Hamid Ghany

On Jan­u­ary 24, the PNM turned 60 years old. Quite sur­pris­ing­ly, there was an ab­sence of fan­fare to mark the oc­ca­sion. That be­ing strange enough, the an­nu­al "So­ca in the Bal­isi­er" fete which has be­come a tra­di­tion­al event on the Car­ni­val cal­en­dar was tagged with an ad­di­tion­al line that said "Cel­e­brat­ing our 60th An­niver­sary."

One formed the im­pres­sion that the par­ty was go­ing to use the oc­ca­sion to "cel­e­brate" its six­ti­eth an­niver­sary. Shock­ing­ly, the event was can­celled and no ex­pla­na­tion was giv­en. By any stretch of the imag­i­na­tion, this was strange for the old­est po­lit­i­cal par­ty in the coun­try.

As a par­ty that came back to pow­er mere months be­fore its six­ti­eth an­niver­sary, one would have thought that some kind of fan­fare would have been as­so­ci­at­ed with the oc­ca­sion. What was be­ing cel­e­brat­ed would have been the for­mal launch of the par­ty at Wooford Square on Jan­u­ary 24, 1956, by the first po­lit­i­cal leader, Dr Er­ic Williams.

Oth­er mem­bers on the first ex­ec­u­tive of the par­ty were Mr Learie Con­stan­tine (chair­man), Dr Ib­bit Mosa­heb (vice-chair­man), Mrs Is­abel Teashea (la­dy vice-chair­man), Mr Don­ald Grana­do (gen­er­al sec­re­tary), Mr Ka­malud­din Mo­hammed (as­sis­tant gen­er­al sec­re­tary) and Mr Ul­ric Lee (labour re­la­tions of­fi­cer).

While the PNM of to­day has not marked the oc­ca­sion of their six­ti­eth birth­day with any sig­nif­i­cant event, they ought to be aware of the strug­gles that Dr Williams faced as he laboured to es­tab­lish a po­lit­i­cal par­ty that would come to dom­i­nate the pol­i­tics and so­ci­ety of this coun­try.

Nat­u­ral­ly, his ac­tiv­i­ties were be­ing mon­i­tored by the colo­nial au­thor­i­ties ahead of the for­mal launch of the par­ty. In a de­clas­si­fied Colo­nial Of­fice file that con­tained the po­lit­i­cal re­port from the Gov­er­nor, Sir Ed­ward Beetham, to the sec­re­tary of state for Colonies, Alan Lennox-Boyd, for the months of Au­gust and Sep­tem­ber, 1955, Beetham re­port­ed, in part, at para­graph 10 as fol­lows:

"In Sep­tem­ber Dr Er­ic Williams con­tin­ued to hold lec­tures all over the is­land and was heard with the same en­thu­si­asm as in re­cent months by large crowds, the av­er­age peak at­ten­dance at his eight lec­tures be­ing 619. The sub­ject on which he spoke through­out the month was 'The Case for Par­ty Pol­i­tics in Trinidad and To­ba­go.' It would ap­pear that Dr Williams in­tends to launch his po­lit­i­cal par­ty on the lines of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Par­ty of Ja­maica for which he ex­press­es ad­mi­ra­tion. He has de­plored the lack of or­gan­i­sa­tion in lo­cal pol­i­tics and has stat­ed his aim as be­ing 'the ed­u­ca­tion of the mass­es' with the ob­ject of achiev­ing a po­lit­i­cal­ly ed­u­cat­ed elec­torate." (Oc­to­ber 11, 1955).

It was clear that Williams had seen an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the cre­ation of an or­gan­ised po­lit­i­cal par­ty be­cause the na­ture of the po­lit­i­cal land­scape at the time was very dis­or­gan­ised. The ad­vent of the PNM changed all of that. There was a struc­ture put in place that in­clud­ed a par­ty con­sti­tu­tion, con­stituen­cy groups and par­ty groups, an­nu­al con­ven­tions, as well as a found­ing doc­u­ment called "The Peo­ple's Char­ter."

With such a rich po­lit­i­cal his­to­ry, it is baf­fling to the av­er­age per­son look­ing on from out­side as to why there has been no fan­fare to mark such an aus­pi­cious oc­ca­sion for an or­gan­i­sa­tion that has wo­ven it­self in­to the mo­sa­ic of the so­ci­ety.

This year will al­so make the six­ti­eth an­niver­sary of when the PNM first cap­tured po­lit­i­cal pow­er in the gen­er­al elec­tions that were held on Sep­tem­ber 24, 1956. The ad­vent of the PNM in­to the cor­ri­dors of pow­er was fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the Gov­er­nor, Sir Ed­ward Beetham, based on in­struc­tions from the Colo­nial Of­fice.

The re­sult of the elec­tion did not give the PNM an over­all ma­jor­i­ty in the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil as the par­ty had on­ly won 13 out of 24 elect­ed seats. Williams need­ed to get at least two of the five nom­i­nat­ed mem­bers in or­der to have 15 out of 29 in the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil.

Ac­cord­ing to a now de­clas­si­fied con­fi­den­tial in­tel cir­cu­lat­ed af­ter the in­stal­la­tion of the new gov­ern­ment, the Colo­nial ad­vised as fol­lows:

"Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the elec­tion the Gov­er­nor, Sir Ed­ward Beetham, sent for Dr Williams and of­fered him his co-op­er­a­tion in form­ing a Gov­ern­ment. Dr Williams then asked that his nom­i­nees should be ap­point­ed to fill nom­i­nat­ed seats, and this re­quest at first threat­ened to give rise to some con­sti­tu­tion­al dif­fi­cul­ty." (No 198 In­tel, Con­fi­den­tial, No­vem­ber 8, 1956).

The po­ten­tial "con­sti­tu­tion­al dif­fi­cul­ty" was re­solved by the Colo­nial Of­fice on the ba­sis of the fol­low­ing di­rec­tive al­so con­tained in the in­tel cit­ed above:

"In Trinidad, there­fore, the emer­gence of a ma­jor­i­ty par­ty was recog­nised as call­ing for some mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the prin­ci­ples of the 1949 despatch. The Sec­re­tary of State there­fore au­tho­rised the Gov­er­nor to 'take such steps by way of nom­i­nat­ing suit­able per­sons to the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil, af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with the leader of the ma­jor­i­ty par­ty, as will pro­vide a rea­son­able work­ing ma­jor­i­ty for that par­ty.'"

On the ba­sis of this di­rec­tive from the Sec­re­tary of State for the Colonies, the Gov­er­nor ap­point­ed Messrs W J Alexan­der and C A Mer­ry as the two PNM nom­i­nat­ed mem­bers which al­lowed the PNM to gov­ern.