Butler Party
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The British Empire Citizens' and Workers' Home Rule Party, Butler Home Rule Party and the Butler Party were a series of political parties in Trinidad and Tobago organised by T.U.B. Butler. Although he first founded the British Empire Citizens' and Workers' Home Rule Party in 1936 after he split from the Trinidad Labour Party, Butler spent most of the period from 1937 to 1945 in prison. Butler was arrested after the labour riots of 1937 and imprisoned until 1939. However, he was re-arrested in 1939 at the start of World War II because he was seen as a security threat to one of the British Empire's main supplies of petroleum.
After he was released from prison at the end of the war, Butler re-organised the British Empire Citizens' and Workers' Home Rule Party to fight the 1946 General Elections. The party won three of the nine available seats on the Legislative Council. In the 1950_General_Elections the Butler Home Rule Party won seven of the eighteen available seats. Although the party secured a plurality of elected seats in the Legislative Council, the British government feared Butler as a radical and instead asked the other Independent members to form the government. Consequently, Albert Gomes was the first Chief Minister and not Butler.
The Butler Party won two of the 24 seats in the 1956_General_Elections, and two of 72 seats in the 1959 County Council Elections, but won no seats thereafter. The 1966 General Elections was the last one contested by the party. Butler died in 1977.
