Even more alarming to the authorities, especially those in the West Indies, was the fact that between 1916 and 1919 a number of colonies including St Lucia, Grenada, Barbados, Antigua, Trinidad, Jamaica and British Guiana experienced a series of strikes in which people were shot and killed. It was into this turmoil that the disgruntled seamen and ex-servicemen were about to return and many people in the region were hoping or anticipating - and, in the case of the authorities, fearing - that their arrival would bring the conflict to head. When the disgruntled BWIR soldiers began arriving back in the West Indies they quickly joined a wave of worker protests resulting from a severe economic crisis produced by the war, and the influence of black nationalist ideology espoused by black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey and others. Disenchanted soldiers and angry workers unleashed a series of protest actions and riots in a number of territories including Jamaica, Grenada and especially in British Honduras. West Indian participation in the war was a significant event in the still ongoing process of identity formation in the post-emancipation era of West Indian history. The war stimulated profound socio-economic, political and psychological change and greatly facilitated protest against the oppressive conditions in the colonies, and against colonial rule by giving a fillip to the adoption of the nationalist ideologies of Marcus Garvey and others, throughout the region. The war also laid the foundation for the nationalist upheavals of the 1930s in which World War One veterans were to play a significant role. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/west_indies_07.shtml
So very true Annie. And Capt A A Cipriani played a big part in Trinidad's Labour Movement. He, post war was elected a member of the Port of Spain City Council, and was a real thorn in the Establishment's side!
Arthur Andrew Cipriani known to his friends as 'Tattoo' was born on the 31 January, 1875. By the time he was six he had lost both his parents in a typhoid epidemic that swept Trinidad in the 1880s. He was brought up by his aunt Mrs. Dick and attended St. Mary's College. He spent a lot of time on the family's cocoa estates at Santa Cruz and at Gran Couva and from an early age demonstrated a way with animals, especially horses. He left St. Mary's at about sixteen years of age and, turning down various offers to study abroad, decided to raise and train horses. He obtained a trainer's license and traveled in the West Indies as a rider and trainer with some considerable success. His friends described him as a solitary sort of man who never married. When Arthur Cipriani died, it is hardly imaginable today what loss Trinidadian workers felt. That he was revered by the basically black and coloured middle-class intelligentia that assumed power in the 1950s is an indication of the stature of `The Captain'
