Labour Day under a state of emergency in Trinidad and Tobago

This article by Dr. Gabrielle Jamela Hosein first appeared in Kiskadee Watch on June 28, 2026. An edited version is being republished on Global Voices with permission.
Framed as an exercise in ensuring public safety, police searched vehicles and lectured workers on Labour Day’s purpose, those authorized to participate, and permissions granted under a state of emergency (SoE).
Trinidad and Tobago has been under a state of emergency, across two different governments, for much of the period since December 2024. Introduced to combat violence and gang-related crime, SoE regulations give the state sweeping powers of arrest and detention. These powers are also being wielded against non-violent civic demonstrations.
Held annually on June 19, Labour Day thus brought together everything – from police repression to labour insecurity – that defined this as the date of annual commemoration.
June 19 is the anniversary of the 1937 Butler Oilfield Riots. Tubal Uriah ‘Buzz’ Butler, a Grenadian who served in the British West India Regiment in Egypt and Palestine during World War I, migrated to Trinidad and began working in the oil fields. Among many others, including women such as Elma Francois, he soon began organising against “starvation wages” and labour conditions. His speeches reflected his fire as a Spiritual Baptist preacher.
On that day, police arrived to detain Butler at the Apex (Trinidad) Oilfields, sparking confrontations during which they opened fire upon striking workers. Corporal Charlie King, attempting to arrest Butler, was chased by crowds, fell through a shop window, and was set on fire at Fyzabad Junction, now renamed.
Fourteen people were killed, 59 wounded, and hundreds arrested; strikes by Indians and Africans, which had long been taking place, ignited the country. British Marines landed to quell the riots and hunt for Butler alongside colonial authorities.
I headed down in my union shirt, but also to witness Protest #19 of the “Justice for Joshua, Freedom for Kaia” movement, led by 25-year-old Alyssa Phillip and her mother, Camille Caresquero. Since January, this movement has been challenging police violence and demanding state accountability.
On January 20, 2026, a police car chase ended in the death of Joshua Samaroo. CCTV video appears to show him surrendering with both hands raised through his driver’s open window while police continued shooting. The news reported he was shot 19 times. Kaia Sealy, his common-law partner, was shot and remains paralysed from the waist down.
Led by Alyssa Phillip, a friend of Kaia, family members and others began to gather at Woodford Square, across from the Red House where Parliament sits, to express their anger. Trinidad and Tobago is considered to have a troubling rate of police-related killings, particularly of poor and working-class men. This time, the country watched it happen on camera.
Outrage again flared from May 21, when the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) advised that Sealy be criminally charged for Samaroo’s death and firearm offences. The “19 Bullets, 19 Protests” campaign, symbolised by a Trinidad flag in which the red stripe became blood dripping from nineteen bullet holes, stepped up condemnation. The police responded with heavy discipline.
On May 27, 2026, in full riot gear, they kettled and stopped a peaceful gathering of women, men and children near the Office of the DPP in Port of Spain, stating that the protest had not provided the required 48 hours’ notice.
Alyssa Phillip, her mother, and another activist were arrested under the just-introduced Emergency Powers (Prohibition of Public Protests and Demonstrations) Order. Phillip was physically removed before finishing her statement, singing, “A little more oil in my lamp, keep me burning” while police carried her away with her mother’s arms wrapped around her waist. When protestors began to chant for the removal of the police commissioner and minister of homeland security, they were warned that chanting was not allowed.
On May 28, 2026, for the first time in history, 15 “no-protest zones” were declared, including “the DPP’s office, the two airports, the port, Defence Force headquarters, Trinidad and Tobago Police Service headquarters, Ministry of Finance, [and] President’s House” as, in the words of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, “you can’t have large gatherings in front these places that gangs may infiltrate.”
The SoE was also used to legitimise the shutdown of the unauthorised June 3 “Walk for Peace” in east Port of Spain, which aimed to unite warring gangs. The police cited traffic management, public safety, and national security concerns. Media showed them even halting a street interview with a young man on the grounds that he did not have permission to protest or make a “public speech.”
Meanwhile, “19 Bullets, 19 Protests” prepared to join the annual Labour Day march on June 19, symbolically the site of the 19th and last protest. It positioned, in Phillip’s words, “truth, justice, fairness, and democracy” as interlocked with workers’ struggle. It expanded the movement’s reach, visibility, and validation. Phillip’s banner, printed with a cross and the slogan “Jesus says Kaia and Joshua deserved justice,” also echoed the evangelical spirit of Butler. Media footage showed union leader Michael Anisette confirming that she was marching with him just before the unarmed woman and her mother were dwarfed by riot police.
In a June 20 press release, the police justified charges of “disorderly behaviour” and “resisting arrest” on a number of grounds: that “19 Bullets, 19 Protests” was not part of the trade union movement and had not received police permission to march, and that unauthorised groups attaching themselves to permitted marches “would have undermined the event, created security risks, and violated the legal framework governing public marches.” Yet, Labour Day has never been for union members alone.
The irony was stark. Police used colonial-era law to block a protest of police authority in the name of protecting the “integrity” of a national event memorialising unauthorised, anti-colonial resistance to police. A short distance away, Butler’s garlanded bust towered over his grave.
The day’s contradictions recalled another of Trinidad’s infamous instances of police repression, the 1884 Muharram Massacre, when colonial authorities used lethal force against Hosay processions that brought together Indians, Africans, Hindus, Muslims, drummers, stick fighters, and labourers. Authorities were threatened by the solidarities such gatherings made possible.
Meanwhile, under Labour Day’s scorching sun, public servants, teachers, and sanitation, prison, banking, insurance, postal, waterfront, transport, industrial, and oilfield workers marched. I didn’t see banners for nurses, communication workers, domestic workers, or non-unionised and informal labour.
We began at the front and gradually drifted back, buoyed by drummers and music trucks. Despite our rich calypso and rapso history, there were only pockets of local protest music and few singing the rallying cry, “Solidarity Forever.” Police with submachine guns and police cars were everywhere.
Under the big tent erected at the Oilfield Workers’ Trade Union (OWTU) Hall, “De Original Bellman,” wearing a white cap printed with those words, was ringing a school bell to welcome arriving unions; the gesture symbolic of Spiritual Baptists.
The unions helped the government to win the election. Their relationship is a strategic and hopeful, though compromised, alignment. The day before the march, the government passed the Miscellaneous Provisions (Heritage Petroleum, Paria Fuel Trading and Guaracara Refining Vesting) (Amendment) Bill, 2026, restoring OWTU’s successor rights to decades of negotiated protections which were lost when the People’s National Movement (PNM) party, now in opposition, dismantled the country’s oil refinery and retrenched workers. OWTU leaders and the PM posed for a photo, all in the colour of the union’s dark blue shirt, their fists in the air.
The next day, on the podium, the Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers Association (TTUTA) president renewed pressure for outstanding salary increases and retroactive payments, promised and undelivered since a collective agreement was signed in April 2025. The PNM had refused to renegotiate public servants’ contracts since 2013, and the billions in backpay owed — and promised on the hustings — are crippling the new government’s ability to pay. Increasingly, public servants (many of whom are women) are being quietly moved from permanent jobs to short-term contract posts without benefits, including maternity leave; an anti-labour policy begun under the PNM in 2002. Labour Day revealed these contradictions in plain sight.
Some are describing the country as becoming a police state, but it always was, under colonial rule, and under both past and current governments. Nonetheless, Labour Day has seen the creeping presence of militarised police, first with batons, then with side arms, and now with sub-machine guns, and in increasing numbers. This is also the first time in memory that anyone has been arrested while simply peacefully participating.
The next day, unions were united and vociferous in condemning police for the arrests, and for attempting to set spurious boundaries on who and what issues could be present in the Labour Day march. Letters to the editor, social media posts, and media releases by women’s organisations all added to voices denouncing the use of emergency powers to suppress peaceful expression, lawful assembly, or democratic participation, and calling for an end to all prosecutions against Alyssa Phillip and her mother. Though highly divided, the country was largely united in the uproar that followed June 19, reasserting Labour Day as a moment for citizens of all kinds to raise a breadth of social justice concerns.
Our colonial status has changed, but both imperialism and the plantation mode of maintaining order remain. History repeats in these islands.
Then, British naval forces were at our shores. Today, US warships militarize our aspirations to be a “zone of peace.”
Then, Butler found himself in British-controlled Palestine. Today, still, a Muslim man in his keffiyeh waved his Palestinian flag as he marched, declaring that until Palestine is free, none of us is free. Meanwhile, police made another take off a jacket printed with words declaring that Israel is committing genocide.
Then, labour protests combined with resistance to police. Today, young Alyssa, like Butler, is cast as a security risk.
Then, abysmal living conditions brought discontent to a boil. Today, in Trinidad and Tobago, more than one-third of the population cannot afford a healthy diet.
Today, an independent nation-state must decide which ghosts will haunt the present and what lessons are to be learned from the fire set upon Corporal Charlie King.