Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

Trofim Ly­senko was a Russ­ian sci­ence/con­man who was more po­lit­i­cal­ly as­tute than re­al sci­en­tists, and thou­sands of sci­en­tists were im­pris­oned or killed as a con­se­quence of his as­cent, and the prop­a­ga­tion of his quack sci­ence, in So­vi­et agri­cul­ture. Ly­senko­ism last­ed 40 years and man­aged to wreck the study of the bi­o­log­i­cal sci­ences in the then USSR in its time.

As with agri­cul­ture in Rus­sia, so with Car­ni­val in the Trinidad. Pass­ing down Pic­cadil­ly Street last week, I saw the ban­ner on the bleach­ers erect­ed for the year­ly Can­boulay clown-show an­nounc­ing "the birth­place of the Trinidad Car­ni­val." Un­like oth­er as­pects of this atroc­i­ty which man­gles the truth, this dis­pensed with truth en­tire­ly. Of course, there was Car­ni­val be­fore 1881, but more on that lat­er. Let's look at 1881 ri­ots.

My sources for the pre­ced­ing and fol­low­ing are the Hamil­ton Re­port, and the news­pa­pers Fair Play and The Chron­i­cle. But be­fore all that, let's hear from an ac­tu­al Can­boulay ri­ot­er, Leonie John, as told to Guardian re­porter M Sel­l­i­er on March 2, 1934: "You should have seen the bands! The band called Mar­il-bone used to come down from Bel­mont, hun­dreds strong, and the peo­ple would flee in ter­ror.... It was noth­ing for them to kill one or two and then flee to Co­corite where they would re­main for days hid­ing.

"Ah! But you should have seen that Cannes Brulee night when we broke the lights and plunged the town in­to dark­ness.... I was one of those who took part in that Cannes Brulee and I re­mem­ber be­labour­ing the Cap­tain (Bak­er) with blows from my stick while the oth­ers shout­ed en­cour­age­ment. No one slept that night we want­ed to set fire to the town and every­one was wait­ing to see what would hap­pen next."

De­light­ful, I'm sure, if you're psy­chot­ic. The Fair Play news­pa­per of 1879 first asked that the Can­boulay be con­trolled, or stopped, then praised Capt Bak­er in 1880 for do­ing just that. In 1881, how­ev­er, it heaped oblo­quy on him when the ri­ot­ers at­tacked the po­lice. The rea­son was that two Cre­ole (lo­cal men) civ­il ser­vants' cor­rup­tion was ex­posed. For days be­fore the ri­ots in 1881, fliers were cir­cu­lat­ed, and the street gangs were whipped in­to fren­zy by mid­dle class provo­ca­teurs. Dur­ing the ri­ot The Chron­i­cle (March 2, 1881) re­port­ed there was a masked white man in the af­fray di­rect­ing the ri­ot­ers to kill Bak­er.

So this wasn't hero­ism, "re­sis­tance" or an­ti-colo­nial­ism. It was crim­i­nal­i­ty and ig­no­rance, and yet an­oth­er in­stance of the loutish mass­es (many of whom were not from Trinidad) be­ing in­cit­ed to ri­ot by a ma­nip­u­la­tive mid­dle class–which tra­di­tion has con­tin­ued.

But, facts notwith­stand­ing, Can­boulay has now be­come a cen­tre­piece of the Car­ni­val, a touch­stone of "na­tion­al iden­ti­ty." This a bad thing. As dis­cussed in this space last week, one of the things that re­built US so­ci­ety af­ter the Great De­pres­sion was the emer­gence of the card-game con­tact bridge, played by mil­lions of Amer­i­cans, which en­cour­aged part­ners to build trust, so­cial re­la­tion­ships, and what­not. It's pro­posed that Car­ni­val does this in/for Trinidad–"All o we is one." But if so, why does T&T have the low­est quan­tum of in­tan­gi­ble/so­cial cap­i­tal in the re­gion? (World Bank re­port, 2006, Where is the Wealth of Na­tions?)

So if Can­boulay is the ul­ti­mate ex­pres­sion of Trinida­di­an any­thing it's our propen­si­ty for an­ar­chy and gulli­bil­i­ty. But there's co­pi­ous ev­i­dence that an­ar­chy is not the na­tion­al sen­ti­ment a few yards up the street from the reen­act­ment, through an arched gate with the leg­end "Lodge Unit­ed Broth­ers." There­in is the old­est Ma­son­ic Tem­ple in Trinidad, formed in the 18th cen­tu­ry.

Freema­son­ry has a bad rap to­day (al­though at least one mem­ber of the present Cab­i­net is a Freema­son), but it meant some­thing dif­fer­ent in the 19th cen­tu­ry. Most am­bi­tious, ed­u­cat­ed white and black men in Trinidad were Freema­sons in­clud­ing JJ Thomas, CP David, Edgar Ma­resse-Smith, MM Philip, JB Philippe, and many more. In­di­ans en­tered the lodges around the turn of the cen­tu­ry. Ma­son­ry con­tin­ued in­to the pre-Er­ic Williams 20th cen­tu­ry to be a sig­nif­i­cant so­cial force: HOB Wood­ing, Adri­an Co­la Rien­zi, George Fitz­patrick, FEM Ho­sein, LC Han­nays and Patrick Solomon were all Ma­sons.

The sig­nif­i­cance of this is that Ma­son­ry was a medi­um for so­cial cap­i­tal: trust, in­ter-eth­nic uni­ty, no­tions of equal­i­ty and uni­ver­sal fair­ness among the no­bler pre­cepts. Apart from the Ma­sons, the Trinidad Blue Book of 1900 (sta­tis­tics) list­ed about 70 fra­ter­nal so­ci­eties in Trinidad: these in­clud­ed Gar­den­ers, Foresters, Me­chan­ics, Odd­fel­lows and so on. These brought peo­ple to­geth­er, unit­ed them with com­mon val­ues and pur­pose. So this is not a so­ci­ety com­prised sole­ly of ri­ots and rage as the peo­ple who per­pet­u­ate the Can­boulay ori­gin the­o­ry scream.

But here's the crux: every­thing above is fac­tu­al and ver­i­fi­able, but it's so alien to pop­u­lar his­to­ry many would dis­miss out of hand. The rea­son for this is that a small group of un­for­tu­nates has been al­lowed to scream their ran­cid ver­sion of his­to­ry for so long, it's be­come or­tho­doxy.

If the Prime Min­is­ter is se­ri­ous about his his­to­ry thing (and I see a com­mit­tee has been ap­point­ed), pulling up the Can­boulay clown-show short would be a good place to start. This might al­so be a good place to dis­close that as I saw the his­to­ry com­mit­tee ap­point­ed, I wrote to the PM, in­form­ing him I'd pro­posed the idea to his pre­de­ces­sor, and en­closed my pro­pos­al. I'm sure he'll treat it with all the se­ri­ous­ness it de­serves, and per­haps send it to his Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions for con­sid­er­a­tion.