section_path: Early history (1941–1952)/1940s politics: the trade unions
section_name: 1940s politics: the trade unions
paragraph_text: 1940s politics: the trade unions
  
  Belizean politics in the 1940s was dominated by activists from the trade unions, particularly the Workers and Tradesmen's Union (later the General Workers Union, GWU), which had just received its right to organise British Honduran workers. Among the Union's leaders (some of whom would later be prominent in the PUP) were Clifford Betson, Antonio Soberanis, Henry Middleton and Nicholas Pollard Sr.