Land sur­vey­or Ivan Laugh­lin has de­signed and over­seen ur­ban plan­ning projects for sev­er­al decades. Laugh­lin be­lieves in sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and ex­pan­sion of vil­lages to in­spire com­mu­nal to­geth­er­ness and en­cour­age de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion away from the ur­ban cen­tres. In a se­ries ex­clu­sive to the T&T Guardian, Laugh­lin will es­pouse his vi­sion for the de­vel­op­ment of T&T's rur­al ar­eas like To­co and the east coast. To­day, Laugh­lin speaks to Tony Rakhal-Fras­er about his life and in­spi­ra­tion for his vi­sion of de­vel­op­ment.

He re­signed from the Queen's Park Crick­et Club in 1966 be­cause he felt that the club dis­crim­i­nat­ed against non-whites; he be­came at­tract­ed to the rad­i­cal per­spec­tives of the New World Group as its mem­bers sought to chart a new course for a post-colo­nial Caribbean and its peo­ple.

As a stu­dent on the UWI St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus in the rev­o­lu­tion­ary 1960s, Ivan Laugh­lin, white and mid­dle-class, im­mersed him­self in the Black Pow­er re­volt, and was part of the march to Ca­roni un­der the ban­ner of "Africans and In­di­ans Unite."

"There was some fric­tion amongst the stu­dents on the march. Ged­des Granger saw what was go­ing on. He told me: 'Ivan, or­gan­ise the stu­dents; get them to­geth­er.'

"So I am say­ing to my­self, here I am, a white man in a Black Pow­er move­ment, and I am be­ing asked to sort out dif­fi­cul­ties amongst the black stu­dents. It gave me a lift (Granger's man­date) be­cause it made me re­alise that when you have to con­front fun­da­men­tal is­sues of life, no longer is it seen in white or black; you are just a hu­man be­ing strug­gling for strong eter­nal be­liefs of a civil­i­sa­tion."

Laugh­lin's per­spec­tive and role were in di­rect con­flict with his eth­nic (Irish and French Cre­ole her­itage) and so­cial class back­ground, out­side of the main­stream of the black ma­jor­i­ty.

His grow­ing-up years were spent not "down the is­lands" in the lap of priv­i­lege, even though there was so­cial in­ter­ac­tion amongst his "kin­dred," but first on Long Cir­cu­lar Road, and then on a fam­i­ly es­tate in Mara­cas (St Joseph) Val­ley.

Dur­ing his teen years, Ivan got a per­spec­tive of Port-of-Spain from an at­tic in which his fa­ther lived on Fred­er­ick Street, his par­ents hav­ing sep­a­rat­ed.

He spent hol­i­days "see­ing and feel­ing the city come alive."

His sec­ondary school years were at the Abbey School at Mount St Bene­dict, to which he ped­dled to and from the es­tate. At the school he came un­der the lib­er­al tute­lage of Dutch prin­ci­pals of the Abbey and had a glo­ri­ous ex­pe­ri­ence as a crick­et-lov­ing boy with El­lis "Puss" Achong (in­ven­tor of the "Chi­na­man"), Clif­ford Roach (who scored the first cen­tu­ry and dou­ble for WI) and Lance Mur­ray, who all spent a ses­sion at the school with the boys. It was Mur­ray (Deryck's fa­ther) who in­flu­enced him in­to the pro­fes­sion of land sur­vey­ing and be­ing a mem­ber of the QPCC.

Sur­vey­ing the land, from beach to bush

This taste of ur­ban and rur­al life made an im­pres­sion on Laugh­lin, and the rur­al was con­sol­i­dat­ed when he be­came an ap­pren­tice sur­vey­or (a white man labour­er, re­al­ly) hav­ing to tra­verse the vil­lages and live with peo­ple in Matelot, Ce­dros, To­co, Ma­yaro, and so on.

"Then I had to in­ter­face with the peo­ple in those ar­eas and the crews; you have to en­counter all kinds of hard­ships, in the bush, on the coast­line; work­ing with old­er men drink­ing rum. Our job was to tell the sto­ry of the face of the earth, un­der­stand the voic­es of land and what they are telling you; and so, too, the voic­es of the peo­ple," says Laugh­lin.

"But the is­sue of race was some­thing that you had to be ex­treme­ly con­scious about, and it forced me to have to think very care­ful­ly about what my life was about in this place. What it made me re­alise was that I had to know about the Caribbean."

He al­so had the fright­en­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of hav­ing to wait out the fierce Hur­ri­cane Janet ("Janet hide in de moun­tain, Janet lick down a mil­lion build­ing"–Lord Melody) on board a schooner in the Bridgetown port. At UWI in the 1960s, hav­ing been per­suad­ed by Lloyd Best to take a de­gree in eco­nom­ics and gov­ern­ment, Laugh­lin found him­self among post-colo­nial in­tel­lec­tu­als of the ilk of Dr James Mil­lette, Best, Nor­man Gir­van, and George Beck­ford of the New World Group.

He read in­ces­sant­ly, in­clud­ing the writ­ings of Ched­di Ja­gan, Er­ic Williams and CLR James. But Laugh­lin's defin­ing mo­ment in his grow­ing con­scious­ness came with an evening spent with CLR James at the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre in St Ann's.

The im­pact of CLR James, Frank Wor­rell

"His im­pact on my think­ing as a man of the Caribbean was pro­found; I owe a great deal to him," says Laugh­lin.

That en­counter with CLR was in the lead-up to the 1966 gen­er­al elec­tion in which James, along with the likes of Stephen Ma­haraj, George Weekes and Bas­deo Pan­day, con­test­ed on the tick­et of the Work­ers and Farm­ers Par­ty–a par­ty with a de­cid­ed­ly so­cial­ist ori­en­ta­tion.

"My mind be­came filled with knowl­edge of the Caribbean, and that fixed my ori­en­ta­tion and an­chored me in this place. It made me re­alise that the Caribbean is a unique kind of civil­i­sa­tion. And the per­son out­side of CLR that made a tremen­dous im­pact on me was Frank Wor­rell.

"In 1961 when Wor­rell took the WI crick­et team to Aus­tralia and mould­ed to­geth­er Caribbean peo­ple, he went against the tra­di­tions of po­lit­i­cal dis­in­te­gra­tion. He was one of the great­est lead­ers the Caribbean has known."

But arm­chair pol­i­tics did not suit Laugh­lin's per­son­al­i­ty. He dived deep in­to elec­toral pol­i­tics as a mem­ber of Tapia, the uni­ver­si­ty-bred par­ty of in­tel­lec­tu­als.

In the run-up to the 1976 poll, Laugh­lin hit the road spread­ing the Re­view, the par­ty's news­pa­per which he and the hi­er­ar­chy of the par­ty hawked up and down the coun­try.

"I had the south run, de­liv­er­ing pa­pers and en­gag­ing in di­a­logue from San Fer­nan­do to Fyz­abad and the deep south. Once I did a run in St James, stop­ping at all of the wa­ter­ing holes along the way. By the end of the line, hav­ing ac­cept­ed in­vi­ta­tions to 'fire one,' I was quite drunk."

At the 1976 polls, Ivan came up against George Cham­bers in the St Ann's con­stituen­cy–one which Cham­bers had ruled over since its cre­ation in 1966. As record­ed, Ivan Alexan­der Laugh­lin (Tapia) re­ceived 679 votes; George Michael Cham­bers (PNM) at­tract­ed 6,853.

It was a chas­ten­ing time for Ivan and his col­leagues. De­spite at­tract­ing much cam­paign plat­form at­ten­tion, not one of them was able to se­cure his or her de­posit.

"At the end of the elec­tion I was flat broke and had to be­gin to re­or­gan­ise my life," says Laugh­lin.

Changes, per­son­aland pro­fes­sion­al

Laugh­lin's do­mes­tic life had tak­en on a change. He had been di­vorced from his first wife, one of his own race and so­cial class. His sec­ond mar­riage was to an In­di­an woman, Tho­ra Char­iandy, whom he had met on cam­pus.

This was not well ac­cept­ed by his own.

"Al­so, I was no longer in re­li­gion and mak­ing my own life, and I mar­ried an In­di­an woman, so in those sit­u­a­tions it was nev­er an easy thing; there were times when I felt I was os­tracised for be­ing mar­ried to an In­di­an woman. How­ev­er I was ac­cept­ed by the fam­i­ly of my wife."

But Laugh­lin stood his ground, just like when he had re­signed from Queen's Park.

"I re­mem­ber Ger­ry Gomez say­ing to me some­time af­ter I had re­signed: 'Ivan, I ad­mire you; you stood by what you be­lieved in and I have to say that it is some­thing I ad­mire.' That gave me some sense of not be­ing com­plete­ly out on a limb."

One project Laugh­lin de­vel­oped was Home Farms, a hous­ing set­tle­ment which fore­cast the Sou Sou Lands project. Laugh­lin's