Michael Del­blond

Even as Dr Er­ic Eu­stace Williams ap­proach­es the cen­te­nary of his birth, he con­tin­ues to be "good copy," as jour­nal­ists say and may be the very stuff that lo­cal leg­ends are made of. His strengths, weak­ness­es, frail­ties and idio­syn­crasies are still fod­der for those in­ter­est­ed in the evo­lu­tion of our pol­i­tics since Williams's me­te­oric 1956 en­trance on the scene. To be fair, where­as he ar­rived with seem­ing­ly im­pec­ca­ble cre­den­tials, there be­came a time that one got the un­easy feel­ing that he had "flat­tered, on­ly to de­ceive." Truth be told, Williams was ac­cept­ed by a wider so­ci­ety than his home base as "a mes­si­ah in the mak­ing, a vic­tim of colo­nial malfea­sance and a lo­cal cham­pi­on who could match strides with the best of them."

Among his ob­vi­ous gifts was that in­de­fin­able qual­i­ty called "charis­ma," so it was not sur­pris­ing that there was al­ready a con­stituen­cy await­ing such a fig­ure, what­ev­er his short­com­ings. He at­tract­ed a de­gree of fa­nat­ic fol­low­ing that had to be seen to be be­lieved. That, decades af­ter his death, he still casts a larg­er than life shad­ow on the po­lit­i­cal land­scape and, like "Ban­quo's ghost," sim­ply won't go away, re­mains as much as a mys­tery as "the man­ner of man that he was" or "the man­ner of man that he was sup­posed to be."

Some years ago, a sym­po­sium mount­ed by the In­sti­tute of So­cial and Eco­nom­ic Re­search at UWI's St Au­gus­tine cam­pus, brought to­geth­er schol­ars, re­searchers, politi­cians, pub­lic ser­vants, at­tor­neys and busi­ness­men who all had their tales to tell. By strange, iron­i­cal twist, the recog­nis­able PNM de­fend­ers of the late Er­ic Williams and his lega­cy ap­peared to have been mar­gin­alised to the ex­tent of be­ing placed in the po­si­tion of hav­ing to de­fend the faith, vir­tu­al­ly out­side the fort. A new PNM "elite" had ap­par­ent­ly re­placed the "old be­liev­ers." It was sug­gest­ed that "an un­der­stand­ing of our great men and women was in­dis­pens­able to forg­ing a sense of na­tion­hood."

There was al­so ref­er­ence to "in­ter­est­ing dis­clo­sures" made by Williams's ad­vis­ers "which ex­posed how in­ad­e­quate and at times down­right in­ac­cu­rate was much of the in­for­ma­tion which formed the ba­sis for mak­ing many "pro­found" judg­ments about Er­ic Williams. For what­ev­er it's worth, it is my own hum­ble view that now is the time for all those who in­ter­faced with Williams or have some spe­cial in­sights to have their first­hand knowl­edge or views doc­u­ment­ed for the pos­si­ble ben­e­fit of oth­ers who come af­ter. An au­then­tic un­der­stand­ing of Williams would, in my view, re­quire that be­fore his gen­er­a­tion goes to its fi­nal rest.

How many, for ex­am­ple, would be sur­prised to learn that as a school­boy Er­ic did not al­ways have his head buried in a book but was cap­tain of his foot­ball team at Queen's Roy­al Col­lege, as well as a mem­ber of the school's crick­et team. Be­sides this, he was vot­ed as a mod­el stu­dent or such like by both fel­low stu­dents and teach­ers at QRC. That is not, of course, to sug­gest that a mere col­lec­tion of anec­do­tal ma­te­r­i­al, how­ev­er ir­rel­e­vant, would do. Nei­ther is it sug­gest­ed that the dark­er cor­ners of the mind or shadier as­pects of the per­son­al­i­ty should be off lim­its, if they throw some sig­nif­i­cant light on larg­er is­sues of "great pith and mo­ment."

My own feel­ing is that any sig­nif­i­cant bi­o­graph­i­cal ef­fort should make al­lowance for po­lit­i­cal or per­son­al ax­es to grind. In my view, Williams has to be lo­cat­ed with­in the con­text of the max­i­mum charis­mat­ic leader of the so­ci­ety which spawned him. It some­times amazes me how lit­tle of sub­stance is re­vealed by Williams watch­ers, sup­posed au­thor­i­ties on Williams and even some who were in quite per­son­al con­tact with him. That, per­haps, should not be sur­pris­ing as com­plex po­lit­i­cal ad charis­mat­ic per­son­al­i­ties seem to have the fa­cil­i­ty to dis­sem­ble and dis­sim­u­late, to in­stinc­tive­ly re­veal or con­ceal as­pects of their per­son­al­i­ty as they deem ex­pe­di­ent for their par­tic­u­lar pur­pose.

The dom­i­nant ques­tion, to my mind, is not whether Williams was "good, bad or ug­ly" but whether any­one was wise enough to be en­trust­ed with the ef­fec­tive pow­er that Williams wield­ed and the in­flu­ence that he ex­er­cised for such a pro­tract­ed pe­ri­od. When­ev­er there is such a con­cen­tra­tion of un­bri­dled pow­er in a sin­gle pair of hands, one is re­mind­ed of Lord Ac­ton's dic­tum that "pow­er cor­rupts and ab­solute pow­er cor­rupts ab­solute­ly." In Williams's case, we may as­sume that con­straints as his be­ing mind­ful of his in­ter­na­tion­al im­age and his own aca­d­e­m­ic and po­lit­i­cal lega­cy would come in­to play.

Now while a Prime Min­is­ter can't go do every­thing, there's no rea­son to doubt that he/she can set the tone, style and cli­mate of the ad­min­is­tra­tion. Dr Williams's im­pact and in­flu­ence were very strong in­deed. They per­me­at­ed the so­ci­ety (for good or ill) and may well be with us for some time yet. His mes­mer­ic in­flu­ence tend­ed to un­der­mine the wit and will of the so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing servile de­pen­dence on him.