ALPHONSO PHILBERT THEOPHILUS
Newsday Historical
Digest
September 24, 2000
Page 10
A
“Fargo” was a truck, a heavy-duty British-built vehicle, used
in the pitch lake at La Brea in the years before the last war.
‘Fargo’
was also a stevedore, a black Tobagonian.
Tall, built large, a strong young man who could bend a shilling between
his thumb and forefinger.
He
had been born Alphonso Philbert Theophilus James at Patience Hill in Tobago in
1901. He went to the Roman Catholic
School in the village and worked in his stepfather’s garden. The Tobago in which he grew up still
lingered in the 19th century twilight, and the bashful giant of a
boy, in search of a little more education had to fit in as a ‘pupil teacher’,
gleaning what he could in the fields of knowledge by being around the more
educated, the more self-assured. Copies
of the Port of Spain Gazette, sometimes weeks old, found their way into the
hands of the young man at Patience Hill.
The
year was 1919. Trinidad and Tobago’s contingents
were returning from the wars in Europe.
The air was full of stories of the adventurous tales of foreign travel,
far away places with strange sounding names.
With the money he had saved, the furthest James could travel was to
Trinidad. Jobs, such as there were,
were in the oil belt, and he journeyed south to see what he could get. From tranquil Tobago he soon found himself
in the turmoil of Trinidad of the 1920s.
The men who had come home from the trenches had seen the great leveler
of war at work. For them, the
stereotype of master and servant in terms of skin colour was gone. The word ‘socialist’ had entered the lexicon
of terms of the common man. The
repatriation of men who had worked on the Panama Canal brought the flash and
spending of ready cash to the eyes of some who had only known the large silver
coins of the British empire, and the almost square low denominations of the
Colonial Bank. The spread of Garvey’s
ideas amongst the working class, the influence of the ‘Left Book Club’, and the
mergence of the new papers such a ‘The Beacon’ and the ‘Teacher’s
Journal’; all made for the quickening of political consciousness.
A.P.T.
James landed a job as a stevedore at Brighton Lake Asphalt. He lived at ‘quarters’ for government
workers in the ‘New Jersey’ area. The
iron grip of the Great Depression had found its way to Trinidad by the late
1920s. There was generally a fall in
wages, retrenchment and a steady rise in cost of living. ‘Black Pride’ was heightened by the news of
the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.
In the boxing ring, Joe Lewis’ triumph over Max Baer and Primo Carnera
in that year was seen as victories for the black man. James aligned himself first with Captain Arthur Cipriani and the
Workingmen’s Association, and eventually with the Federated Workers Trade Union
(F.W.T.U.) under the guidance of Albert Gomes and Quintin O’Connor. He worked for the union and established a
branch office at La Brea.
James
represented not only stevedores, but oilfield workers on the whole. His energy was tremendous, and his charisma
attracted people to him.
He
made money and spent it. Women loved
him. His vanity was not his greatest
charm. He had married his village
sweetheart before leaving to seek his fortune, and did not fail to support her,
but his life’s path now took him far afield.
He got a divorce and subsequently remarried ‘a La Brea girl.’
James’
involvement with the labour movement of the time did not hinder his
enterprising spirit. In 1941, he won a
contract to supply labour to the oil fields.
He became a stevedore contractor during the war years and worked from
his office at 47 Henry Street in Port of Spain. The harbour of the city and at Brighton was the hub for all
transatlantic shipping originating in the south Atlantic. The convoys of merchantmen came and went
despite the ongoing threat of submarine attacks. Port of Spain in the war years had assumed for the gentle folk of
the town, an astonishing character.
Thousands of American army personnel thronged its streets. Gangsterism, unknown before, dominated
gambling and prostitution. Men like
Boysie Singh controlled the city, our very own homegrown murder incorporated!
A.P.T.
James made a fortune. He also made
allot of children. He limed in the
Chinese shop at la Brea playing checkers.
He often won back from his workers what he had only just paid them. But e was generous and as people said “His
loans were very soft.” James bought
property, houses, an estate, a hotel.
He bought land in Tobago and his friends and relatives were allowed to
build homes on it.
He
owned thoroughbred racehorses and financially supported many trade unions,
paying their bills and the salaries of the executive. His contribution to the Democratic Labour Party was such that it
was rumoured that he had financed their campaign in 1961. Andre Phillips, who wrote a short biography
on A.P.T. James in 1993, recounts that James in the company of his friends
attended a ‘social’ fete in Port of Spain when the barman refused his ‘black
friends’ at the bar. James bought the
whole bar for them. His hard work and
common touch in Tobago earned him a seat on the Legislative Council in 1946. He would be returned in two subsequent
elections in 1950 and 1956, until in 1961, when he lost to the P.N.M.
In
the Legislative Council, he acted as deputy leader of the opposition, when
Bhadase Sagan Maraj was away. He served
the Butler Party, the Caribbean Socialist Party, the Trinidad Labour Party and
the D.L.P.
It
was under the banner of the Butler Party that Fargo along with Timothy Roodal
and Chanka Maraj sat in the expanded legislature of 12 elected members. James became a deputy leader of the party
during Butler’s incarceration in the 1940s.
Their relationship, however, soured, and James allied himself with Dr.
Patrick Solomon’s Caribbean Socialist Party.
His contemporaries were Victor Bryan, Norman James, musician Raymond
Quevedo (“Attila the Hun”), Roy Joseph and Dr. David Pitt.
James
worked for Tobago like no one had ever done before. Carlton Ottley wrote:
“Tobago
neglect was halted to a minor extent when there appeared on the scene a
Tobagonian who deserves honour in the island’s hall of fame.”
Andre
Phillips concludes his paper on A.P.T.:
“Alphonso
P.T. James died of a stroke on January 5, 1962, after a seven hour long
struggle for survival, only a month after the elections. As he lived, so did he die – a fighter to
the end.”
Fargo
A.P.T. James is today, like so many others in this country that is made up of
people with incredibly short memories, an almost unknown figure. Ridiculed by those who came later, his
memory is maintained only by a handful of friends and relatives. This is a great shame, because now, at this
time, we are in need of heroes, role models to point the way, to say to young
people: “Watch me, I did this, all this, my way.”