ALFRED RICHARDS (1862-1947)

RICHARDS A MAN BENT ON CHANGE

 

THE PEOPLE OF THE CENTURY

By Michael Anthony

Express

March 15, 2000

Pages 34 & 35

 

Alfred Richards was one of those people possessed with a relentless, driving force for change.  Although the arena of his battles was not the wider arena of Trinidad and Tobago, but, rather, the narrower one of municipal politics in Port of Spain, it is his spirited campaign for change that has helped to clear the clear the way for political awareness, and brought in a new day for Trinidad and Tobago.

 

Alfred Richards, the son of Tam Chong, a Chinese indentured worker, and Margaret Richards, a black Barbadian, appeared to have had a passion for pharmacology, and to have emerged early as a druggist and pharmacist.  He also had a head for business for he quickly established himself in Port of Spain, and almost up to our own time his name remained a household one in drugs.

 

But if he had stuck to drugs there would have been no need to write this article.  Without abandoning his calling, he took up arms against poverty, wretchedness, bad living conditions, and the other rampant social evils in the Port of Spain of his day. 

 

For he must have realised that the cure for society's ills needed stronger medicine than his drugs.

 

His thirst for change and for the betterment of the working class involved him in a struggle, which lit up the way for the reformists towards the end of the last century.

 

Alfred Richards started his agitation when he became a member of the Port of Spain borough council towards the end of the last century.

 

In 1897, in the face of what was seen as Government inspired hostile forces ranged against reform, Richards formed the Trinidad Workingmen's Association.  This Association had the characteristics of a political party as well as a trade union, neither of which entities had existed in Trinidad before.  The Trinidad Workingmen's Association was indeed a pressure group for political reform and at the same time a watchdog for the rights of the workers - and so it was no wonder that it was in turn closely watched by the Government.

 

The period immediately following, marked by the abolition of the borough council of Port of Spain and later by the water riots, brought out to the fullest the fighting spirit of the members of the Trinidad Workingmen's Association, and particularly of its leader Alfred Richards.  Richards was undoubtedly one of the stubbornest enemies of the Government, most of whose members continually repudiated any attempt to restore the borough council.  A case to recall occurred in early 1906 when, in a debate, the Legislative Council rejected a proposal by Governor Henry Moore Jackson calling for a restoration of the borough charter in five years, and humiliatingly crushed another amendment by two reformists proposing restoration in three years.  The attitude of the Government was clear beyond doubt when a resolution by one of its members calling for the governor to continue nominating all the members of the Borough Council was overwhelmingly carried by the House.

 

Alfred Richards and his Trinidad Workingmen's Association reacted with fury and they immediately sent a protest to the secretary of state for the colonies asking him to set aside such a decision.  The Association told the secretary of state the charter was "abolished under the pernicious rule of Sir Hubert Jerningham," and even though Richards recognised Governor Jackson's sympathy for restoration, he did not approve of even his proposal to restore the charter in six years, saying this was likely to bring in six years of unrest.  It called for restoration without delay.

 

As could be expected, Richards' call was ignored by the authorities, yet he continued to fight without let-up, and it can be argued that he, more than anyone else, kept the spirit of resistance alight.  It was only when the charter was returned to Port of Spain in 1914 that this warrior laid down his arms.

 

But this was only for a brief moment for there were many other battles for him to fight.

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Richards' battles continued as he warred against poverty and slum areas.

 Tune in next Wednesday for part two of Michael Anthony's tribute to Alfred Richards.

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A PIONEER FOR T&TEC

 

People of the Century

By Michael Anthony

Part 2

Express

March 22, 2000

Pages 30 & 31

 

The war years - 1914 to 1918 - forced Richards to lie low, but no sooner had the war in Europe ended that he declared his own war on poverty and squalor in Port of Spain.

 

A like-minded and much-admired colleague of Richards, Captain Arthur Andrew Cipriani, returned home from the front in 1919, and when Cipriani was elected to the borough council in 1921 he found a staunch ally in Alfred Richards.

 

Richards' target in the 1920s and 1930s was the same as Cipriani's - the removal of Port of Spain's horrible slums and shantytowns.

 

But the 1930s also provided another formidable challenge.

 

This was the electricity issue.

 

When the 30-year franchise of the Trinidad Electric Light and Power Company had expired in 1931, this company, aided and abetted by the administration of Governor Sir Claude Hollis, refused to return the company to the Port of Spain City Council.

 

This was hurtful to men like Cipriani and Alfred Richards, who had not only seen the Port of Spain borough council introduce electricity, but had seen it lose its hold on electricity in an alarmingly unjust manner, since it was "the pernicious rule of Sir Hubert Jerningham" which had put the council out of office in 1899.

 

Also, the electricity franchise agreement of 1901 had stated clearly that at the end of the franchise the city corporation had to be given the first option.

 

The Port of Spain City Council was forced to go to the Privy Council twice, so stubborn was the electric company and its allies.

 

Richards, who had presided over this issue when he became mayor in 1936, was forced into a compromise with the government, although the Privy Council had ruled for the city corporation.

 

The compromise was that because of the number of issues to be cleared up, and taking into account the amount of work to be done with respect to the handing over, the electric company and the government would hand over the electricity undertaking at the end of 10 years.

 

In the interim, the Trinidad Electricity Board had formed (May 1937) but Alfred Richards was never satisfied with the arrangement, and when the government quite naturally envisaged an island-wide electricity scheme, Richards strongly advocated that the corporation controlled its own part of the electricity undertaking, including tramways.

 

When he became mayor in Port of Spain for the term 1940-1941 this appeared to be his great objective.

 

However, the government carried out its promise to hand over the electricity undertaking and this was achieved in December 1945.  (Richards had retired the previous year at the age of 82).

 

The Port of Spain city corporation then established the Corporation Electricity Board (CEB).

 

The government then moved to set up a commission to look after the supply and distribution of electricity throughout the rest of Trinidad and Tobago, and of course this was the Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission (T&TEC).

 

After this came into operation in January 1946, it became abundantly clear that Richards' selfish attitude, which had led to the formation of the CEB, would prove unnecessarily costly to the city corporation.

 

In fact, the days of the CEB were numbered.

 

Although Alfred Richards was no longer actively on the scene, some of his friends now began criticizing him for having been "small-minded", for by having urged the corporation not to co-operate with the government, he was saying, in so many words, that because Port of Spain had introduced electricity, electricity should remain in Port of Spain.

 

Anyway, the compromise creating the Corporation Electricity Board meant that the Corporation had its share of the electric works and the government had its share.

 

But soon the Corporation found the task was too much to handle and started to make overtures to be absorbed in the Electricity Commission.

 

Anyway, the long-lived warrior had lived long enough to see the troublesome electricity issue resolved with the act which created T&TEC.

 

Of course he did not think of it that way.  The Act had taken place in 1946 and Alfred Richards died in 1947.

 

But whether or not Richards had approved of the commission is of no importance here, and his involvement in the electricity problem is not the motive for paying tribute to him.

 

Nor is it for his pharmaceutical activities his contribution to slum clearance, nor in general, his social work.

 

Maybe it could be said that it was his attention to all of these matters that made up the man Alfred Richards.

 

But it is especially for his political agitation that he will be remembered, and the mind goes back to the formation of his Trinidad Workingmen's Association in 1897.

 

This was perhaps the first organised movement of resistance for those who hankered after political reform.

 

For as a force for change, the Trinidad Workingmen's Association cast a light of hope in those gloomy political days when our 20th century began.

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