Opinion
- Editorial
Andy
Johnson:
Why
'Federation' really fell apart
Sir Grantley Adams
"People
want to know why Jamaica run, from the Federation
People
want to know why Jamaica run away, from the Federation..."
In his calypso "Federation" the Mighty
Sparrow laid the blame for the break-up on the shoulders
of the Jamaicans, who had voted in a referendum
earlier that year to stand against the grouping
of ten then British colonies which had come together
in an ill-fated attempt at political union in 1958.
But
a new book by Jamaican historian Colin Palmer, the
latest in the chronicles of the life and times of
Dr Williams, sheds disturbing light on this period
in recent Caribbean history. His research is suggesting
that while the referendum engineered successfully
by Jamaican opposition leader Alexander Bustamante
may have been the catalyst, there was much else
that threatened the existence of the federation.
From one man rat to the next, and from one issue
to the other, the generation of leaders across the
region harboured their own doubts, misgivings and
mistrusts of one another. Such disharmony at the
top had doomed the union from the start, and whereas
in Trinidad and Tobago no one questioned the Williams
arithmetical formula that "one from 10 leaves
nought", this was simply his own fanciful way
of getting out of it.
How
many Barbadians alive today know that Sir Grantley
Adams, their avowed national father-figure, was
characterised as lazy and lethargic, or do the Guyanese
people know that Williams despised both Cheddi Jagan
and Forbes Burnham! To what extent do Trinidadians
and Tobagonians know the level of anxiety expressed
across the rest of the region when it was decided
to site the federal capital in Chaguaramas?
This
location, it turned out, was the third choice by
the British-organised Federal Capital Commission,
behind a location in Barbados and one in Jamaica.
The Commission had been initially troubled by "the
instability of that island's politics and the low
standard accepted in its public life". It found
credible the "widespread reports of corruption
in the public life of Trinidad" that "these
practices appear to be tolerated" and that
such tolerance "would be a disquieting augury
for the future of a capital located there".
Dr Palmer presents these discoveries in "The
Challenge", the second chapter of his book
entitled Eric Williams and the Making of the Modern
Caribbean. It is the chapter which deals with the
enduringly disturbing undercurrents which conspired
to ruin the first direct attempt at decolonialisation
and anti-colonial organisation across the British
West Indies.
Much
of the discontent was inspired by the divide and
rule tactics employed jointly by the British and
the Americans, as revealed in Dr Palmer's research
of the colonial records for the period under review.
But among the documents he uncovered much that remains
difficult to digest with respect to how these leaders
independently dealt with and regarded one another.
All
of the region's first generation of post-colonial
political standard bearers are not just made human,
they are brought low. The book reveals tremendous
private duplicity and disrespect among them, while
at the same time they were giving the impression
of working for unity. Everyone of them had his own
ideas of what constituted leadership or development,
leading one to wonder what really lies behind some
of today's headlines when the current generation
of leaders talks now about some of the same issues.
"Eric
Williams possessed the energy and the impatience
of one who was new to the political fray,"
Dr Palmer writes of the period, towards the end
of the chapter on Federation. His elders-Adams,
Manley and Bustamante-viewed him, however, "as
an iconoclastic upstart who declined to follow their
lead. But Williams also had the distressing tendency
to alienate his colleagues with his sharp tongue,
his difficulty in absorbing criticism or dealing
with opposing points of view, and his marked intellectual
arrogance".
After
the break up of the federation and Williams tried
to engineer another formula for unity with a number
of other islands in the eastern Caribbean, those
leaders distrusted his motives, describing him as
"the threat from the south". Although
he had, in Palmer's view, articulated the need for
a Federation with more passion than any of his contemporaries,
he had been too critical of the slow pace in moving
forward.
In
1960, incensed by some of those attacks, Adams was
to declare that "desire to interfere has now
become greater than his desire to help". He
felt the need to declare also that such personalities
as T Albert Marryshow and Captain AA Cirpriani were
in the forefront of the effort to build up a strong
labour and nationalist movement "when Dr Williams
was still a schoolboy".
Marryshow,
the great Grenadian trade unionist, politician and
journalist, Palmer also reveals, was Williams' godfather.
Adams
had been chosen as the Federal Prime Minister principally
because both Williams and Jamaica's Norman Manley
did not stand for the federal elections in their
respective countries. In Jamaica, Bustamante wondered
how can "this insular Adams, who lacks sufficient
imagination, do any good for the ten states, having
ruled over pauperised Barbados for so long, obviously
without realising the state of poverty there"?
Williams
and Adams were also at loggerheads because Adams
felt in 1958 it was the Federal government's prerogative
to deal with the Americans (a foreign power) over
the issue of reviewing the American lease on Chaguaramas.
Williams had embarked even then on an aggressive
campaign to take back Chaguaramas. He was angered
by what he saw as the federal government's passivity
over the matter and was "deeply offended when
Adams, without consulting him, accepted an Anglo-American
proposal to review the lease agreement in ten years".
But
the British and the Americans also had little respect
for Adams. He had "a somewhat sleepy exterior
and is in fact lazy, though he has an agile mind,
particularly in a political tight-spot" the
Colonial office concluded in 1961, as it prepared
for a meeting with him and British Prime Minister
Harold McMillan. This, despite the conclusion that
he had a reputation for polished urbanity and a
rather old world charm. This report also found that
after he had received red carpet treatment in Canada,
reports had surfaced about his "growing irritability,
swollen-headedness and a readiness to take offence".
Generally, the report concluded his position as
the federal Prime Minister was "not wholly
secure".
While
Bustamante delighted in every opportunity he got
to taunt Adams, the Prime Minister's relationship
with Manley and Williams, one Palmer describes as
"frigid at best". Adams often bristled
at the criticism of his leadership coming from his
colleagues.
The
Jamaican opposition leader, Palmer writes, had played
on significant ambivalence among Jamaicans about
the federation and forced Manley to take positions
to which he was not passionately committed. In one
case Bustamante referred to Williams as "an
intellectual fool" in one exchange of words
on the question.
Backed
into a corner and forced to make extreme demands
for his country's acceptance of its place in the
union, Manley took positions which angered Williams,
who then began plotting his country's withdrawal
if Manley lost the referendum he agreed to hold.
Those differences grew more intense and could not
be resolved when the leaders met at the famous Lancaster
House conference in London in 1961, to formulate
a constitution for the Federation.
A
proposal for freedom of movement across the region
was said to have been a major bugbear. Then, as
now, it held a great terror for residents in some
of the territories, and equally, remains open to
manipulation by opposing politicians. The opposition
in Trinidad and Tobago had used this as one of the
reasons why it opposed the federation, in the same
way it opposes fresh ideas about political union
now.
Prior
to the conference in London, Adams had written to
Manley in 1960 complaining of what he discerned
as a plot among the others to remove him as Prime
Minister. Conspiracy, he said, was not too strong
a term to use. "Manley did little to reassure
him," Palmer writes; and even before this,
Williams and Manley had drawn swords over a decision
by Manley to build an oil refinery in Jamaica, granting
Esso tax incentives and protection against competition.
Williams regarded this move as contrary to Trinidad's
interest, "and it soured his relationship with
his Jamaican counterpart". Then when Adams
did not censure Manley for this decision, "Williams
was furious". He accused the federal government
of deliberately endorsing a policy which it ought
to recognise as leading to the federation's destruction.
Contrary
to what was believed by his political opponents
Williams was fearful even in his staunch advocacy
in favour of the federation about a possible influx
of migrants into Trinidad and the impact this would
have on the social and economic conditions.
At
the same time, however, the leaders of those islands
were terrified of what they termed "Trinidadian
imperialism" and were not likely to give up
their identity for a union with their larger sister
island, Palmer concludes. "There was also the
added complication that Williams would not have
won a popularity contest in any of those territories,
and his relationship with their leaders was consistently
rocky."
Grenadians
also would not be amused by the manner in which
Williams despised Eric Gairy; and while he worked
to find a solution to the problems of race-based
politics in Guyana, Trinidad's neighbour to the
south, Williams also saw nothing to applaud in the
personalities of either Cheddi Jagan or Forbes Burnham.
(To
be continued)
Colin Palmer is Dodge Professor of History at Princeton
University, who says his scholarly interest in Eric
Williams began in 1994, when he was invited by the
University of North Carolina Press to write a new
introduction to Williams' Capitalism and Slavery.
He
delivered this year's eighth annual Eric Williams
Memorial Lecture, at Miami's Florida International
University, on October 6. Eric Williams and the
Making of the Modern Caribbean, his latest book,
is described as "the first scholarly biography
of Williams", looking at his intellectual life
and political views as scholar, politician and anti-colonial
advocate.
Andy
Johnson
writes for the Trinidad Express. Petroleumworld
not necessarily share these views.
Editor's
Note: The preciding article is a two part article
by Trinidad Express, Sunday,
October 22nd 2006.
Petroleumworld reprint this article in the interest
of our readers.
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Petroleumworld
10/22/06
Copyright
©2006 Andy
Johnson.
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