Sedi­tion is de­scribed by the Ox­ford dic­tio­nary as en­gag­ing in con­duct or ut­ter­ing speech that in­cites peo­ple to rebel against the au­thor­i­ty of a state or monarch.

But was it sedi­tion or the “right of strug­gle” when it came to world lead­ers like Unit­ed States civ­il rights leader Mar­tin Luther King Jr and for­mer South African Pres­i­dent Nel­son Man­dela or even Trinidad and To­ba­go trade union leader Tubal Uri­ah “Buzz” But­ler, who all re­ject­ed the heavy-hand­ed or­der of the day which seemed to en­croach on ba­sic hu­man rights and equal­i­ty?

The is­sue has been on the pub­lic front-burn­er re­cent­ly af­ter Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke was charged with sedi­tion for com­ments he al­leged­ly made last No­vem­ber while de­fend­ing work­ers at WASA, T&TEC and TSTT. Duke is cur­rent­ly out on $250,000 bail.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Win­ford James opines the Sedi­tion Act was born out of op­pres­sion.

“We should not from a po­lit­i­cal stand­point be sup­port­ing a law that has been de­vel­oped against us to keep us sub­ju­gat­ed, qui­et, ac­qui­es­cent and com­pli­ant,” James ad­mon­ished.

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, he ex­plained Trinidad and To­ba­go was ruled by Britain and the law was es­tab­lished by the monar­chy to main­tain a state of af­fairs to keep cit­i­zens sub­ju­gat­ed be­cause the law, over time, has been pol­i­tics.

James not­ed that it is politi­cians who make law and al­though they call them­selves leg­is­la­tors, they leg­is­late law from a po­lit­i­cal per­spec­tive very of­ten.

“If you have for­mer colonies now rul­ing them­selves us­ing the laws that were de­vel­oped by those who op­pressed us be­fore, you are like­ly to find the laws de­vel­oped, as they were from a per­spec­tive of the colo­nial mas­ter to keep the lo­cal pop­u­la­tion in check,” James said.

“You get the very clear im­pres­sion that those laws may not be in our best in­ter­est. You can’t au­to­mat­i­cal­ly sup­port law like that.”

He said this is one of the rea­sons why when T&T be­came in­de­pen­dent in 1962, the law was not re­al­ly to pros­e­cute, be­cause it was then re­alised that those types of laws were con­trary to our aims as peo­ple - a peo­ple who were be­com­ing more au­tonomous and a coun­try in charge of run­ning its own af­fairs. But even so, he said the laws are still on the books.

“Be­cause they are on the books we might feel that we ought to en­force those laws. But the in­fre­quen­cy of en­force­ment sug­gests that we un­der­stood that those laws could on­ly be con­ve­nient­ly in­voked,” James said.

Re­fer­ring to the rea­son for the re­cent con­tention sur­round­ing the Sedi­tion Act af­ter Duke’s de­ten­tion, James said, “In the case of Wat­son Duke, the first thing we must be think­ing, this is a law that has been in­voked con­ve­nient­ly be­cause of the long in­fre­quen­cy, the long lack of ac­ti­va­tion that has at­tend­ed the ex­is­tence of the law.”

James spoke of a high­ly re­gard­ed re­li­gious leader be­ing charged with sedi­tion in 2005 and be­fore him dat­ing back to 1937 when Uri­ah “Buzz” But­ler was charged un­der the Sedi­tion Act.

“I can’t imag­ine a trade union leader be­ing charged with sedi­tion. So when it was an­nounced Duke was ar­rest­ed and charged for sedi­tion, this made my eyes open wide. This is as­ton­ish­ing and it’s not sup­port­able,” he said.

He said even if Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley didn’t agree with it, be­ing the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive, he couldn’t go against the work of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion and the po­lice.

“As a com­men­ta­tor, I am free to say this is ab­surd. And this doesn’t mean that I am right, be­cause ul­ti­mate­ly the court de­ter­mines right­ness. But even if the court rules in a par­tic­u­lar way, I don’t have to agree with them from a po­lit­i­cal stand­point.”

In the same breath, James clar­i­fied that his per­spec­tive was not to say that he was against laws that were de­signed to pro­tect sov­er­eign­ty. But he said there was a sov­er­eign­ty that T&T was es­tab­lish­ing and de­vel­op­ing and it’s not some­thing that sug­gests that the British were right.

“In my opin­ion, the British were wrong from where they were com­ing from. So it is re­al­ly dis­turb­ing to see in 2019, our po­lice, DPP and oth­er agents of the state are try­ing to en­force a law that is con­trary to our in­ter­est. We have to de­vel­op our own laws in re­la­tion to where we want to go.”

His­to­ri­an: T&T a cul­ture
of rebels and re­sis­tance

While James looks at the Sedi­tion Act as a law cre­at­ed to op­press and sub­due its sub­jects, his­to­ri­an Ger­ard “Ger­ry” Besson, who gave some of the ear­li­est ex­am­ples of re­bel­lion dat­ing back to the 1800s un­der Span­ish rule and then through­out the British con­quest, said T&T had a cul­ture of re­sis­tance. And from its pri­mal time, he said T&T had proven to be a very dif­fi­cult so­ci­ety to gov­ern.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Besson said there was the ten­den­cy em­bed­ded in our cul­ture and na­ture to glo­ri­fy ei­ther the rebel leader or the “smart man” or the sort of zig-zag per­son…the Anan­si per­son­al­i­ty we la­bel as a cul­tur­al hero.”

Besson said the first up­heaval to take place in Port-of-Spain af­ter the eman­ci­pa­tion of slaves came in 1849 be­cause of some mis­un­der­stand­ing of a law that was passed be­cause peo­ple were at­tempt­ing to burn down the gov­ern­ment build­ings and they had to call out sol­diers to re­store or­der.

n See Page A7

Re­fer­ring to the line in one of Trinida­di­an war his­to­ri­an Gay­lord Kelshall’s book, Besson said Kelshall put it quite right when he wrote: “We al­ways for­get the men who sup­port­ed law and or­der.”

As­crib­ing the 1937 Fyz­abad Ri­ots dur­ing the trade union up­ris­ing led by But­ler as a prime ex­am­ple of this, Besson men­tioned po­lice of­fi­cers Cor­po­ral Carl King and In­spec­tor William Brad­burn among those who were all killed dur­ing the ri­ots, but he said no­body re­mem­bers them.

He re­it­er­at­ed, “Trinidad has this cul­ture of glo­ri­fy­ing the rebel lead­ers and at the same time it pos­sess­es this on­go­ing un­der­cur­rent, like a sort of a hot-spot just be­neath the sur­face, all you need is the charis­mat­ic in­di­vid­ual, whether it is Abu (Abu Bakr), Den­nis Granger or But­ler, to spark the un­der­cur­rent of re­sis­tance.”

He said every ad­min­is­tra­tion, whether it was the colo­nial or first in­de­pen­dence ad­min­is­tra­tion, was al­ways very aware of that “so it is out of that kind of back­ground that laws to gov­ern sedi­tion and trea­son were cre­at­ed and are on the books.”

Speak­ing to the age of the Sedi­tion Act, Besson said all laws are old and that was the na­ture of law. But he point­ed out that it was al­so the na­ture of law that it should be up­grad­ed and should be rethought through at var­i­ous times when the so­ci­ety evolves and changes.

In the mean­time, how­ev­er, he said the fact of the mat­ter is that two re­al­i­ties ex­ist­ed in Trinida­di­an cre­ole cul­ture -the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the an­ti-hero and the oth­er is an in­cli­na­tion to re­sis­tance.

“Re­sis­tance ex­press­es it­self as an­ti-em­ploy­er re­sis­tance; an­ti-gov­ern­ment re­sis­tance; an­ti-es­tab­lish­ment re­sis­tance; an­ti-colo­nial re­sis­tance or an­ti-slav­ery re­sis­tance. What we have is a cul­ture of re­sis­tance that ex­press­es it­self from time to time in vi­o­lence through a charis­mat­ic leader com­ing to the fore. This is why these laws must ex­ist,” Besson re­solved.

He said from a his­tor­i­cal point of view, these are the facts. And this was the ba­sic can­vas against which this re­cent up­heaval is paint­ed.

Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans brace your­self

Vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian Dr Hol­lis “Chalk­dust” Liv­er­pool says the cen­tu­ry-old Sedi­tion Act has been a ma­jor hur­dle to artistes through the decades.

“Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans have faced the chal­lenges of the Sedi­tion Act more than any­body else,” he said.

“The chal­lenge is how do you say cer­tain things with­out up­set­ting the ap­ple cart and be­ing tak­en to court.”

Some of the ear­li­est artistes to find them­selves run­ning afoul of the act were the likes of Patrick Jones, al­so known as Chi­nee Patrick and Neville Mar­cano, known as the Growl­ing Tiger. The lat­ter was charged in the 1940s af­ter singing a ca­lyp­so about the then di­rec­tor of ed­u­ca­tion, an Eng­lish­man, who was caught dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol.

When the Growl­ing Tiger sang that Jones was not fit to lead the min­istry, he was charged for sedi­tion.

“In those days it was a big thing to sing against an Eng­lish­man,” Liv­er­pool told the Sun­day Guardian. He added, “The British gov­ern­ment may have had a dif­fer­ent mo­tive than from to­day. It was an act that they saw the ca­lyp­so­ni­ans as chal­leng­ing them.”

Even the eight-time Ca­lyp­so Monarch him­self had in­stances where he flirt­ed with the sedi­tion law. Liv­er­pool’s 1972 hit “Ah Fraid Karl” took aim at then-at­tor­ney gen­er­al Karl Hud­son-Phillips. In the four-stan­za song, Liv­er­pool sang about how he re­fused to sing about top­ics that of­fend­ed the then Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment be­cause he “‘fraid the Sedi­tion Act.”

“When I sang ‘Ah Fraid Karl’ a lot of peo­ple were scared. My fam­i­ly was scared I would have been jailed,” Liv­er­pool ex­plained.

The con­tents of Liv­er­pool’s com­po­si­tion came a year af­ter the Sedi­tion Act was amend­ed. The orig­i­nal 1920 law re­quired there to be an in­cite­ment to vi­o­lence but in 1971 that part was re­moved, mean­ing mere speech could be sedi­tious. Crim­i­nal de­fence at­tor­ney Wayne Sturge says this is when the Sedi­tion Act be­came a “re­al dan­ger.”

In ad­mit­ting that parts of the 99-year-old law are still need­ed to­day, Sturge ad­vo­cat­ed for a to­tal re­peal of the law.

He said, “There are as­pects of the sedi­tion act that re­main rel­e­vant but there is no need to have it in a Sedi­tion Act. For in­stance, if you in­cite racial di­vi­sion, that is al­so in the Sedi­tion Act and that is still rel­e­vant in our coun­try, but we don’t need a Sedi­tion Act for that. What you need to do is per­haps have a race re­la­tions act.”

Sturge said he would like to see T&T fol­low in the foot­steps of the Unit­ed King­dom (UK), where the Sedi­tion Act was re­pealed and has been put in­to statutes that deal specif­i­cal­ly with things like racial ha­tred.

“If you amend it, you’ll be left with very lit­tle,” Sturge said.

“It will make no sense keep­ing it. So what you do is you take the parts that you still need and en­act cer­tain of­fences deal­ing with racial di­vi­sive­ness and oth­er things.”

With the re­cent charges against Duke, Liv­er­pool is con­cerned about his fel­low singers.

“I’m con­cerned be­cause some­body will want to say some­thing on Wat­son Duke and the Sedi­tion Act and they’ll have to be very care­ful. We have al­ways had that chal­lenge, a moun­tain in front of us when com­pos­ing. I’m not wor­ried about it be­cause ca­lyp­so­ni­ans have gone through that many times.”

Many have seen Duke’s re­cent ar­rest as an at­tack on free­dom of ex­pres­sion. How­ev­er, Liv­er­pool doesn’t be­lieve the Row­ley-led Gov­ern­ment is try­ing to sti­fle pub­lic opin­ion.

He said, “I don’t think the Gov­ern­ment to­day is try­ing to si­lence any­body, but the act re­mains so prob­a­bly there is a need to re­view it.

“But cer­tain­ly you need a Sedi­tion Act. Any so­ci­ety needs a sedi­tion act but it de­pends on how far you are go­ing to go.”