A false promise of equality: the termination of apprenticeship, 1838

Dr Rita Pemberton

The Act for the Abolition of Slavery made provision for a delayed freedom, through a system of apprenticeship which was to last four years for skilled workers and six for unskilled workers.

Justification for the variation of the terms of this provision lay in the prevalent notion that the Africans remained “uncivilised” and should not be made completely free until they were sufficiently “civilised.”

This civilising process included that they be taught how to manage their freedom, the virtues of hard work, and the necessity to earn a living and become fully responsible for supporting themselves and their families.

The variation in the length of the apprenticeship was based on the notion of white superiority, so that skilled enslaved African workers who worked in closer contact with their masters and related more to white society were classified as more “civilised” than the unskilled workers who spent most of their time in the field.

This justification was a smokescreen to offer plantation owners a guaranteed supply of labour for an extended period.

The heaviest labour demands for the operations of the plantation were placed on the field workers who were responsible for planting, weeding and reaping the canes. These functions, which constituted the backbone of the industry, ensured there was a crop to be processed into sugar.

The greatest challenge Emancipation posed to the planters was the fear of the loss of their labour force, which would strangle the industry. Therefore, the planters, under duress, accepted Emancipation in phases, which allowed them the extra time with an assured labour force over which they were able to exert some control to maintain their operations.

The Tobago Act for the termination of apprenticeship stated that it was “expedient to terminate the apprenticeship system on 1 August 1838 next” for all apprentices, who were “absolutely freed…of the remaining term of their apprenticeship…and from all and every the obligations, pains and penalties imposed or incurred hereby.”

No explanation was provided of the circumstances which created the expediency, but there were important reasons why the period was amended to four years for all apprentices on the island.

The act detailed the terms under which the so-called liberation was granted. The freed people were to be provided with medical care if they were unable to work because of illness and were entitled to remain in the houses they occupied free of charge as long as they were prepared to perform their accustomed duties for wages.

These benefits would apply up to 1 October except in the cases of worker non-performance and insubordination, theft, trespass, drunkenness and riotous behaviour, as verified by two justices of the peace.

All commitments of the employer to infirm individuals would be terminated on August 1, 1839, and if such people had no supporting family members to care for them, the assistance of a justice of the peace should be sought.

The act was silent on the question of long-term accommodation for the freed population, and the promised liberation could not occur if the workers remained dependent on the planters for housing. Also there was an assumption that they would remain permanent estate workers.

The proclamation of Lieut Governor Henry Darling on July 15, 1838, is very instructive. He said the apprentices were all free “to all intents and purposes as free as any white man, on the 1st of next month,” which he describes as “a great boon, a great and kind gift on the part of those from whom it proceeds…”: the very Council and the House of Assembly whose members were opposed to Emancipation.

He went on to indicate that the Queen and the people of England would be glad to hear the formerly enslaved are now upon a “footing of perfect equality with them” as subjects of the same country, but cautioned that they would be expected to demonstrate that they deserved “the great blessing” which had been conferred on them.

The qualities which would indicate their appreciation were: sobriety; peaceable, industrious, faithful discharge of duties to employers, with a reminder that depriving the employer of any part of their time of lawful labour, whether by “idleness, neglect or careless performance of your duty,” is to be guilty of an act of dishonesty, and “such dishonest men become the enemy of God and will be despised by mankind.” Thus the lieutenant governor also assumed the freed Africans would remain estate workers.

Life for the Africans during the apprenticeship period bore absolutely no resemblance to the promised freedom of life like that of white men. Colour prejudices remained entrenched in the society and Africans continued to be seen as the labour force to provide profits to the white planter class.

In fact, it was a period of sharp contestation between apprentices and their employers, as both sought the best deal for themselves.

Ironically, it was the planters who became “the enemy of God” when they displayed the condemned act of dishonesty. This was manifested in the first planter ploy to reshuffle the apprentices so that more of them were classified as unskilled workers, who were required to serve the longer period of apprenticeship. Domestic and some skilled workers, who would ordinarily be considered the more “civilised,” found themselves relegated to the class of field workers, which set the stage for a conflict-ridden period of apprenticeship.

Planter dishonesty was displayed across the period in their insistence that free children who lived on the estates with their apprenticed mothers continue working on the estate; they changed the allowances previously given to the workers; tried to mandate working hours to reduce the apprentices’ free time; and cheated the workers by increasing the size of tasks for the same rate of pay.

Payment was made in kind and the wages were tied to the estate shops, which were notorious for having overpriced poor-quality goods, or goods which did not reflect the value of the service provided.

Traditional privileges were curtailed, and the punishment for the workers’ infractions was extra labour.

Given the conflicts and tensions that characterised the period of apprenticeship, it became evident that any attempt to free one group of workers in 1838 and leave the majority to serve two further years would be courting disaster.

The expediency to which the act referred was to avert a social explosion in the region. This realisation caused the imperial government to mandate the termination of apprenticeship in 1838 – to which the planting community in Tobago, and elsewhere in the Caribbean, was strongly opposed. The lieutenant governor was disingenuous in his attempt to invoke a moral responsibility of the workers to those who granted freedom by giving service to God, when the very terms of the act and his own explanations underscored their unequal relationship.

In such an environment the promise of freedom and equality, as detailed by both the act and the lieutenant governor, was fictive.