Who was St William Grant?

Sam Sharpe, Paul Bogle, Alexander Bustamante, Norman Manley, George William Gordon, and Marcus Garvey all fought for freedom, social justice, and economic equity for black people, and they were honoured with the Order of National Hero, the nation’s highest national award.

And, of course, there was Nanny of the Maroons, the heroine, whose indomitable spirit helped to defeat the British colonisers in the Maroon wars.

Missing from that pantheon is William Wellington Wellwood Grant, the man from Brandon Hill in west rural St Andrew and for whom St William Grant Park, right in the heart of downtown Kingston, was named. It was once called Victoria Park, after Queen Victoria of England, who had never set foot there. It was in that same space that Grant and Bustamante gave many a fiery speech as they advocated labour rights for poor people. Born in 1894, Grant is regarded as the person who started the struggle for the working class in Jamaica to get what it deserves but was superseded by Bustamante along the way. Colour and social standing were two factors that made Grant play second fiddle to Bustamante, but his impact on the watershed period of the labour movement in Jamaica is without question.

The boy who attended St Phillips Church School in St Andrew and West Branch Elementary School in Kingston, grew up to be tough and determined. As a young man, he became a dockworker in Kingston, and when World War I exploded in Europe, he sailed right into it by stowing away on a British troop ship and subsequently joining the Eleventh British West India Regiment, Jamaica being part of the British Empire.

After the war ended, Grant returned to Jamaica in one piece, but he was jobless and restless. In 1920, he arrived in New York, where he worked for a while as a cook in restaurants. At the time, Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA) was growing in membership, and Grant joined the Tiger Division. In 1934, he served as a delegate to the UNIA convention in Jamaica.

He came to national attention through the UNIA, preaching messages of African redemption. However, Grant and Garvey, two eloquent speakers, clashed, and Garvey himself expelled Grant from the UNIA for “misrepresenting the aims and objectives” of the UNIA.

Remaining in Jamaica, Grant returned to the kitchen, but still inspired by some of Garvey’s messages, he was also actively campaigning for workers’ rights at a time when there was much discontent among workers from the grassrin the 1930s. He and Bustamante were at the forefront of the rioting, which destabilised the running of the country, to some extent. In May 1938 the dock workers of the United Fruit Company went on strike. Bustamante and Grant were the leaders, promoting and directing the strike. They were both arrested on 24 May, and remanded in custody by a police inspector. While Bustamante acquiesced to the authorities, Grant protested and was badly beaten.

They were charged with inciting unlawful assembly and obstructing the police. They were refused bail, and as a form of humiliation, their clothes were removed, leaving them only in their underwear. More strikes and rioting ensued, until they were freed by on 28 May. In that same year, Bustamante established the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU).

Research has not uncovered why Grant and Bustamante parted company, but Grant left to join the People’s National Party (PNP). In 1947, he contested the West Kingston division for the PNP in the first municipal elections since universal adult suffrage was attained in November 1944. He lost by a margin of 2:1.

When Bustamante was Jamaica’s first chief minister (1944-1955), he recommended in 1950 that Grant be appointed watchman at the Central Housing Authority (now Ministry of Housing). Grant held that post until he died in 1977, the same year Bustamante died. They both got state funerals. Three years before, Grant was awarded the Order of Distinction on National Heroes Day. He was also specially honoured by the UNIA on the 21st of December 1974.

“ Bustamante went from strength to strength, but Grant, who broke with the BITU in the early 1940s, sank into poverty and obscurity. However, the role that Grant played in the development of modern Jamaica was not forgotten … ,” Olive Senior writes in Encyclopedia of Jamaican Heritage.

Grant usually dressed in military-esque attire, and it is said that the St before his name stood for sargeant, perhaps his rank when he fought in the West India Regiment, and not saint, as some people believe.

Paul H. Williams