Talk:West Indies Federal Labour Party

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In wikipedia's never-ending quest to clean up articles, I would suggest that this article be cleaned by redirecting it to a West Indies Federal Labour Party page, since the name of the party was not the West Indies Federation Labour Party (and the article content says as much). (User:208.131.185.163; sig. added by Guettarda)


  1. I'll check my source - I may have misread the name
  2. Can you provide a source that backs up the name?
  3. You should never copy the contents of a page to a new location. The edit history is important and must be preserved. You need to use the [Move] tab - but only do so after explaining your edits and allowing other editors the opportunity to respond. Thanks.
  4. Since I either made a mistake on the page name or in the article, it doesn't really serve as proof one way or the other. Guettarda 04:47, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
According to Meighoo's book, this is the correct name. He may have made a mistake, but until there is another source, the article should stay here. Guettarda 18:20, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sorry I haven't gotten back to you on this and sorry about copying the contents of the page (I should have just asked for a redirect only). Now, I don't know where Meighoo is from, but I'm from the West Indies (Jamaica specifically) and all of my local history books say West Indies Federal Labour Party or (West Indian Federal Labour Party- though this is much less common in the books). Up until this article I have never seen it as West Indian Federation Labour Party, though I can imagine how Meighoo came up with that name (he probably only knew the abbreviation WIFLP and then assumed the F stood for Federation. As for references here are the books: 1)History of Jamaica by Clinton V. Black, 1997, Longman Caribbean publishing 2)A Sketchmap History of the Caribbean by Robert Greenwood, 1991, MacMillan Education Ltd (publishers) 3)Caribbean Story. Book two: The Inheritors by William Claypole and John Robottom, 1989, Longman Caribbean publishing Online references (which have West Indian Federal Labour Party)include: http://cpmuc.org/Caribbean%20History.htm http://www.casbah.ac.uk/cats/archive/135/ICSA00015.htm http://www.guardian.co.tt/archives/2004-12-22/bukka.html

Just google WIFLP.

-Anonymous User

Meighoo is a Trini, his book (which comes from his PhD) was actually published by Ian Randle Publishers in Kingston. Thanks for the refs, and I will look into it. As an aside though, I don't onsider Bukka Rennie to be a reliable source for names or spellings - I have found mistakes before (maybe it's the Guardian's copyeditors. They suck too. For example, Rennie and the "casbah" site say "West Indian Federal Labour Party", while the CPMUC site says "West Indies Federal Labour Party". So we now have three version of the name.
Meighoo worked from primary sources. That said, there are mistakes in his books. But there are lots of mistakes in history books too. I would consider Meighoo a reliable source but it's always possible that it was a typo that wasn't captured.
Thanks for the info - I plan to do some more digging, see what I can come up with before changing the page. I will put a note to the effect that there are conflicting versions of the name and send my brother in law to dig through the library at UWI. Guettarda 20:14, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, until your brother-in-law digs through the library at UWI how about just throwing in the other versions of the name at the start of the article, example:

"The West Indian Federation Labour Party, also known as the West Indian or West Indies Federal Labour Party, was one of the two Federal parties......"

-Anonymous User

This is Kirk Meighoo, author of "Politics in a Half-Made Society", writing from the University of the West Indies. I came upon this site quite by accident and it obviously piqued my interest to learn of this problem you identified. It is a pleasure for me to try to get to the bottom of such problems. The short answer is: the correct name is the "West Indies Federal Labour Party". This is how it is officially recorded by the Chief Elections Officer in Jamaica in his Report on the 1958 Federal Elections. This means that my book and thesis contains an error, which was not recognised by any of the leading authorities, but spotted by the Wikipedia community. For this I am grateful and appreciative. I will include the correction in the second edition of the book (or the next print run, if possible).

I would like to offer some explanation, comments, and background information. The Supervisor of Elections in Trinidad and Tobago did not record any party affiliation for candidates in the Federal elections. Party affiliations in territorial elections were not officially recorded until 1956. This may be due to the fluid and independent nature of political affiliation in Trinidad and Tobago before the PNM. But it may also have to do with the proper Westminster principle of having representation come from individuals rather than parties. Party affiliation is not relevant in Westminster, properly speaking. There are officially no PNM or UNC MPs for example, but the MP for St. Ann's, or MP for Caroni East, etc. This is why the crossing of the floor act is problematic. In doing my research to solve this problem, I looked at the Federal results of Grenada, Dominica, and St. Vincent. Not an easy task in a place like the West Indies, with such poor traditions of record keeping. Each one I unearthed, none recorded party affiliation. Only Jamaica did, when I finally found it. This makes sense, not only because of Jamaica's long-standing rivalry between the PNP and JLP, but also because the two major Federal parties were based around the Jamaican leaders.

My mistake comes from my use of "The West Indies: the federal negotiations", by Sir John Mordecai, former Deputy Governor-General of the Federation of the West Indies, as a primary source. Mordecai contrarily refers to both the "West Indian Federal Labour Party" and the "West Indies Federal Party". I did not notice this dual usage until I did the research to answer this question. I suspect that the "West Indian Federal Labour Party" was how many people probably referred to the party.

Finally, I am unclear as to whether "Guettarda" is saying that I have referred to the party as the "West Indian Federation Party". In the editions of the book in my possession, on pages xvi and 41 I refer to the "West Indian Federal Party", an apparently common mistake made, even by the Deputy Governor-General of the Federation of the West Indies!

64.28.135.2 22:15, 17 March 2006 (UTC) Kirk Meighoo

Thanks for the clarification and welcome to Wikipedia. I hope you stick around. Guettarda 02:08, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
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