McIntosh, George

March 6, 1886
November 1, 1963

George Augustus McIntosh can arguably be described as the most outstanding political leader in St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the first fifty years of the twentieth century. Born in 1886, he was the son of a Scottish father, Donald McIntosh, and a Vincentian mother who worked as a cook. His was a pharmacist by profession, beginning at the age of seventeen as a trainee at the Kingstown General Hospital. McIntosh is best known, however, as a political and labor leader.

George McIntosh, or "Dada," as he was called, first entered the political arena when he became one of the founders of the St. Vincent Representative Government Association, an organization that struggled for the reintroduction of elected representation in the legislature and politics of the country. As a pharmacist, he was consulted on a regular basis by the poorer classes of the community. His establishment of a pharmacy near the Kingstown market meant that on Saturdays, after selling their goods at the market, the peasantry and working people would patronize his store, which was not limited to pharmaceutical products. It was this relationship that brought him into prominence at the time of the riots in 1935, when he was arrested on the belief that he was the mastermind behind the riots.

Because of his relationship with the country's working people, they consulted him at the time of the riots and sought his help in intervening with the governor to plead for improvements in their dire social and economic situation. After his case was dismissed at the preliminary trial, McIntosh sought to capture the energies and hopes of the working people through the formation of the St. Vincent Workingmen's Cooperative Association, a movement that was part union and part political party.

Despite the fact that the majority of his supporters could not meet the franchise requirements, McIntosh's association held the majority of seats in parliament in 1937 and did so until the introduction of universal adult suffrage in 1951. McIntosh took issues related to the working people to parliament at a time when even as leader of his party he had virtually no power under the crown colony system of government. He was, however, able to highlight their problems and had their support as an extraparliamentary force. McIntosh stressed issues centered on land settlement for the working people and was instrumental in forcing the government to extend land settlement through the 1945 Land Settlement Scheme. He also took up the struggle of the Spiritual Baptists, then called Shakers, a religion that was banned in 1912. He constantly raised the issue in parliament and set the stage for the eventual repeal of the law in 1965. McIntosh also served in the Kingstown Town Board from 1924 to the time of his death, acting as chair on numerous occasions. He was in the forefront of efforts to form a political union of English-speaking Caribbean colonies and of the integration of the regional labor movement.

McIntosh kept a portrait of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in his shop, wore a red tie, and held—on at least one occasion—a dinner in honor of the Russian Revolution. He was in the forefront of radical and progressive politics but was "no Leninist insurrectionist" according to Gordon Lewis. McIntosh died in 1963, still holding a seat on the Kingstown Town Board.

Bibliography

Fraser, Adrian. "Peasants and Agricultural Labourers in St. Vincent and the Grenadines 1899–1951." Ph.D. diss., University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, 1986.

Gonsalves, Ralph E. The Trial of George McIntosh: The McIntosh Trial and the October 1935 Uprising in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, West Indies. New York: Caribbean Diaspora Press, 1996.

John, Kenneth. "The Political Life and Times of George McIntosh." Paper presented at the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Country Conference, May 22–24, 2003. Available from <http://www.uwichill.edu.bb/bnccde/svg/conference/papers/john.html>.

John, Rupert. Pioneers in Nation Building in a Caribbean Mini-State. New York: Unitar, 1979.

Lewis, Gordon K. The Growth of the Modern West Indies. New York: Modern Reader, 1968.

adrian fraser (2005)