Keywords

election, politician, integrity, franchise

Abstract

On 1 July 1946 the first election featuring universal adult suffrage was held in Trinidad. As reported in the island’s leading newspaper of the day, the Trinidad Guardian, the “privilege of a lowered franchise” expanded the electorate nearly tenfold, from approximately 30,000 to 259,000 eligible voters (“Momentous”). This was a precipitous change, especially in a colony where voting even on a limited scale had only been instituted a couple of decades before (1925), in an era when lingering doubts about the qualifications of nonwhites and women had motivated the institution of property, literacy, and age requirements that disenfranchised all but about 6 percent of the population (Caton 628, Malik 69-70,73,75).1 In 1946 these restrictions were lifted all at once.

Original Publication Citation

Eastley, Aaron. “V. S. Naipaul and the 1946 Trinidad General Election.” Twentieth-Century Literature 55.1 (2009): 1-35. Print.