The unrest served to highlight inequalities of wealth, led the British government to attempt a solution to the problem, and in some cases spurred the development of indigenous party politics that would lead to self-government and independence in the postwar period.
After a relatively tranquil year in 1936, there was widespread unrest in Trinidad that saw unprecedented cooperation between Indo-Trinidadian and Afro-Trinidadian labourers,[4] in Barbados in June 1937, and Jamaica in May–June 1938.
As workers, many women were involved in the planning and execution of the strikes, and they were active in radical organizations such as the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League.
The Caribbean unrest was not limited to British colonies: massive strikes took place in independent Cuba in 1930, 1933 and 1935, as well as a hunger march by sugar workers on French Martinique in February 1935.
In the postwar years, sugar prices fell sharply as world supply exceeded effective demand.
The prices of other agricultural staples, including cocoa, coconuts, limes and bananas, also slumped to unprofitable levels due to worldwide overproduction.
The crisis in the colonial economy was exacerbated by the global economic Depression, which further reduced demand for British Caribbean exports in the 1930s.
Social conditions deteriorated as unemployment and underemployment increased (which an inadequate social welfare system could not address), factors that were worsened by sharply increased population growth, itself the result of a significant downward trend in the region's mortality rate as health conditions improved.
They wanted the same high standard of living at home, wished to be accorded respect as trained professionals and desired opportunities for upward mobility.
Its members visited all the British Caribbean territories between November 1938 and February 1939, looking at conditions in housing, agriculture, hospitals, asylums for the mentally ill, leper homes, prisons, factories, docks, schools, orphanages, land settlement, and political and constitutional matters.
The investigation was regarded with great seriousness, as seen from the high level of public interest and the numbers, status and range of organisational affiliation of those giving evidence; both the latter and those who had been in active rebellion saw it as a channel for achieving reform.
The excitement generated there quickly spread to dockworkers and street cleaners, ultimately producing a general strike suppressed by British forces.
Bustamante was jailed for seventeen months, becoming a labour martyr; his cousin Norman Manley helped settle the strike.
Other leaders identified with working class aspirations emerged, including Grantley Adams of Barbados, who served as legal counsel for some of those arrested in 1937; and Albert Gomes of Trinidad, who became a popular political speaker during this period and was elected to the Port of Spain City Council.