The Road Travelled

On the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the independence of T&T, with an eye on her father Dr Eric Williams’ legacy, Erica Williams-Connell reflected on the state of the nation at the Independence Gala in Toronto last August. Her remarks, while contextually specific to T&T, are quite relevant to the other members of the former British Caribbean – especially Guyana, which shares Trinidad’s demographic profile.
She began by citing the caution that Dr Williams offered to his country at independence: “a country will be free, a miniature state will be established, but a society and a nation will not have been formed.” Was this not true of us all? With the exception of Guyana, the native peoples had been exterminated and their place taken by peoples dragged from practically all the continents to simply provide labour for the sugar plantations.
No nationalism had been inculcated by the agencies of socialisation into the people for their new countries: all loyalties were to be for “Mother England”. The policy of ‘divide and rule” ensured that cleavages of race, colour, religion, ethnicity and class were exploited and reified. Williams the iconoclastic Oxford historian discerned this handicap very clearly, and as his daughter pointed out, advised: “There can be no Mother India, for those whose ancestors came from India….there can be no Mother Africa, for those of African origin. There can be no Mother England and no dual loyalties.”
But that goal was easier said than achieved. Identification for a new homeland a ‘mother’ will only be achieved if the mother treats all her children equally. Those that feel they are being rejected will end up ostracised from the national ethos. Williams himself had ended the caution above by observing: “Mother cannot discriminate between her children.”
Ms Williams-Connell claimed: “While Eric Williams was alive and arguably at no time since, T&T owed its unrivalled reputation of harmony to the apparent ability of a number of races, colours and creeds to live together in relative tranquillity. Since my father’s demise, however, the ugly spectre of race has consistently raised its head in our polyglot society with existing tensions exacerbated, as political parties often seek to stake out their ethnic turf and to emphasize our differences rather than to celebrate our similarities.”
However, while it is understandable that the daughter of Dr Williams would view societal relations during her father’s regime in rather halcyon terms even she had to speak of the various groups’ “apparent ability” to live in ‘relative tranquillity’. Ms Williams-Connell offered a clue as to why inter-group relations might have been quite nettlesome when she expatiated on Dr Williams’ conception of ‘democracy”. Among all the usual exhortations about rights, and protection etc. the putative “Father of the Nation” declared, “Democracy means the obligation of the minority to recognise the right of the majority.” “The right of the majority to what?” was the question of the minorities.
Now this was, and remains, a very widespread sentiment among the early group of Caribbean leaders and in all of their countries, it led to inevitable stresses and strains. In T&T and Guyana, the stresses and strains were between ethnic groups but in Jamaica and other islands, as MG Smith, Walter Rodney and others demonstrated, the divisions of class and colour were just as salient. Pointing out innocuous innovations such as “Indian National Holidays”, such as those also instituted in Guyana by Forbes Burnham, Ms Williams-Connell seem to be echoing her father’s querulous complaint about Indians, that “hostile and recalcitrant minority”.
She complained: “Now, depending on which political party is in the ascendancy – both major ones identified with one or the other of the leading groups – you will undoubtedly hear the mantra – “is we time now” – a vulgar reference to the notion of “it’s our turn to be on top!”
She elides the omnipresent question as to who set us on that road.