To­mor­row, Au­gust 31, we will cel­e­brate the 63rd an­niver­sary of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s In­de­pen­dence. My fa­ther, the late Bal­go­b­in Ramdeen, was a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment (1961-1966). He of­ten spoke about the pride he felt as he stood among Par­lia­men­tary col­leagues and dig­ni­taries when, at mid­night on Au­gust 30th, the British flag (the Union Jack) was low­ered, and the red, white and black T&T flag was raised for the first time. We at­tained Re­pub­li­can sta­tus on Au­gust 1st, 1976.

I will at­tend the an­nu­al Thanks­giv­ing In­ter­faith Ser­vice at the St Pe­ter’s CE Church, Eaton Square, Lon­don, to­mor­row. The theme of the Ser­vice is: “Striv­ing to­wards ex­cel­lence as we face the fu­ture.”

I have been shar­ing with the young ones in my fam­i­ly, my thoughts on the mean­ing and im­por­tance of In­de­pen­dence. John Adams was right when he said: “Chil­dren should be ed­u­cat­ed and in­struct­ed in the prin­ci­ples of free­dom...Lib­er­ty can­not be pre­served with­out gen­er­al knowl­edge among the peo­ple...Lib­er­ty can no more ex­ist with­out virtue and in­de­pen­dence than the body can live and move with­out a soul.”

Much has been writ­ten about the prin­ci­ples of free­dom e.g. equal­i­ty, eq­ui­ty, the rule of law, per­son­al and fam­i­ly re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, jus­tice, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance, cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion, a free press and oth­er me­dia, free­dom of re­li­gion and be­lief, free­dom of ex­pres­sion and as­sem­bly. The recog­ni­tion and pro­tec­tion of our hu­man rights are en­shrined in both our 1962 and our 1976 Con­sti­tu­tions. Let’s fa­mil­iarise our­selves with these.

We pay trib­ute to those who fought for our free­dom from British rule, in­clud­ing those who at­tend­ed the T&T In­de­pen­dence Con­fer­ence at Marl­bor­ough House, Lon­don, on May 28, 1962, to make a case for our In­de­pen­dence. The Con­fer­ence in Lon­don was at­tend­ed by mem­bers of the British gov­ern­ment and T&T’s 17 rep­re­sen­ta­tives, as out­lined in T&T’s Na­tion­al Archives:

“Dr Er­ic Williams, Sir Learie Con­stan­tine MBE, Mr. Wil­fred Alexan­der, Dr Rudranath Capildeo, Mr Li­onel Seuk­er­an, Mr Ash­ford Sinanan, Mr Taj­mool Ho­sein, Mr Pe­ter Far­quhar, Sir El­lis Clarke CMG., Mr George Richards, Sir Pad­lock Hob­son, Mr J Ro­tas, Mr M Julien, Mr J O’Neil Lewis, Mr SC Ma­haraj, Mr O Math­urin and Mr S Mo­hammed.

“At the open­ing of the In­de­pen­dence Con­fer­ence, a re­vised draft of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s In­de­pen­dence Con­sti­tu­tion was pre­sent­ed by our del­e­ga­tion. The first draft of the Con­sti­tu­tion had been pub­lished by the Gov­ern­ment in Feb­ru­ary 1962 and was lat­er al­tered af­ter re­ceiv­ing feed­back from dif­fer­ent sec­tors of so­ci­ety.

“Al­though there were some is­sues of con­tention among mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go del­e­ga­tion at the In­de­pen­dence Con­fer­ence, they were able to ar­rive at a land­mark agree­ment which paved the way for in­de­pen­dence in Au­gust 1962. The con­fer­ence re­port was sub­mit­ted to the British Par­lia­ment by Her Majesty’s Sec­re­tary of State for the Colonies in June 1962. On June 8th, 1962, the Sec­re­tary of State for the Colonies an­nounced from Lon­don that af­ter re­view­ing the con­fer­ence re­port, it was de­cid­ed that the Colony of Trinidad and To­ba­go would be­come an in­de­pen­dent state on Au­gust 31st, 1962.”

I have been read­ing in UK’s Hansard, the record of The Sec­ond Read­ing of T&T’s In­de­pen­dence Bill on Ju­ly 16, 1962, vol 242 cc463-87. The bill was moved by the Min­is­ter of State for Colo­nial Af­fairs, The Mar­quess of Lans­downe. Lord Wal­ston’s words chal­lenge us in 2025.

In­ter alia, he said: “Any step for­ward to­wards giv­ing for­mer Colonies their in­de­pen­dence must be an oc­ca­sion for re­joic­ing. But it is dif­fi­cult, par­tic­u­lar­ly on this oc­ca­sion, to men­tion noth­ing ex­cept the rosy fu­ture that lies ahead. I do not want to be a pes­simist, and I do not want to cast any gloom over what is un­doubt­ed­ly a great and hap­py event; but Trinidad, like the oth­er new­ly in­de­pen­dent ter­ri­to­ries, has great prob­lems...My Lords, all these so­cial evils, in­clud­ing racial ha­tred, en­vy of those who have and dis­il­lu­sion­ment among those who have not, are the things which make it so hard to build up a re­al­ly sta­ble democ­ra­cy, no mat­ter how ad­mirable the lead­ers of the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion may be.”

What will help us to build a sta­ble democ­ra­cy eq­ui­ty/equal­i­ty/jus­tice/re­spect for hu­man rights? Let’s strive to build a democ­ra­cy that is un­der­pinned by val­ues that re­spect the in­nate dig­ni­ty of each per­son; one that pro­motes au­then­tic, in­te­gral hu­man de­vel­op­ment; that is, the de­vel­op­ment of each per­son, and of every di­men­sion of the per­son.

Let’s work to elim­i­nate pover­ty and so­cial ex­clu­sion, build the com­mon good, and cre­ate con­di­tions that will en­able in­di­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies and or­gan­i­sa­tions to flour­ish.