Dr Rita Pemberton

FIFTEEN YEARS after the termination of the apprenticeship system and the legislated change of status of the African workers from 'slaves' to free workers, the administration of Tobago found it expedient to augment the island's police force.

Policing had been well established as an essential part of the system of enslavement, which was based on rigid controls over the large, enslaved population and forcing them to accept their servile position.

In Tobago, however, to the shock of the planting community, enslaved resistance was a feature of the period of establishment of sugar plantations. During the 1770s, the island's enslaved population rose in rebellion against their enslaved status, in the process threatening the survival of the newly established plantations.

The mortified plantation owners took immediate steps to institute systems of control to restrict resistance by the enslaved population. These included organising military defence mechanisms and a system of policing, which both gave authority to planters, managers and other members of the white community on the island to force compliance by the enslaved population.

The first such act, passed in 1835, was to give effect to the provisions of the imperial Emancipation Act; assist the industry of the manumitted slaves; compensate those who were entitled to their services; establish a police service, and provide for building prisons.

Although the establishment of the police force was presented as essential to promote the industry of the newly freed population, there was nothing in the act which made provision for the development of the free workers, while a significant part of the process of policing included building places of confinement and punishment and instituting restrictive vagrancy laws which reflected both their control and punitive impulses, as well as the desire to maintain the distinction between superior and inferior people.

Also, it should be noted that a police law which included accommodation for prisoners was construed as being a part of the compensation to planters who were entitled to the services of the freed population, although under the Emancipation Act, plantation owners were handsomely compensated by the imperial government.

In 1838, planters became very apprehensive. Ruling-class fears were that emancipation would stimulate reprisals which would threaten their social and economic position, and in anticipation, establishing and strengthening a police force was considered urgent.

A second law, in 1843, sought to regulate policing to manage internal security across the island with support from the military element, especially in and around the towns of Scarborough and Plymouth, the locations with the largest estates and the largest concentrations of estates and, of course, the largest concentration of the African population.

Before emancipation, planters served as the policemen on their estates, each of which provided its own prison facilities for those enslaved who were considered 'devian