Profiles: Heroes, Role Models and Pioneers of Trinidad and Tobago - by Nasser Khan

176 first president. He also represented ‘labour’ at the Forster and Moynes commissions. As a lawyer he intensified his personal opposition against all attempts of exploitation of workers. In addition to pushing for workers rights, Rienzi also fought for the rights of Indo-Trinidadians, helping to secure more employment in the public service as well as the right to cremate, the recognition of Hindu and Muslim marriages and the setting up of schools by non-Christian religious denominations. In addition to being a Member of the Legislative Council from 1937-1944, he was also the Mayor of San Fernando from 1939 to 1942 and served four terms on the San Fernando Borough Council.  He was a member of the franchise committee appointed in 1941, and strongly advocated universal adult suffrage. He stoutly defended Uriah Butler’s agitation in the oil belt in June 1937 and did his best to defend his comrade becoming his legal counsel in the charges that were brought against him. During the two year period that Butler was jailed and subsequent detention on war security grounds, Rienzi made all efforts to keep the Butler’s supporters together and his image alive so that upon his release in 1945, he was warmly welcomed back. Adrian Cola Rienzi’s long stint in the Legislative Council saw him working tirelessly for the end of the Crown Colony System and the coming in of Adult Franchise. A prominent building in the heart of what once was the sugar belt in Couva, central Trinidad, is named the Rienzi Complex in his honour. CLOTIL WALCOTT (1925-2007) S he worked tirelessly for the rights of the working woman. In 1965 she began her activities in the Labour Movement by joining the Union of Commercial and Industrial Workers (UCIW) which was later replaced as the representative union for the Cannings workers by the National Union of Government and Federated Workers (NUGFW) and in 1967 she joined that union. In 1985 she got the United Nations to move that women’s work should be counted in the Gross National Product. In 1998 Clotil Walcott was awarded the Humming Bird Medal Silver.