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Tuesday, February 25, 2025

Williams, Daaga and Black Power

by

20100510

Dr Er­ic Williams, Trinidad and To­ba­go's first Prime Min­is­ter and ac­claimed "Fa­ther of the Na­tion", was an apos­tle of the ideals of Black Pow­er.

Williams spoke and wrote lib­er­al­ly on the sub­ject be­fore and af­ter he im­posed a State of Emer­gency on Mon­day April 20, 1970, and snuffed out the Makan­dal Daa­ga-led up­ris­ing. The is­sue has re­turned to rel­e­vance in light of Daa­ga's elec­tion can­di­da­cy and, es­pe­cial­ly, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's stout crit­i­cism of the al­leged des­e­cra­tion of the Cathe­dral of Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion in Port- of- Spain by Black Pow­er pro­tes­tors. The Black Pow­er Move­ment "en­list­ed the sym­pa­thy of a num­ber of peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly young peo­ple, who bit­ter­ly re­sent­ed dis­crim­i­na­tion against black peo­ple, both here and abroad," Williams told the na­tion in a tele­vi­sion and ra­dio ad­dress on May 3, 1970. He added: "This is a le­git­i­mate griev­ance and I would have been no par­ty to any at­tempt to re­press it."

But he voiced con­cern that the Black Pow­er slo­gan "de­gen­er­at­ed in­to race ha­tred and even at­tacks on black busi­ness in To­ba­go and Point Fortin." Daa­ga and his cronies led pub­lic march­es for weeks across the coun­try and Williams said he de­cid­ed to act "when the to­tal break­down of the trade union move­ment was im­mi­nent." In a speech on March 23, 1970 –be­fore his State of Emer­gency crack­down–Williams al­so up­held the pil­lars of the Black Pow­er cause. The fun­da­men­tal fea­ture of the demon­stra­tions, he said, "was the in­sis­tence on black dig­ni­ty, the man­i­fes­ta­tion of black con­scious­ness and the de­mand for black eco­nom­ic pow­er." He sur­mised: "The en­tire pop­u­la­tion must un­der­stand that these are per­fect­ly le­git­i­mate and are en­tire­ly in the in­ter­est of the com­mu­ni­ty as a whole." If that is Black Pow­er, "then I'm all for Black Pow­er," Williams said. He had made sim­i­lar points in an ear­li­er ar­ti­cle in the PNM's Na­tion news­pa­per.

Daa­ga's cam­paign was prompt­ed by var­i­ous in­ter­na­tion­al protests against de­pri­va­tion and in­jus­tices against Africans and Afro-Amer­i­cans. In T&T, un­em­ploy­ment among youths and al­leged racial dis­crim­i­na­tion fac­ing job hunters sparked the protests and even­tu­al tur­moil. While Man­ning has cit­ed an in­va­sion of the cathe­dral, he has not spo­ken of the "Africans and In­di­ans Unite" demon­stra­tions, in­clud­ing a march from Laven­tille to Ca­roni. For his part, Williams ac­knowl­edged the ide­al of the Black Pow­er ad­vo­cates. He told the na­tion: "Our goal has al­ways been Afro-Asian uni­ty." That har­mo­ny, he stressed, "is the on­ly way to achieve the gen­uine na­tion­al in­te­gra­tion to which many of us are ded­i­cat­ed." He al­so said: "We have con­scious­ly sought to pro­mote black eco­nom­ic pow­er." The as­ser­tion was a ref­er­ence to Daa­ga's call for the work­ing mass­es to en­joy greater eco­nom­ic pow­er.

Williams ar­gued that his ad­min­is­tra­tion had cre­at­ed 1,523 black small farm­ers, had en­cour­aged small busi­ness­es in man­u­fac­tur­ing and tourism and had boost­ed free ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing. He in­sist­ed: "We have un­ceas­ing­ly sought to con­trol or at least al­le­vi­ate the un­em­ploy­ment which we in­her­it­ed..." Still, the is­sue was larg­er than that: It was about greater peo­ple par­tic­i­pa­tion in the crit­i­cal eco­nom­ic sec­tors. In­ter­est­ing­ly, in the decade af­ter the Black Pow­er flare-up, Williams launched ini­tia­tives for lo­cal­i­sa­tion of the oil in­dus­try, a thrust part­ly prompt­ed by trade union­ist George Weekes' "Tex­a­co Must Go" cam­paign. Even ear­li­er than that–on Ju­ly 1, 1970, to be ex­act–Williams lo­calised the Bank of Lon­don and Mon­tre­al, which he turned in­to the Na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Bank, a fore­run­ner to the cur­rent First Cit­i­zens' Bank.

Williams al­so boost­ed the co­op­er­a­tive sec­tor, and, be­fore long, out­lined a five-year plan aimed at giv­ing na­tion­als a larg­er piece of the na­tion­al pie. That, of course, had been a ral­ly­ing call of Daa­ga's Black Pow­er rev­o­lu­tion. Williams termed his agen­da "na­tion­al re­con­struc­tion". He de­fined it as "in­creas­ing the de­gree of na­tion­al con­trol over the na­tion­al econ­o­my." Di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my and full em­ploy­ment were oth­er hall­marks of the Williams post-Black Pow­er pro­gramme. "Work­ers would be en­cour­aged to play a more pos­i­tive role in the econ­o­my of the coun­try," he vowed. He was adamant that "the claims of black peo­ple to so­cial jus­tice, eco­nom­ic dig­ni­ty and a fuller life would be un­equiv­o­cal­ly sup­port­ed and en­cour­aged by my Gov­ern­ment." Forty years lat­er, Daa­ga has stat­ed this dreams and as­pi­ra­tions were now be­ing ful­filled. Man­ning, Williams' suc­ces­sor, has plucked an in­ci­dent of the heady Black Pow­er days to tar Daa­ga, in the lat­ter's makeover as elec­toral foe of the PNM. In all of this, truth is be­com­ing a ma­jor ca­su­al­ty.


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