Er­i­ca Williams-Con­nell

"On Au­gust 31, 1962, a coun­try will be free, a minia­ture statewill be es­tab­lished, but a so­ci­ety and a na­tion will not have­been formed. Af­ter Au­gust 31, 1962, the peo­ple of Trinidadand To­ba­go will face the fiercest test in their his­to­ry -whether they can in­vest with flesh and blood the bare skeletonof their Na­tion­al An­them, 'Here, every creed and race find anequal place.' That is their chal­lenge. They may fail.....But mere­ly to make the at­tempt, mere­ly to de­ter­mine to­suc­ceed, would be an enor­mous trib­ute to their ca­pac­i­ty, apow­er­ful in­spi­ra­tion to frus­trat­ed hu­man­i­ty."

That was Er­ic Williams in his His­to­ry of the Peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go (p.282). The book was an In­de­pen­dence gift to his peo­ple - a chron­i­cling of their his­to­ry - a his­to­ry that had pre­vi­ous­ly on­ly been writ­ten by their col­o­niz­ers.

Trinidad and To­ba­go is now cel­e­brat­ing the 50th an­niver­sary of this in­de­pen­dence", so it is en­tire­ly ap­pro­pri­ate to re­view the vi­sion and as­pi­ra­tions that this pop­u­lar­ly called "Fa­ther of the Na­tion" had for his peo­ple. You've heard all about the suc­cess­es, so al­low me to give a broad overview of a few oth­er pa­ra­me­ters, which might well be con­sid­ered the bases of de­vel­op­ment, for with­out them, the coun­try might as well be lost.

Trinidad and To­ba­go is both a mul­ti­eth­nic and mul­ti-re­li­gious so­ci­ety, with the vast ma­jor­i­ty of its cit­i­zens be­ing ei­ther of African or In­di­an ori­gin. Let's lis­ten to Er­ic Williams on the sub­ject:

"To­geth­er, the var­i­ous groups in Trinidad and To­ba­go have

suf­fered, to­geth­er they have as­pired, to­geth­er they have

achieved. On­ly to­geth­er can they suc­ceed. And on­ly to­geth­er

can they build a so­ci­ety, can they build a na­tion, can they

build a home­land. There can be no Moth­er In­dia, for those

whose an­ces­tors came from In­dia....there can be no Moth­er

Africa, for those of African ori­gin. There can be no Moth­er Eng­land

and no dual loy­al­ties.....There can be no Moth­er Chi­na, even if one could

agree as to which Chi­na is the Moth­er; and there can be no Moth­er

Syr­ia and no Moth­er Lebanon. A na­tion, like an in­di­vid­ual, can

2 have on­ly one Moth­er. The on­ly Moth­er we rec­og­nize is Moth­er

Trinidad and To­ba­go, and Moth­er can­not dis­crim­i­nate be­tween her chil­dren."

Er­ic Williams, His­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go (p. 279)

So how suc­cess­ful have we been in ful­fill­ing this glo­ri­ous man­date? Here are the facts. While Er­ic Williams was alive and ar­guably at no time since, Trinidad and To­ba­go owed its un­ri­valled rep­u­ta­tion of har­mo­ny to the ap­par­ent abil­i­ty of a num­ber of races, colours and creeds to live to­geth­er in rel­a­tive tran­quil­i­ty. Since my fa­ther's demise, how­ev­er, the ug­ly spec­tre of race has con­sis­tent­ly raised its head in our poly­glot so­ci­ety with ex­ist­ing ten­sions ex­ac­er­bat­ed, as po­lit­i­cal par­ties of­ten seek to stake out their eth­nic turf and to em­pha­size our dif­fer­ences rather than to cel­e­brate our sim­i­lar­i­ties. As the on­ly Pro- Chan­cel­lor to date of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, it was Er­ic Williams, of African her­itage, who first pro­posed to Prime Min­is­ter Nehru the idea of a Chair in In­di­an Stud­ies. This was in­tro­duced in 1966 and the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia still pro­vides the ser­vices of a schol­ar from that coun­try. My fa­ther was al­so re­spon­si­ble for the in­clu­sion of cours­es in African and Latin Amer­i­can Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty. And it was his ad­min­is­tra­tion that in­tro­duced na­tion­al re­li­gious hol­i­days for our Mus­lim and Hin­du broth­ers, while they were giv­en carte blanche to or­ga­nize their own schools, cul­tur­al pro­grammes, ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tions. To­day, while we have not yet ex­pe­ri­enced the vi­o­lent con­flicts rife in some coun­tries, race ap­pears to per­me­ate every as­pect of the so­ci­ety – and in a man­ner not ev­i­denced in Er­ic Williams' era. To be sure at that time, and dur­ing gen­er­al elec­tion fever, both dom­i­nant races were some­times guilty of in­flam­ma­to­ry rhetoric, but this nev­er reached the lev­el – you could al­most say of in­sti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion – as it has to­day. Now, politi­cians rou­tine­ly "play the race card" for their own ends, and with a fla­grant dis­re­gard for the con­se­quences of their ac­tions. Now, de­pend­ing on which po­lit­i­cal par­ty is in the as­cen­dan­cy – both ma­jor ones iden­ti­fied with one or the oth­er of the lead­ing groups – you will un­doubt­ed­ly hear the mantra – "is we time now" – a vul­gar ref­er­ence to the no­tion of "it's our turn to be on top!" This sort of dis­crim­i­na­tion has been demon­strat­ed by re­ports of whole­sale fir­ings, dis­missal of es­tab­lished Boards and pro­mo­tion by­pass­es. Yet de­spite the politi­cos' best ef­forts, there is some hope for the fu­ture, for the fastest grow­ing pop­u­la­tion sub­set is those of "mixed" race.

Let's talk about ed­u­ca­tion. With his watch­words, "To ed­u­cate is to eman­ci­pate," when Er­ic Williams came to pow­er in 1956, on­ly 14,000 stu­dents went on to sec­ondary school, of which a mere 236 spaces were non-pay­ing. Some 30 years lat­er, this fig­ure had in­creased to 150,000 stu­dents at­tend­ing free sec­ondary school. Free ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion 3 was al­so in­tro­duced in the 1970's, as a re­sult of Trinidad and To­ba­go's oil wind­fall dur­ing the glob­al en­er­gy cri­sis. This was abol­ished in the 1980's and on­ly just re­in­stat­ed a few years ago. But it's one thing to go to school for free, quite an­oth­er as to what is be­ing taught in the schools. Lis­ten to Er­ic Williams again, as he urged the youth of the na­tion at In­de­pen­dence:

"You, the chil­dren, yours is the great re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ed­u­cate your par­ents,

teach them to live to­geth­er in har­mo­ny...To your ten­der and lov­ing hands, the

fu­ture of the Na­tion is en­trust­ed. In your in­no­cent hearts, the pride of the Na­tion

is en­shrined. On your scholas­tic de­vel­op­ment, the sal­va­tion of the Na­tion is

de­pen­dent...you car­ry the fu­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go in your school bags."

Er­ic E. Williams, Au­gust 30, 1962 In­de­pen­dence Youth Ral­ly

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, while books are still car­ried in the school bags of to­day so, too in some in­stances, are knives, guns and drugs. There are count­less ex­am­ples of this. And how does one ac­count for the fact that suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have long al­lowed for­eign schools, at­tend­ed by gen­er­a­tions of Trinidad and To­ba­go stu­dents, to ad­here to the cur­ricu­lum of the moth­er coun­try in­so­far as the so­cial stud­ies con­tent is con­cerned, so that they know more about Cana­di­an or British his­to­ry, as taught in these schools, than they do about their own? In fact, there ap­pears to have been no for­mal at­tempt made by these for­eign schools, and no gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go has re­quired it, to teach our cit­i­zens about our own land and re­gion - its his­to­ry, mores and cul­ture. Just what are all these chil­dren go­ing to do up­on at­tain­ing adult­hood – em­i­grate to Cana­da? in­de­pen­dence?

And what about democ­ra­cy? As Williams so of­ten said, the im­por­tant thing about pow­er is to know when not to use it. Here he is again –

"What use will you make of your In­de­pen­dence? What will you trans­mit to your

chil­dren five years from to­day? The first re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that de­volves up­on you

is the pro­tec­tion and pro­mo­tion of your democ­ra­cy. Democ­ra­cy means more,

much more, than the right to vote. Democ­ra­cy means recog­ni­tion of the rights of

oth­ers. Democ­ra­cy means equal­i­ty of all in the eyes of the law. Democ­ra­cy

means the pro­tec­tion of the weak against the strong. Democ­ra­cy means the

oblig­a­tion of the mi­nor­i­ty to recog­nise the right of the ma­jor­i­ty. Democ­ra­cy

means re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment to its cit­i­zens, the pro­tec­tion of the

cit­i­zens from the ex­er­cise of ar­bi­trary pow­er and the vi­o­la­tion of hu­man

free­doms and in­di­vid­ual rights. Democ­ra­cy means free­dom of wor­ship for all

and the sub­or­di­na­tion of the rights of any one race to the over­rid­ing right of the

4 hu­man race. Democ­ra­cy means free­dom of ex­pres­sion and as­sem­bly and

or­gan­i­sa­tion...All that is Democ­ra­cy... Democ­ra­cy, fi­nal­ly, rests on a high­er

pow­er. It rests on an in­formed and cul­ti­vat­ed and alert pub­lic opin­ion.

Er­ic Williams, In­de­pen­dence Day Ad­dress, Trinidad & To­ba­go, Au­gust 31, 1962

Some time ago, there was a po­lice raid on the of­fices of one of the ma­jor dai­ly news­pa­pers, and a home in­va­sion of a re­porter whose com­put­er was seized – all in an ef­fort to iden­ti­fy a spe­cif­ic source. Sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia or­ga­ni­za­tions have pub­licly de­cried this par­tic­u­lar "ini­tia­tive".

In terms of de­vel­op­ment, Er­ic Williams would say: "De­vel­op­ment has a face – and that is the face of man. De­vel­op­ment must, there­fore, cater for the to­tal needs of that man."

Er­ic Williams, from EWMC In­au­gu­ra­tion, Comp­ton Bourne speech, March 22, 1998

No one can de­ny that in the es­tab­lish­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go's en­er­gy-based in­dus­tries in the 1970's – years be­fore his death in of­fice in 1981 – Er­ic Williams laid the foun­da­tion so that gen­er­a­tions of our cit­i­zens would ben­e­fit from the "eco­nom­ic mir­a­cle"that is Trinidad and To­ba­go. In this re­spect, the coun­try was char­ac­ter­ized by the New York Times in 1998 as "A Tiger in a Sea of Pussy­cats." All this was done amidst a ca­coph­o­ny of naysay­ers quar­relling nois­i­ly about his "waste of the na­tion­al pat­ri­mo­ny". In 2010, it was es­ti­mat­ed that the coun­try's per capi­ta in­come was some US$21,200 and it was, for sev­er­al years, the lead­ing ex­porter of liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas to the US. In 1999, the first LNG plant in the west­ern hemi­sphere was built in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Us­ing rev­enues from these en­er­gy-based in­dus­tries, which to­day dri­ve the eco­nom­ic en­gine of the coun­try, Williams in­tro­duced free bus pass­es for stu­dents and se­nior cit­i­zens, the free ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion men­tioned be­fore, old age pen­sions and oth­er so­cial ser­vices, to ben­e­fit the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Search­ing dili­gent­ly for a hook on which to hang its ob­struc­tion­ist hat, the op­po­si­tion did a pret­ty cred­i­ble job of la­bel­ing this pol­i­cy the "de­pen­den­cy syn­drome!" All this while the State of Alas­ka has, for years, rou­tine­ly af­ford­ed every man, woman and child a por­tion of its oil div­i­dends, some­times amount­ing to over $1,000 each! Some "de­pen­den­cy syn­drome!" What do they call it now, I won­der, when since 1999, and with its enor­mous wealth of­ten not fil­ter­ing down to the need­i­est, Trinidad and To­ba­go has earned the du­bi­ous dis­tinc­tion of har­bour­ing "street chil­dren?" 5 And what about Trinidad and To­ba­go's in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ing – de­spite our re­cent spate of Olympic medals and, notwith­stand­ing hu­mil­i­at­ing diplo­mat­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tions? No way would Williams have "kow­towed" for a White House break­fast, as did some Caribbean lead­ers, when the US want­ed to nul­li­fy CARI­COM's po­si­tion in rec­og­niz­ing the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court! Af­ter all, this was a man who count­ed among his peers the likes of: Churchill, Lyn­don John­son, Nass­er, Ben Gu­ri­on, Nkrumah, Nehru and Mao Tse Tung, among oth­ers. He was the on­ly head of gov­ern­ment se­lect­ed as a found­ing mem­ber of the Gov­ern­ing Coun­cil of the Unit­ed Na­tions Uni­ver­si­ty, head­quar­tered in Japan. And al­though the vis­it nev­er ma­te­ri­al­ized, as one of three oth­er Com­mon­wealth Prime Min­is­ters, he was dep­u­tized by British Prime Min­is­ter Harold Wil­son to vis­it Viet­nam, in the hope of solv­ing that coun­try's long and bit­ter con­flict. Can Trinidad and To­ba­go to­day boast of such in­ter­na­tion­al re­spect and recog­ni­tion when it won't even take the lead in forg­ing the elu­sive Caribbean in­te­gra­tion – a con­cept, by the way, that Er­ic Williams vo­cif­er­ous­ly es­poused al­most 70 years ago, be­fore the es­tab­lish­ment of the Eu­ro­pean Com­mon Mar­ket (pre­cur­sor of the Eu­ro­pean Com­mu­ni­ty [EC]). Con­sis­tent­ly pro­mot­ing this over the years, as late as 1973, he sent an ar­ti­cle he wrote for Po­lit­i­cal Quar­ter­ly on "A New Fed­er­a­tion for the Com­mon­wealth Caribbean" to both his Caribbean Head of Gov­ern­ment col­leagues, as well as to the British. It was bare­ly ac­knowl­edged!

So, my premise is that Trinidad and To­ba­go has yet to ful­fill to­tal­ly the promise of In­de­pen­dence, or the vi­sion of its found­ing fa­ther. Crime con­tin­ues to spi­ral out of con­trol, in ex­cess of one mur­der a day in a pop­u­la­tion of 1.3 m; our cul­ture is beingerod­ed at every turn, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the de­clin­ing stan­dards of Car­ni­val or the art form that was ca­lyp­so; medi­oc­rity is the or­der of the day – be it in pol­i­tics, lead­er­ship, or ser­vice. One is left to lament Williams' ad­vice:

"In our view, the de­vel­op­ment of this coun­try rests ul­ti­mate­ly with our peo­ple and their col­lec­tive ef­fort."

Er­ic Eu­stace Williams

"...place al­ways first the na­tion­al in­ter­est and the na­tion­al cause. The strength of the Na­tion de­pends on the strength of its cit­i­zens..."

Er­ic Williams, In­de­pen­dence Day Ad­dress, Trinidad & To­ba­go, Au­gust 31, 1962

Er­ic Williams made us "proud to be who we were, and op­ti­mistic, as nev­er be­fore, about what we were go­ing to be – or could be", so says Arnold Ram­per­sad of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty – and I think that is his most pro­found lega­cy. With hard work and an hon­est as­sess­ment of how much more needs to be done, we can hope­ful­ly em­brace the ad­mo­ni­tion of the late schol­ar, Ed­ward Said:

"Mem­o­ry is a pow­er­ful col­lec­tive in­stru­ment for pre­serv­ing iden­ti­ty. It is one of the main bul­warks against his­tor­i­cal era­sure. It is a means of re­sis­tance."

In con­clu­sion, there are two things about half a cen­tu­ry of "in­de­pen­dence" that give me pause. Was it worth­while? Un­equiv­o­cal­ly, yes! For we are now the mas­ters of our own des­tiny, with the pow­er to ei­ther make or break our fu­ture, and that alone is rea­son to cel­e­brate. No longer can we blame oth­ers for our suc­cess­es or our de­fi­cien­cies. We can look in that prover­bial mir­ror to de­ter­mine the road ahead or we can con­tin­ue with bliss­ful in­sou­ciance to ig­nore and di­min­ish our his­to­ry. The choice is ours to make.

The oth­er fac­tor is that 50 years in the life of a na­tion im­plies its in­fan­cy. Trinidad and To­ba­go has nev­er lacked, in fact there is a say­ing that "God is a Tri­ni" – and there­in lies the prob­lem. We have fought for noth­ing, in the way that many coun­tries con­tin­ue to do. There­fore, we ap­pre­ci­ate noth­ing. One can on­ly pray that as we ma­ture – both as a peo­ple and as a na­tion – we will come to give life and mean­ing to Er­ic Williams' fi­nal ex­hor­ta­tion in 1979:

"....build the na­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, bring­ing in all the races; ac­knowl­edg­ing all their con­tri­bu­tions, el­e­vat­ing low­ly castes, dig­ni­fy­ing de­spised colours, achiev­ing a syn­cretism here and a new au­ton­o­my there, rais­ing up the poor and the low­ly and giv­ing them a pos­i­tive stake in our so­ci­ety..."

Er­ic Williams Caribbean Man Speech to 21st An­nu­al Con­ven­tion of the PNM,

Sep­tem­ber 29, 1979

"....The hum­blest an­tecedents are not in­con­sis­tent with great­ness of soul."