To­day, April 21, marks the 45th an­niver­sary of the de­c­la­ra­tion of a State of Emer­gency, in­voked to quell the Black Pow­er Move­ment and an in­creas­ing up­surge of civ­il dis­or­der which had its gen­e­sis a cou­ple of years ear­li­er. T&T Guardian arts and en­ter­tain­ment ed­i­tor Pe­ter Ray Blood speaks with Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee head Khafra Kam­bon, who was among the de­tained in 1970.

The lo­cal move­ment was in­spired and fu­elled by the Black Pow­er Move­ment of the Unit­ed States and the strug­gle for equal rights in Cana­da by stu­dents at­tend­ing the Sir George Williams Uni­ver­si­ty in Mon­tre­al, Que­bec.

In Trinidad, stu­dents at­tend­ing the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus of UWI iden­ti­fied with these two move­ments and served as an in­cu­ba­tor for an­ti-gov­ern­ment and an­ti-cor­po­rate groups like the Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee (NJAC). The trade union move­ment al­so iden­ti­fied with the move­ment with the its lead­ers even­tu­al­ly be­com­ing co-lead­ers of the move­ment.

In the van­guard of the Black Pow­er move­ment were aca­d­e­mics like Carl Black­wood, Ged­des Granger, Dave D'Abreau and Rus­sell An­dal­cio, and union lead­ers George Weekes, Win­ston Leonard and Clive Nunez.

The ide­olo­gies and doc­trines of the move­ment as­cribed to so­cial and eco­nom­ic equal­i­ty. As the rev­o­lu­tion­ary fer­vour and strug­gle for civ­il rights of the Amer­i­can African be­gan to boil, names like Mal­colm X, Mar­tin Luther King, An­gela Davis, Rosa Parks, Huey New­ton, Bob­by Seale, El­drige and Kath­leen Cleaver, H Rap Brown, Jesse Jack­son and our own Stoke­ley Carmichael (Kwame Ture) soon be­came liv­ing leg­ends to blacks world­wide, de­fy­ing the op­pres­sive white racist Amer­i­can sys­tem.

The ac­tivism of these and oth­ers, in groups like the Black Pan­thers, NAACP, SNCC and Na­tion of Is­lam, aside from ro­man­ti­cis­ing the move­ment, fu­elled mass demon­stra­tions, many vi­o­lent and fa­tal, across Amer­i­ca, es­pe­cial­ly in places like Harlem, Mont­gomery, Sel­ma and Watts.

Trinidad's youth soon be­came en­am­oured by the de­vel­op­ments in Amer­i­ca and it wasn't long be­fore the con­fronta­tion be­tween State and mass­es came to our shores. Protests and demon­stra­tions be­came a dai­ly oc­cur­rence and three sig­nif­i­cant in­ci­dents has­tened swift and dras­tic ac­tion by the gov­ern­ment.

A march on Feb­ru­ary 26, 1970, de­scend­ed on the Cathe­dral of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion on In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain, and the pro­test­ers in­vad­ed the Ro­man Catholic cathe­dral and de­stroyed stat­ues and paint­ed some of them black. In a sub­se­quent march on April 6, Basil Davis was shot and killed in the vicin­i­ty of Wood­ford Square and his fu­ner­al then was the largest ever in the coun­try. There were al­so threats of a na­tion­wide strike fu­elled by a sug­ar work­ers strike on April 18, 1970.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams then got gov­er­nor gen­er­al Sir Solomon Ho­choy to in­voke the his­toric State of Emer­gency of 1970 on April 21 and is­sued war­rants for the ar­rests of the Black Pow­er and trade union lead­ers.

Now Khafra Kam­bon, Dave D'Abreau was 23 when the SoE was de­clared in 1970. A uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent, he was dri­ven in his mis­sion to help the down­trod­den and un­der­priv­i­leged of the land. Kam­bon re­called: "I was a younger man then who al­ways had an affin­i­ty for the per­son who was an un­der­dog. This be­ing a part of me meant I was in­volved in a num­ber of move­ments from my days in Sixth Form at Trin­i­ty Col­lege.

"When I en­tered UWI I al­ready had a par­tic­u­lar mind­set about so­cial, eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal ills. I was al­ready rad­i­calised. I fur­ther got in­volved in a num­ber of things, like a group off cam­pus named Piv­ot and the New World Group, a re­gion­al body. I was even­tu­al­ly re­cruit­ed in the 60s, a trans­for­ma­tive pe­ri­od in our his­to­ry, in­to the UWI Guild Coun­cil, led by Ged­des Granger.

The im­pact of the Civ­il Rights Move­ment and Black Pow­er, and strong in­di­vid­u­als like Mal­colm X, Mar­tin Luther King, Che Gue­var­ra and Fi­del Cas­tro, all hap­pen­ing at the same time, had a pro­found im­pact on young aca­d­e­mics at the time. Things were hap­pen­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly to in­flu­ence your think­ing process."

The UWI Guild Coun­cil em­barked on a pro­gramme of vis­it­ing com­mu­ni­ties na­tion­wide and hold­ing "block meet­ings," in­ter­fac­ing with the grass­roots, learn­ing of their chal­lenges, and ed­i­fy­ing them. Said Kam­bon: "A num­ber of groups be­gan form­ing spon­ta­neous­ly, in­spired by the in­flu­ence by the Black Pow­er Move­ment in the Unit­ed States, across the coun­try.

The term "Black Pow­er" res­onat­ed strong­ly in Trinidad as it did glob­al­ly. This was a pe­ri­od of re­volt and it helped to in­flu­ence us all and shape our thoughts. On cam­pus we worked with blocks across the coun­try, as well as with the trade unions. We were nev­er aligned to any po­lit­i­cal par­ty of re­li­gion."

Say­ing he was not sur­prised by the SoE of 1970, Kam­bon said: "The SoE was de­signed to stop a move­ment that was grow­ing stronger with every pass­ing day and the gov­ern­ment had to take a de­ci­sion to try and sweep us aside. There was wide­spread in­dus­tri­al ac­tion and un­rest in the coun­try and the gov­ern­ment was against the ropes."

So, how did Dave D'Abreau be­come Khafra Kam­bon?"I changed my name in the 70s," he said, "in the post-SoE pe­ri­od, be­cause this was a man­i­fes­ta­tion of my con­scious­ness. I lost my re­al name cen­turies be­fore and want­ed to de­fine who I am in the sense of my her­itage and African­ism."

Kam­bon cites that tu­mul­tuous pe­ri­od of the 70s as per­haps the most sig­nif­i­cant of this na­tion's his­to­ry and de­vel­op­ment. He said: "In the wake of Black Pow­er there was a sig­nif­i­cant change in em­ploy­ment prac­tices and in own­er­ship of prop­er­ty in this coun­try. The State cre­at­ed an at­mos­phere by which it start­ed lo­cal­is­ing cor­po­rate en­ti­ties. We be­gan see­ing lo­cal en­tre­pre­neurs and lo­cals sit­ting on board of lo­cal­ly owned com­pa­nies. It wasn't just in the banks that you could see vi­su­al changes.

"We set out to fa­cil­i­tate Trinidad to own prop­er­ty in Trinidad like state en­ter­pris­es. Forty-five years lat­er, we are see­ing a grad­ual re­ver­sal of this. Back then we said 'we don't want the crumbs we want the whole bread' but, we are now back to set­tling for crumbs and are los­ing our pat­ri­mo­ny."What is in lo­cal hands to­day is be­com­ing more and more con­cen­trat­ed and the so­ci­ety is more and more ma­te­ri­al­is­tic and in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic. Those core West­ern val­ues of yes­ter­year are much stronger now than they ever were.

"To­day there is still an un­der­cur­rent of con­scious­ness and na­tion­al aware­ness in the coun­try. As a coun­try we have to re­fo­cus our at­ten­tion to the things we can do out­side of the oil and gas sec­tor to cre­ate a healthy GDP for our na­tion and save it from end­ing up like Ja­maica did af­ter baux­ite stopped be­ing king. We need to se­ri­ous­ly di­ver­si­fy our econ­o­my.

"I cer­tain­ly think that if the price of oil doesn't go back up sub­stan­tial­ly, it is go­ing to be a huge chal­lenge for any gov­ern­ment, re­gard­less of who is in pow­er, to man­age. A gov­ern­ment would have to change the style of gov­ern­ing or go with re­pres­sion. Cre­at­ing false ex­pec­ta­tions in a peo­ple is a very dan­ger­ous thing to do."

in­fo

Nel­son Is­land de­tainees–1970

�2Ab­dul Ma­lik

�2Adri­an Es­pinet

�2Aiye­goro Ome

�2An­tho­ny Mac­Far­lane

�2Apoesho Mu­tope

�2Bayliss Fred­er­ick

�2Bri­an Chen

�2Carl Black­wood

�2Carl Dou­glas

�2Car­los Williams

�2Chan Ma­haraj

�2Clive Nunez

�2Dar­win Lewis

�2Dedan Ki­mathi

�2Dupont Ew­ing

�2Er­rol Bal­four

�2George Weekes

�2Ger­ald Bryce

�2Glen­ford George

�2Hec­tor Greig

�2Hilton Greaves

�2Hugo Piechi­er

�2Ian Richard­son

�2John McKarm

�2Ju­lian Brit­to

�2Kelshall Brit­to

�2Khafra Kam­bon

�2Leroy Rat­tan

�2Lester Efebo Wilkin­son

�2Makan­dal Daa­ga

�2Mervyn Quinn Hug­gins

�2Michael Als

�2Michael Phillips

�2Nue­vo Di­az

�2Ot­to Patrick

�2Pat Em­manuel

�2Stan­ley An­toine

�2Syl Lowhar

�2Ur­ban Ma­son

�2Vib­ert Har­ri­et

�2Vic­tor Mar­cano

�2Wayne Davis

�2William Ben­jamin

�2William Dun­can

�2William Riv­ierre

�2Win­ston Leonard

�2Win­ston Pierre

�2Win­ston Smart

�2Win­ston Suite

�2Con­tin­ues to­mor­row