By Anand MOHEEPUTH

On 23rd February 1936, Dr Maurice Curé held a public meeting at Champ-de-Mars in Port-Louis. In the press communiqué announcing this meeting, Dr Curé included the agenda of the day: the formation of a political party. That Party was going to identify itself root and branch with the working classes and press for the betterment of their social and economic conditions as stipulated in international conventions. At the end of a rousing speech, Curé?s initiative for the floating of the Labour Party was enthusiastically voted together with a number of resolutions addressed to the Secretary of state for the colonies. Curé?s Manifeste pour un Parti travailliste published that year sets out the reasons why it became imperative to launch a political party.

To understand Curé?s mind in the launching of a political party, one must go back to 1934. In September of that year, the Procureur General moved in the Legislative Council the Minimum Wages Ordinance. This ordinance provided for the fixing of minimum wages whenever it was felt necessary in respect of certain trades, occupations and in consi-deration of localities. That move taken by the Procuréur General was a step in the right direction for putting into effect the Geneva conventions, which regulated labour conditions at international level. But it hardly aroused any concern from members of the Council so that with the exception of Maurice Curé everybody kept mum.

Before the Bill went for adoption, Curé stated that the minimum wage machinery intended to assess labour rates would be of no significance unless there were labour legislations and workers? participation to support its functioning. He therefore explained the urgency of introducing a Trade Union Bill, the more so, as Governor Hebert Read had made promises in 1926 for this Bill to be discussed in the House and that nothing had come yet. He said two persons nominated by the Union should sit in the Council to represent workers? interest.

To the government, this request sounded as ?somewhat unorthodox.? Curé then suggested that if the government was not comfortable with the words ?trade unionism? as it had a frightening effect, then trade unionism could be replaced by ?the working classes.?

The officer administering the Government responded: ?The ?working class? is an expression, which hardly has any precise legal sense in legal phraseology.? The amendments proposed were thus rejected. True, the Statute Book made no provision for the appointment of ?nominees? from the working classes or any organization like the trade unions. There was no institution or electoral system enabling the selection of persons as representatives of the wor-kers in the Council. One thing came out clear: the Constitution of 1886 provided for a fossilised power structure enabling only a class to be dominant in both spirit and action in the Council.

Our Governors, as an example, Hebert Read, could only make promises to calm down the rising tides. They were helpless in front of the capitalist juggernaut that rode roughshod over the plight of the lower classes so much so that in one of his editorials in Le Mauricien of March 1936, Raoul Rivet made the point that it was a waste of time writing to the Secretary of state putting forth request for Constitutional changes. The Secretary of state would do nothing, he wrote, but send all issues back to the Council.

Which name to give to this party then? Curé?s choice fell on ?Le Parti travailliste? as he said this appellation was more in tune with the labour movement he was spearheading

In another debate in the Council on 27 June 1935, Curé stated that the department of the Protector of Immigrants should be scrapped since it had no relevance and be replaced by a Labour department. He said that since the UK government had signed the various conventions of the International Labour Orga-nization (ILO) in Geneva, the existence of a Labour department was all the more a necessity to ?secure and maintain fair and humane conditions of labour for men, women and children?.

Curé deplored the fact that the ordinance on minimum wages though approved in 1934 could not be implemented because of the several weaknesses he had pointed out in 1934, and by not adhering to the Geneva conventions, it was pushing the workers further down the quagmire of poverty.

Nobody before Curé had talked about these conventions in the Legislative Council. The Governor Wilfrid Jackson seemed to be in blissful ignorance of these labour conventions. ?What Convention was that?? he asked. To which Curé enumerated a host of measures taken to improve workers? conditions.

These interventions came when Curé was elected to the Legislative Council for Plaines-Wilhems in the 1934 by-election. His defeat in the general election of January 1936 left no one in the Council to talk about the difficulties of the working classes.

That defeat was a blessing in disguise. Out of the Council, his response to the obstinacy of the government in considering labour reforms was by way of mobilization of the workers and rallying them under a party that was to be used as workers? mouthpiece. Already, simmering discontent started manifesting itself when in January 1936, some workers tried to demonstrate in front of Government House.

The creation of a party that was to be a potent instrument to alert the ILO and denounce the local government in matters rela-ting to the poor labour conditions obtaining in the island was steadily making its way.

Which name to give to this party then? Some of Curé?s supporters suggested that the party be called ?Le Parti Socialiste.? Curé?s choice fell on ?Le Parti Travailliste? as he said this appellation was more in tune with the labour movement he was spearheading.

This inclination for a labour movement could be explained by the fact that during his student days in London - 8 February 2007 marked 100 years when he won the English scholarship for the Royal College ? Curé was impressed by the aggressive militancy of British Labour party. He also fell under Jaures? spell who was writing for the French pro-communist paper, l?Humanité. His family background was another influence; his father was working at the Albion Dock. They were residing at Long Mountain.

In the leaflet released with the caption Manifeste pour un Parti travailliste, Curé picked up the same themes relating to labour conditions and which he had earlier raised in the Council, that is, mini-mum wages, old age pension, health insurance, the setting up of trade unionism, the creation of a Labour department and the necessity of having ?two nominees? to represent workers in the Legis-lative Council. The introduction of these elements and promoting the welfare of the workers, he wrote, could only be made if powered by the Labour Party. ?If there is not a Labour Party,? he told the Hooper Commission, ?then the workers will be left in the lurch?? He ordered books from Geneva, which served as guidelines for putting up structures and running the Labour party as an ?incorporated body?.

Those demands of Curé or for that matter of the Labour Party dismally ignored by the government were recommended by the Hooper commission after the island was set ablaze and the implementation of these laid the foundation of modern Mauritius.

To the Conservative elements, Curé could not but emerge as an ?outstanding trouble maker? whose only sterling achievement resided in having founded a troublesome Labour party that gave fright to many of our budding politicians, like, for example, the flamboyant Renganaden Seeneevassen who said ?No? to Curé for joining the Labour party when they met in the house of Barrister Beedaysee.