To­mor­row is the 32nd an­niver­sary of the death of T&T's first Prime Min­is­ter, Er­ic Williams, who led the coun­try from 1956 to the day of his death on March 29, 1981.

Williams's sem­i­nal work, Cap­i­tal­ism and Slav­ery, is still be­ing cit­ed in aca­d­e­m­ic de­bates on the caus­es of the abo­li­tion of slav­ery–as re­cent­ly as last month when the Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of Lon­don launched a Web site, giv­ing de­tails of its project Lega­cies of British Slave own­er­ship, which traces the im­pact of slave own­er­ship on the for­ma­tion of mod­ern Britain.

The orig­i­nal re­search by Williams–for which he re­ceived a D.Phil in 1938 and that he turned in­to Cap­i­tal­ism and Slav­ery in 1944–was fund­ed by an Eng­lish trade as­so­ci­a­tion named The Leathersellers' Com­pa­ny on the rec­om­men­da­tion of Sir Claud Hol­lis, who served as the Gov­er­nor of T&T from 1930 to 1936.

The en­try in our Court Min­utes for Ju­ly 1936 is brief and busi­nesslike: "EE Williams of Trinidad: Grant for Uni­ver­si­ty Ex­pens­es. An ap­pli­ca­tion was pre­sent­ed from Sir Claud Hol­lis on be­half of Er­ic E Williams, a na­tive of Trinidad and now a grad­u­ate mem­ber of St Cather­ine's So­ci­ety, Ox­ford (first class ho­n­ours in his­to­ry) for fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to en­able him to re­main for a year or two at Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty for re­search work. Re­solved, that a grant of �50 be made to Er­ic E Williams for one year from Oc­to­ber 1936."

Few can pre­dict the full mag­ni­tude of the ben­e­fits that can re­sult from ac­cess to a good ed­u­ca­tion. The Leathersellers' Com­pa­ny has been fund­ing needy stu­dents at uni­ver­si­ty since 1602, many of whom have gone on to note­wor­thy achieve­ments in a wide va­ri­ety of fields, but none has achieved the glob­al fame of Er­ic Williams.

When he came to the at­ten­tion of the Leathersellers, he was an ob­scure but bril­liant stu­dent of 24 from the West In­dies, who would have been un­able to con­tin­ue his stud­ies at Ox­ford with­out our as­sis­tance. He went on to lead his na­tion of T&T to in­de­pen­dence and re­mained its leader for 25 con­sec­u­tive years, un­til his death in of­fice in 1981. His achieve­ments–as an in­tel­lec­tu­al, his­to­ri­an, philoso­pher, politi­cian and in­ter­na­tion­al states­man–were uni­ver­sal­ly recog­nised.

Er­ic Williams on grad­u­at­ing as a doc­tor of phi­los­o­phy at Ox­ford in 1938.

Er­ic Eu­stace Williams was born in Trinidad on Sep­tem­ber 25, 1911, the son of a mi­nor civ­il ser­vant. The el­dest of 12 chil­dren, he showed aca­d­e­m­ic promise ear­ly on at school in Port-of-Spain, win­ning an "is­land schol­ar­ship"–the on­ly one of­fered an­nu­al­ly in his field–which sent him across the At­lantic to study his­to­ry at what is now St Cather­ine's Col­lege in Ox­ford.

Here he ex­celled and grad­u­at­ed with a bril­liant first class ho­n­ours de­gree, but would then have had to re­turn to Trinidad, prob­a­bly to work as a school­mas­ter, had it not been for our grant. This en­abled him to re­search and present his doc­tor­al the­sis in 1938 en­ti­tled, The Eco­nom­ic As­pect of the Abo­li­tion of the West In­di­an Slave Trade and Slav­ery.

This ground-break­ing his­tor­i­cal cri­tique of slav­ery ar­gued that eco­nom­ic mo­ti­va­tion, not al­tru­ism or hu­man­i­tar­i­an ide­al­ism, was the main im­pe­tus for the abo­li­tion of slav­ery. The the­sis was re­vised and pub­lished in 1944 as Cap­i­tal­ism and Slav­ery, ar­guably the 20th cen­tu­ry's most in­flu­en­tial book on the sub­ject. This book re­framed the his­to­ri­og­ra­phy of the British trans-At­lantic slave trade and es­tab­lished the con­tri­bu­tion of Caribbean slav­ery to the de­vel­op­ment of both Britain and Amer­i­ca. It has nev­er been out of print and has been trans­lat­ed in­to nu­mer­ous for­eign lan­guages, in­clud­ing Chi­nese, Japan­ese, Russ­ian and, this year, Turk­ish.

Many bi­ogra­phies have been writ­ten about Er­ic Williams and it is im­pos­si­ble to do him full jus­tice in the space of a short ar­ti­cle. Giv­en our role in his life, we might choose to fo­cus on his many aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess­es, but these were matched by po­lit­i­cal bril­liance, a bril­liance in­ti­mate­ly linked to these aca­d­e­m­ic and lit­er­ary achieve­ments.

In 1939, Williams moved to the Unit­ed States to teach at Howard Uni­ver­si­ty in Wash­ing­ton DC, but he sub­se­quent­ly moved in­to the pub­lic sphere, re­turn­ing to Trinidad in 1948 to work for the An­glo-Amer­i­can Caribbean Com­mis­sion's Caribbean Re­search Coun­cil.

In 1956 he be­came a full-time politi­cian and found­ed T&T's first mod­ern po­lit­i­cal par­ty, the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment. Lat­er the same year, he was elect­ed the coun­try's first chief min­is­ter, then first Pre­mier and, in 1962–when he led his na­tion to in­de­pen­dence from British colo­nial rule–its first Prime Min­is­ter. His ad­min­is­tra­tions wit­nessed times of con­sid­er­able po­lit­i­cal con­flict as the new­ly-in­de­pen­dent coun­try strug­gled to find sta­bil­i­ty and pros­per­i­ty.

With Williams at the na­tion's po­lit­i­cal helm dur­ing such a long and cru­cial pe­ri­od, Trinidad was able to weath­er these storms rel­a­tive­ly suc­cess­ful­ly.

Trinidad's 'fight­er for jus­tice and equal­i­ty' had poor eye­sight and his hear­ing was quite bad­ly im­paired. He gen­er­al­ly wore a hear­ing aid–though could turn this to his ad­van­tage at times. In his au­to­bi­og­ra­phy, In­ward Hunger, he re­counts how "a hear­ing aid is a pow­er­ful weapon against an Op­po­si­tion in Par­lia­ment; one can al­ways turn it off!"

Williams' au­to­bi­og­ra­phy gives many ac­counts of the racial dis­crim­i­na­tion he en­coun­tered in Britain in the 1930s and the USA in the 1940s.

At Ox­ford he felt that his race placed him at an un­fair dis­ad­van­tage when he ap­plied, un­suc­cess­ful­ly, for a fel­low­ship at All Souls Col­lege in 1935. Such things are hard to prove, but the ex­pe­ri­ence un­doubt­ed­ly en­cour­aged his de­ter­mi­na­tion to fight for jus­tice and equal­i­ty. It is to the cred­it of Sir Claud Hol­lis and the Leathersellers that Williams was not forced to leave Ox­ford at this point, but was giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tin­ue his post­grad­u­ate stud­ies and com­plete his doc­tor­al the­sis, a cru­cial stage in his aca­d­e­m­ic and in­tel­lec­tu­al de­vel­op­ment.

Sir Claud Hol­lis

Sir Al­fred Claud (gen­er­al­ly known as Sir Claud) Hol­lis, the Leatherseller who pro­posed Williams as an em­i­nent­ly suit­able can­di­date for a grant, was not on­ly a dis­tin­guished colo­nial gov­er­nor, but al­so a gift­ed lin­guist, an­thro­pol­o­gist, writer and his­to­ri­an. Much of his ca­reer was spent in Africa, but from 1930 to 1936 he was Sir Claud Hol­lis, Gov­er­nor of Trinidad, which is doubt­less where Williams first came to his no­tice.

Hol­lis took a keen in­ter­est in the wel­fare of those he gov­erned. In Africa he cham­pi­oned the rights of na­tive peo­ples against the en­croach­ment of Eu­ro­pean set­tlers, learnt Swahili so well he was a gov­ern­ment ex­am­in­er in the lan­guage at 27, and wrote pi­o­neer­ing books on the Nan­di and Ma­sai peo­ples.

In Trinidad, he coun­tered the ef­fects of the great de­pres­sion through es­tab­lish­ing ma­jor pub­lic wa­ter sup­ply, elec­tric­i­ty and har­bour con­struc­tion schemes. A bar­ris­ter's son from High­gate, his ad­vo­ca­cy of Er­ic Williams is there­fore en­tire­ly con­sis­tent with the rap­port he felt with peo­ple from very dif­fer­ent back­grounds from his own.

Sir Claud served as mas­ter of the Leathersellers for the year 1945-46. He can be cred­it­ed with in­sti­gat­ing two of our com­pa­ny's most un­usu­al so­cial events, a din­ner in 1929 in our fifth Hall, and a lunch in 1960 in our new sixth Hall, at both of which, the same Sul­tan of Zanz­ibar and his en­tourage were guests of ho­n­our.

Hol­lis had been British Res­i­dent Min­is­ter in Zanz­ibar from 1924 to 1930 and de­vel­oped a cor­dial and last­ing friend­ship with the sul­tan and his fam­i­ly, an­oth­er in­di­ca­tion of his nat­ur­al gift for tran­scend­ing racial and cul­tur­al bar­ri­ers.

Sir Claud died in 1961, aged 87, and al­though his on­ly son, Mark, was trag­i­cal­ly killed in ac­tion in Er­itrea in 1941, oth­er mem­bers of the Hol­lis fam­i­ly re­main on the Liv­ery to­day.

Sir Claud Hol­lis de­serves to be re­mem­bered for many rea­sons, but his cham­pi­oning of Er­ic Williams–in whom he clear­ly recog­nised some­one with the po­ten­tial to go far–and sup­port for his ed­u­ca­tion was, per­haps, one of his most in­flu­en­tial and far-reach­ing, if un­fore­seen, lega­cies.

Fa­ther of the Na­tion

Er­ic Williams ful­ly recog­nised the trans­form­ing po­ten­tial of a good ed­u­ca­tion and want­ed this to be avail­able to all. A daz­zling pub­lic speak­er, from 1956 on­wards he gave hun­dreds of open lec­tures to thou­sands of his fel­low na­tion­als, on a wide va­ri­ety of cul­tur­al, po­lit­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal sub­jects, in Wood­ford Square, Port-of-Spain, re­named by him the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wood­ford Square. As he had ben­e­fit­ted from ed­u­ca­tion him­self, so he in turn left a last­ing lega­cy to ed­u­ca­tion in T&T by in­tro­duc­ing leg­is­la­tion stip­u­lat­ing that pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion should not dis­crim­i­nate on the ba­sis of race, sta­tus or lan­guage.

Even to­day, he is wide­ly re­gard­ed as The Fa­ther of the Na­tion of T&T. The cen­te­nary of his birth in 2011 was the oc­ca­sion of con­fer­ences, lec­tures and oth­er cel­e­bra­tions, not on­ly in his home coun­try, but around the world.

Few can, in­deed, pre­dict the full mag­ni­tude of the ben­e­fits that can re­sult from ac­cess to a good ed­u­ca­tion. To ho­n­our Williams, one of the six new Hous­es at Pren­der­gast Vale Col­lege in Lewisham has been named Williams House, af­ter the most fa­mous re­cip­i­ent of a Leathersellers' ed­u­ca­tion­al grant to date.

Cour­tesy The Leathersellers' Com­pa­ny