Water as a Weapon

What happened in 1903, when an angry mob set the Red House to the torch? A look at the Water Riots by Lenny Anduze from his book "When the Lion Stumbled". It seems as though history repeats itself in Trinidad - this time the other way round, but with the same intentions on all sides!

Looking back at the first Red House, which had been designed in 1844 by Richard Bridgens, Superintendent of Public Works, architect John Newel Lewis, H.B.M., observed that “the building was sober enough, heaven knows”. Its main feature was a carriageway through its courtyard. This was to keep Prince Street open to Sackville Street, and was the only stylish motive in a somewhat austere and boring building.

The original drawings did in fact have an ornate facade, but Bridgens died before he could finish the implementation. His executor asked too high a price for the construction, so the Red House was left plain like it was for several years. As time went by, however, it was decorated somewhat enthusiastically.

This is the story of 1903, when the first Red House was burnt down. The story actually begins a few years earlier, when the Secretary of State for the Colonies closed down the Port of Spain Borough Council, replacing it by four Governor-nominated officials. The official reason was the Council’s debt to the government; the unofficial reason was that the Borough Council was regarded as a “hot bed” of dissent with the Colonial Government, where middle class coloured professionals and “pseudo intellectuals” were in pursuit of their own agendas.

Some of the councillors had made a little money and had risen to “insular importance and sophisticated living”. They had forgot, however, that in the final analysis an “overlord does not have to bargain with his subjects”, as Lenny Anduze puts it in his historical novel “When the Lion Stumbled”.

They had been disenfranchised at the stroke of a pen. The rage at which they saw this as a public humiliation and denigration of their status turned into open hostility to the government, and they vowed revenge.

As Anduze points out, “their discomfort was all the acute because the Colonial Government itself was very efficient in administrating the island. The town’s streets, squares and public buildings were maintained to a high standard, as were hospital services, the post office, treasury and audit offices; the law courts dispensed justice which was put into effect by a disciplined police force and prison service. The country districts were under the control of a warden and all were fully controlled and supervised by the central authority at the Red House in Port of Spain.

“The disenfranchised burgesses knew that they could not claim that it was an incompetent government that had dissolved their bankrupt council, so they sought ways of seriously embarrassing the government, hoping that if the consequent outcry of the population was sufficiently damaging, the Governor would be forced to seek their aid in settling matters. They would then demand the restoration of the council with full powers to manage their own affairs."

Then they discovered that the weapon was already in their hands - actually in their homes - water! It is paradoxical that a tropical island with an average rainfall of about 70 inches per year, often as high as 90 inches, should ever lack water, but a water shortage came about in the towns because the pipes to the houses were connected to reservoirs, built to hold only sufficient water to supply the ‘reasonable needs’ of the population. An ‘unreasonable’ use would run the reservoir dry, and that was the weapon which the disenfranchised group chose to fight the Government.

“In 1900, the Government realised that water was being deliberately wasted and the levels in the reservoir were falling," writes Anduze. "In its checks and surveys, it discovered that leakage in the old mains was not responsible. Rather, taps and fountains were being left running all day and all night; pools were being emptied and filled more frequently than usual; large private plunge baths holding between one thousand and two thousand gallons were in constant used - often emptied more than once each day, and that one house alone consumed 8,170 gallons daily."

The Colonial Secretary, Courtenay Knollys, told the Governor, Sir Alfred Moloney, that something needed to be done against the deliberate wasting of water.

"Sir, there is no longer any doubt that much, if not all, of this waste is deliberate. Taps all over the town are being re-opened as soon as Government officers shut them, and thousands of gallons of clear water can be seen flowing through the gutters every minute," said Knollys.

"But why?" asked the Governor.

"A very deliberate motive, Your Excellency. Since the abolition of the Borough Council, there is a section of the inhabitants doing its best to create unrest in the town."

"Subversive?"

"No, Sir, They keep well within the law; but my information leads me to think that the instigators of the waste water campaign intend to cause trouble for us by depriving the town of water."

"With the hope of gaining what?"

"Of creating a situation where they would be called on to co-operate with the Government when they will state their terms, one of which would be the immediate re-instatement of the borough Council."

"I will not stand for that, Knollys. They had more than one chance to come to a reasonable settlement over the Council and threw it away arrogantly - I will not be defied."

Turning to the Director of Public Works, Walsh Wrightson (after whom Wrightson Road is named), Sir Alfred asked:

"What do you suggest, Wrightson?"

"That our action be in two parts - the short term and the long term. In the short we should consider cutting off the supply to selected areas of the town for specified hours; these times to be dependent on the rainfall and condition of the reservoirs. As regards the longer outlook, we should begin immediate construction of the pipeline and pumping station to provide an additional water supply to Port of Spain from the Diego Martin valley and install meters for the consumers."

"What effect will the cost of all that have on the water rate?"

"An increase of not more than 1 percent."

"All right, draw up the plans."

"As soon as these decisions were made public, the members of the dissolved Borough Council, angry that their plan to force the Governor's hand was to be contested, formed the 'Ratepayers Association', writes Lenny Anduze. "They held public meetings in Brunswick Square opposite the Red House within sight and earshot of the Governor's private office, calling on the people to resist all the proposed changes - especially the installation of meters.

The more Governor persisted in his plans and in refuting the Ratepayers Association misrepresentations in the daily press, the more abusive theygrew. In February 1903, with the dry season imminent, the Governor ordered the cutting of 80,000 gallons daily used in flushing the gutters, and introduced a bill entitled "The Port of Spain Waterworks Ordinance 1903".

Cycles of Revolt

It has been noted that Trinidad, not Tobago, possesses a cycle of violence. From the time of Governor Sir Tomas Picton, slave insurrection, official violence, torture, public execution, public display of decapitated heads, public whippings (1,500 lashes for desertion) from the army was meted out to both free and enslaved, military and civilian, even to young girls, on through to slave poisonings on the estates.

This happened in a short period from 1797-1805. Then the Port of Spain Riots of 1849 took place, when a British regiment opened fire on a mob intent on destroying the Government building, later the Red House, in protest of a law stating that the heads of debtors be shaved in the same manner as convicted felons. The law was repealed. In the 1890s, the Canboulay Riots and the Hosay Riots took place. This was followed 54 years later by the famous Water Riots, when a mele ensued the burning down of the Red House and 16 people were shot.

Just 35 years later, the country experienced a general strike in which riots swept the city and protesting workers were shot out of hand at various places around the country. In 1970, Port of Spain’s Woodford Square again saw demontrations, riots and shootings. The events of 1990 are well known. This re-occuring cycle of revolt, followed by official reaction, has now become virtually inherited, involving basically the same people for close to 200 years.

In the context of these articles, we will deal with events that led up to the Water Riots of 1903.

Crown colony rule was frustrating for the general populance right accross the board. It was reepressive to the lower classes, mostly black people, and it tended to debar upward mobility confining the children of the ex-slaves to perpetual poverty. It was humiliating to the coloured people and the white middle class, who, notwithstanding the heroic attempts at educating their children and mindboggling and convoluted endeavours to achieve and maintain European cultural moirees and a respectable lifestyle, they were still ouside the pale and likely to remain there.

The upper class French creoles were jealous of the English for their positions and power and smarting at the slights dished out by people whom they considered to be beneath their social standing. They were the grandchildren of the original aristocratic colonists who had, after all, come here first. The Indians were completely out of the equation socially and politically at this point.

In the closing years of the 19th century, opposition to colonial rule became more general and in fact more radical. What was mostly a middle class dissatisfaction evolved into movements that attracted working class support.

Joseph Chamberlain, the Secetary of State for the Colonies, the Govenor’s boss, brushed aside the reform movements and turned down appeals for any form of elected representation in the Legistlature, summing it up thus “Local government (falsely so called) is the curse of the West Indies. In many islands it means only local oligarchy of whites and half breeds - always incapable and frequently corrupt. In other cases it is the rule of the negroes, totaly unfit for representative institutions and the dupes of unscrupulous adventures.” He followed this up by ending the token majority of local unofficials in the Legislative Council nominated by the Governor.

He then moved on the Port of Spain Borough Council. An elected body set up in 1853, it had served as an important forum for local politicians, particularly the black and coloured radicals, and was the only voice through which any national view could be expressed by elected representatives. The conditions placed on the members were tough and they voted not to accept these and, in effect, voted themselves out of existence. Chamberlain ordered a Board of Commissions put in place to run the city. It was felt that this amounted to “the killing of a school to teach people to manage their own affairs.”

These were not significant issues, however, to attract mass support. The young but vigorous Trinidadian Workingman’s Association was much better able to do rally people around their causes, and so too was th Pan African Association led by a London-based lawyer called H.S. Williams. The next and sigificant link was forged by the creation of the Rate Payers’ Association, comprised mostly of professionals and businessmen. This group of taxpayers sought to act as a counter balance against arbitrary measures taken by the government, particularly in the distribution of water in the city. These groups acted, more or less, in an organised manner. The grassroots, however alienated, poor and easily manipulated, were moved by the rhetoric of Rate Payers’ Association’s principle speakers, Emmanuel Lazare, Moresse-Smith and others. Those speakers urged them to assemble in Woodford Square, outside the Red House, on the day when the new Ratepayers Ordinance was supposed to be read. The purpose was to seek to prevent this reading. The Ratepayers’ Association’s radicals made a strenuous effort to excite the assembled crowds against the Government. The outcome was a major riot during which the old Red House was completely burnt down. Much of recorded history was forever lost in this fire. Soldiers were called in, and 42 people were wounded, 16 lost their lives.