Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany

The Guardian ed­i­to­r­i­al on May 5th, 2009 said: “Mau­rice Bish­op be­came him­self the vic­tim of the re­pres­sive sys­tem he had run: his col­leagues put him un­der house ar­rest. A crowd of his sup­port­ers even­tu­al­ly freed the em­bat­tled prime min­is­ter, and marched with him to the hill­top fort, where his ri­vals were en­trenched. Hell lit­er­al­ly broke loose. The Peo­ple’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Army turned its guns on the peo­ple, and ri­val rev­o­lu­tion­ary lead­ers seized and ex­e­cut­ed Bish­op and his clos­est al­lies. As Grena­da plunged in­to ter­ror and ru­in, US and Caribbean (but not T&T) troops in­vad­ed. In short or­der, every of­fi­cial, phys­i­cal, and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture stand­ing in the name of rev­o­lu­tion was dis­man­tled. The killers of Bish­op were ar­rest­ed, tried and even­tu­al­ly con­demned. A Caribbean ex­per­i­ment in rev­o­lu­tion failed spec­tac­u­lar­ly. The ex­pe­ri­ence, how­ev­er, con­firmed the ne­ces­si­ty, re­gard­less of pre­vail­ing po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tions, of pre­serv­ing and ex­tend­ing rights and free­doms.”

The re­jec­tion of Cuban in­flu­ence in Grena­da split Cari­com in 1983 be­tween the so­cial­ist sym­pa­this­ers (Burn­ham, Cham­bers, et al.) and the cap­i­tal­ist sup­port­ers (Adams, Sea­ga and Charles).

Dur­ing his po­lit­i­cal life, Dr Er­ic Williams was nev­er a so­cial­ist sym­pa­this­er. He dis­missed the Non-Aligned Move­ment and did not at­tend its 1973 con­fer­ence. In his res­ig­na­tion speech to the PNM’s 15th An­nu­al Con­ven­tion on Sep­tem­ber 28th, 1973, he said: “I have nev­er at­tend­ed any of the non-aligned con­fer­ences. On this oc­ca­sion Pres­i­dent Boume­di­enne of Al­ge­ria sent a spe­cial emis­sary to me invit­ing me to at­tend. I in­ti­mat­ed to the emis­sary that, if I did at­tend, I would be forced to raise a par­tic­u­lar is­sue on which I felt most strong­ly, and what I would have to say on the sub­ject would break up the Con­fer­ence. I told him what I would say. He was most un­hap­py, and in­di­cat­ed he would re­port it to Pres­i­dent Boume­di­enne, to whom I mere­ly wrote sub­se­quent­ly ex­cus­ing my ab­sence on the ground of heavy do­mes­tic com­mit­ments.” (PNM 15th An­nu­al Con­ven­tion, Ad­dress by the Po­lit­i­cal Leader, p. 33).

Williams re­fused to ac­com­pa­ny Fi­del Cas­tro, Michael Man­ley and Forbes Burn­ham, who all came to Trinidad, to trav­el to this con­fer­ence on Sep­tem­ber 5th, hop­ing Williams would have joined them. He did not. In his 1973 res­ig­na­tion speech, he said:

“I then heard for the first time of the arrange­ments for the Caribbean Prime Min­is­ters to ren­dezvous at Pi­ar­co and trav­el to Al­giers in the large Russ­ian jet. The spe­cial emis­sary ex­pressed sur­prise that we had not heard of ei­ther his vis­it or the trav­el plans; he in­di­cat­ed that an­oth­er Gov­ern­ment was sup­posed to ad­vise us on this. By the time all this emerged, our del­e­ga­tion to Al­giers had been an­nounced; nei­ther the Prime Min­is­ter nor any Min­is­ter would be go­ing.” (p. 28).

Two years lat­er, Williams re­fused Cu­ba’s re­quest to land air­craft at Pi­ar­co for re­fu­elling in send­ing troops to fight in the An­golan civ­il war. He in­ter­rupt­ed the 1975 bud­get de­bate to make the fol­low­ing state­ment:

“Mr Speak­er, I am most grate­ful to you for the op­por­tu­ni­ty you have now giv­en me here to make a state­ment of ur­gent pub­lic im­por­tance on be­half of the Cab­i­net, which has just held pri­vate con­sul­ta­tions among mem­bers present and has had tele­phone con­fir­ma­tion from the mem­bers who, for one rea­son or an­oth­er, are not here to­day. The state­ment is as fol­lows. A re­quest has been made by the Cuban Gov­ern­ment through its civ­il avi­a­tion au­thor­i­ties to the Di­rec­tor of Civ­il Avi­a­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go seek­ing per­mis­sion to land Cuban Army planes at Pi­ar­co for re­fu­elling. These planes will be trans­port­ing Cuban troops to An­go­la. Cab­i­net has re­fused the re­quest of the Cuban Gov­ern­ment and has made it clear that Trinidad and To­ba­go will not, un­der any cir­cum­stances, ei­ther in­ter­vene in An­go­la’s af­fairs or con­tribute, how­ev­er in­di­rect­ly, to the in­ter­ven­tion of any oth­er coun­try. The Cab­i­net’s de­ci­sion has been passed to the Di­rec­tor of Civ­il Avi­a­tion for trans­mis­sion to the Cuban Gov­ern­ment.” (Hansard, House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, 18th De­cem­ber, 1975, pp. 295–296).

Williams was de­ter­mined to block the Cuban gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts in the An­golan civ­il war. No­tably, his ra­tio­nale for open­ing diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions with Cu­ba in 1972 was couched in the fol­low­ing way in his res­ig­na­tion speech:

“Some have op­posed our new re­la­tions on the ground that Cu­ba is a Com­mu­nist coun­try. But if that didn’t pre­vent Pres­i­dent Nixon from ini­ti­at­ing new arrange­ments with Com­mu­nist Chi­na, why should it pre­vent us from bring­ing Cu­ba in­to a re­gion­al trade arrange­ment?” (p.27).

Williams on­ly recog­nised Cu­ba on tit-for-tat terms by us­ing the USA as the barom­e­ter. The PNM out­look has now be­come left-wing when com­pared to its founder. Last Wednes­day’s UN vote by T&T re­sem­bled Williams’ blast from the past by recog­nis­ing Cu­ba diplo­mat­i­cal­ly, while re­ject­ing their ide­ol­o­gy.

Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI. He was se­lect­ed by the THA to guide the dis­cus­sions on To­ba­go au­ton­o­my.