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Saturday, February 22, 2025

Federation of the West Indies

by

20140927

Prob­a­bly be­cause it hap­pened near­ly 60 years ago and last­ed for on­ly a short time, many can­not now re­mem­ber when T&T, for one brief in­ter­lude, lost is sta­tus as a se­mi-au­tonomous colony of Britain and be­came a province in a gov­er­nance arrange­ment called the Fed­er­a­tion of the West In­dies or West In­dies Fed­er­a­tion. It was a mod­el sim­i­lar to what had been put in­to place in Aus­tralia and mar­gin­al­ly akin to the gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States, with sep­a­rate ter­ri­to­r­i­al ad­min­is­tra­tions un­der a fed­er­al leg­is­la­ture.One might ar­gue that the fed­er­a­tion was a last ditch at­tempt by Eng­land to save what was left of its rapid­ly de­clin­ing em­pire.

In 1948, In­dia had be­come in­de­pen­dent, de­priv­ing the British of their crown jew­el. In the im­me­di­ate post-WWII era there arose in the Caribbean many pop­u­lar lead­ers from among the peo­ple whose emer­gence sig­nalled to the Crown that change was im­mi­nent. In T&T this man of the peo­ple was Dr Er­ic Williams. He proved his po­lit­i­cal met­tle in the es­tab­lish­ment of the PNM as the dom­i­nant force in the colony. Sim­i­lar up­heavals were tak­ing place in Ja­maica, British Guiana and Bar­ba­dos, among oth­er ter­ri­to­ries.The British Caribbean Fed­er­a­tion Act (1956) be­came the leg­isla­tive au­thor­i­ty for the fed­er­a­tion and on Jan­u­ary 3, 1958, the fed­er­a­tion came in­to be­ing.The pro­pos­al for a fed­er­al cap­i­tal was one of the ear­li­est mat­ters, with Ch­aguara­mas be­ing the pop­u­lar choice, but since this area was large­ly a US Army fa­cil­i­ty es­tab­lished un­der the Bases Agree­ment (1941), the cap­i­tal was more or less Port-of-Spain.

The fed­er­al union from the start was fraught with prob­lems. For one, the in­di­vid­ual eco­nom­ics and so­cial sit­u­a­tions of the re­spec­tive ter­ri­to­ries were not prop­er­ly con­sid­ered; for in­stance, cer­tain mi­nor­i­ty fac­tions like the In­do Trinida­di­ans (British Guiana, like Be­lize, had on­ly ob­serv­er sta­tus) feared mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion in the large­ly ho­moge­nous Afro-Caribbean space. The fed­er­a­tion's gov­ern­ment con­sist­ed of a bi­cam­er­al par­lia­ment with 19 sen­a­tors ap­point­ed by the gov­er­nor gen­er­al and an elect­ed House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, with Ja­maica and Trinidad hav­ing 17 and ten seats re­spec­tive­ly, thus mak­ing them ma­jor­i­ty stake­hold­ers.In 1958, Lord Hailes, the gov­er­nor gen­er­al, pro­claimed fed­er­al elec­tions–which would show up the se­ri­ous flaws of the sys­tem.The two dom­i­nant po­lit­i­cal par­ties–which were sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly en­gi­neered by white Ja­maicans (Nor­man Man­ley's West In­di­an Fed­er­al Labour Par­ty and Alexan­der Bus­ta­mante's De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Labour Par­ty)–com­plete­ly dom­i­nat­ed the elec­tions and claimed 26 and 19 seats re­spec­tive­ly, with the DLP win­ning six of the ten T&T seats. The ap­point­ment of Sir Grant­ley Adams of Bar­ba­dos as the fed­er­al prime min­is­ter fur­ther soured the al­liances so weak­ly forged un­der fed­er­al leg­is­la­tion. Man­ley and Dr Williams were seen as the two men best fit to lead the fed­er­a­tion and with their de­ci­sion to con­cen­trate on their provin­cial pol­i­tics, ma­jor con­fi­dence in the fed­er­a­tion was lost.

Un­der the new reg­i­men, it was tout­ed that sev­er­al in­sti­tu­tions and ser­vices would be com­mon to all ter­ri­to­ries, in­clud­ing a Supreme Court, ship­ping ser­vice, the West In­dia Reg­i­ment and the Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of the West In­dies.One of the biggest omis­sions of the fed­er­a­tion struc­ture, how­ev­er, was ne­glect­ing to pro­vide a sin­gle cus­toms ser­vice. The con­cept of free trade and ze­ro bar­ri­ers to en­try were ad­mit­ted­ly in a nascent stage even on a glob­al spec­trum, but with each ter­ri­to­ry main­tain­ing its in­di­vid­ual tar­iffs and ex­cise du­ties, free trade with­in the fed­er­a­tion was stymied. This placed a lim­i­ta­tion on the amount of eco­nom­ic growth and de­vel­op­ment which could be achieved. More­over, with on­ly a stingy fed­er­al bud­get pro­vid­ed by sub­ven­tion from the UK, Ja­maica and T&T as the two largest and most vi­able economies were re­quired to bear the brunt of the bur­den of sup­port­ing the fed­er­al in­sti­tu­tion.

Even with­in the in­di­vid­ual ter­ri­to­ries, there was an in­ward fo­cus on lo­cal po­lit­i­cal cli­mates rather than fed­er­al af­fairs. Fol­low­ing poor re­sults for the PNM in the 1959 coun­ty coun­cil elec­tions in Trinidad, Dr Williams too be­came dis­il­lu­sioned with the fed­er­a­tion.His grow­ing dis­con­tent, how­ev­er, was in­de­pen­dent­ly ex­ceed­ed by what was brew­ing in Ja­maica. As the province with the largest num­ber of seats, Ja­maica held im­mense sway in fed­er­al af­fairs. In 1961, by forc­ing Man­ley in­to hold­ing a ref­er­en­dum, Bus­ta­mante com­pelled Ja­maica to with­draw from the fed­er­a­tion and swift­ly led Ja­maica to in­de­pen­dence in April 1962. This elicit­ed the fa­mous com­ment from Dr Williams: "One from ten leaves nought."Dr Williams was re-elect­ed to the post of prime min­is­ter and in a rapid draft­ing of an In­de­pen­dence Con­sti­tu­tion lead­ing to na­tion­hood, the Fed­er­a­tion of the West In­dies fi­nal­ly col­lapsed, be­ing dis­solved in 1962.


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