Scarborough explodes: The Land Tax riot of 1852

DR RITA PEMBERTON

From 1838-1848, freed workers and their planter employers in Tobago were presented with difficulties.

While workers expected their freedom, the economically challenged planters made no attempt to liberate the workers. Instead, they operated as they did during the period of enslavement, causing tensions between the two groups. The planters labelled it “labour problems.”

The planters were also dealing with the crippling effects of the 1846 Sugar Duties Act, which removed the protection Caribbean sugar had long enjoyed on the British market. This was followed by the devastating hurricane of 1847 and the financial crisis in Britain, resulting in the failure of 13 merchant houses that serviced a number of Tobago estates.

With the outlook for the sugar industry offering little hope for improvement, and because plantation owners were unable to influence any of these other factors, their emphasis was on reducing their labour costs. The planters’ determination to control versus the freed African workers’ determination to become independent led to an intensified struggle between them for the second half of the 19th century.

Planters used their influence in the administration to obtain approval for strategies to deal with what they described as a “labour shortage” on the island. Among these was the passage of a number of restrictive laws intended to force workers to accept low wages and poor working conditions and permit planters to remain in full control of labour. It was the attempt to implement one of these laws that resulted in an explosion in Scarborough in 1852.

Planters became concerned when there was an exodus of workers from residences on the estates in 1848. This meant a change in their status as located labourers whose wages were lower than those workers who did not live on estate property. Planters, who could not accept the reality of losing control over their workers, reacted by imposing taxation directed at reducing earnings outside of plantation labour and undermining the ability of workers to become independent.

In 1849, a tax of five shillings ($1.20) per acre was imposed on provision grounds, the source of food and extra incomes for the workers. Given that the standard wage on the island was eightpence (16 cents) per day, the earnings of nine and a half days would be required to pay the tax, leaving little to support the workers and their families.

One of the survival strategies used by the freed Africans was to engage in a number of arrangements that provided them with access to land. They rented estate land as garden plots and received provision ground plots as a part of their labourer and metayer agreements with the estates, usually at several different locations. When totalled, the acreage of land to which they had access could be considerable and the tax burden would be onerous.

The Land Tax Act of 1852 followed, bringing further impositions on the workers. A tax of four shillings (96 cents) per acre was imposed on cultivated land, and sixpence (12 cents) per acre on both occupied or unoccupied uncultivated land. Plots that were half an acre and less were taxed as half-acres. All land users, whether owners, tenants, metayers or located labourers, were required to pay the taxes – an indication that the measure was meant to be revenue-generating because multiple payments would be made on the same piece of land.

In addition, the tax burden was heavily placed on the people who were least able to bear it. The only lands exempt from taxation were church land, burial plots, town and village lots and crown lands. This measure was clearly intended to restrict both land owning and access to land.

Additionally, half of the proceeds of the land taxes were intended to fund immigration to provide what the planters considered an “adequate” labour force to service the plantations. It was felt that the resident labour force must contribute to it.

At the same time, new personal income taxes were introduced and taxes on carts for hire targeted former slaves who were able to move into independent employment activity. This favoured the planters, whose export duties on plantation produce were reduced.

This law must also be seen in the context of developments regarding land ownership in Tobago. Reports by the island’s stipendiary magistrates indicate that since Emancipation, there had been suspicious transfers of properties by plantation owners who extended the size of their holdings by annexing adjacent unoccupied land. This included land allocated as poor settlers’ lots; parts of adjacent abandoned estates; and land bordering the sea and other crown land with the intent to prevent other people from occupying it.

On November 22, 1852, a militant crowd composed of both urban and rural dwellers gathered at Market Square and marched to the Treasurer’s Office, where they indicated their refusal to pay the taxes and threw down their tax forms. They threw missiles through the windows of the courthouse and fought with the superintendent of police and senior government officials, to the consternation of the ruling class. The garrison was summoned to disperse the crowd and restore order.

But that was not the end of the matter. Protest action continued during the following week, when workers from rural locations, some black property owners and those who were employed as assessors went to the Treasurer’s Office to indicate their opposition to the tax law by dumping their tax forms.

The outburst alarmed the administration, and the president of the Legislative Council, Henry Yeates, attempted to defuse the situation. He advised that clarity on the interpretation of the law should be provided – the tax was to be paid by owners and employers only; renters, located labourers and metayers were tax-exempt; plots under an acre were not to be taxed; and garden lands were classified as uncultivated land and taxed at sixpence (12 cents) per acre.

While it was a victory for the protesters, Yeates’ intervention resulted in hostility from the irate members of the assembly, directed at both Yeates and the freed African workers.

Tobago’s planter class remained determined to wring profits from a dying sugar industry by extracting cheap labour from their workers, imposing tax burdens on them and applying other restrictions to force them to remain dependent on the estates. This approach, which characterised planter policies to the end of the 19th century, was met with a determined worker response.