Dr Rita Pemberton

CONFLICTS between the executive and the local assemblies featured prominently in the politics of the British Caribbean possessions, because of which the British government sought to reduce and ultimately remove the powers of the assemblies and take full charge of colonial administration. Thus, in order to avoid these conflicts, the new colonies were made Crown Colonies, which did not have assemblies and in which the seat of financial control remained with the imperial government.

During the early conflicts with the old colonial assemblies, whenever the assemblies disagreed with the attempts of the British authorities to implement what were considered undesirable laws or policies, the assemblies used their power of financial control to make their point. They refused to vote supplies, preventing the allocation of money for various purposes. This strategy had a two-fold effect for it created chaos in the administration while embarrassing the imperial authorities, who were rendered unable to pay their officers.

The imperial challenge to colonial authority was based on the notion that the authority of the colonial assemblies was based on the powers given to them by the imperial government. However, this was challenged by the assemblies, which argued that their powers were donated by neither king nor parliament, insisting they were their birth right as Englishmen.

The creation of the colonial assemblies occurred at a time when the imperial government was comfortable in the belief that the administration of the colonies was being placed in the hands of people whose vested interests in exploiting the colonies for their financial benefit were synchronised with those of the imperial authorities. However, conflicts largely emerged from a divergence between the interests of the imperial power and the planter elite on the islands.

The interests of the imperial government shifted from the restricted trading arrangements of the navigation acts, which placed Caribbean sugar-producing colonies at the centre of the imperial trading system, to a desire for wider markets in which the mass-produced goods of the Industrial Revolution could be sold. In addition, while planter interests remained wedded to the welfare of the declining sugar industry, cheaper and better-quality sugar, of which imperial interests wanted to partake, became available on the international market.

Tensions between the British government and the assemblies became heated over the issues that the assemblies considered critical for the survival of the sugar industry. These included the termination of the slave trade, the passage of the Emancipation Act in 1834, and what planters saw as the premature termination of the apprenticeship system and the institution of full freedom, all of which the assemblies were forced to accept.

The frequency with which these conflicts reared their heads made the British government determined to make important changes to the system of government in the Caribbean without further aggravating imperial/col