Opinion
- Editorial
Andy
Johnson:
In
search of the real Eric Williams
Andy
Johnson concludes his report on the latest biography
of the "father of the nation"
ERIC
Williams was "easily the most academically
distinguished and controversial politician of his
day in the Anglophone Caribbean", Colin Palmer
writes. But except for his devoted supporters in
Trinidad and Tobago, of which, he said, there were
many, Palmer concludes that Williams "inspired
a profound respect elsewhere in the Caribbean but
not a deep affection."
He
manifested at times the charismatic appeal of Alexander
Bustamante in Jamaica and Cheddi Jagan of (then)
British Guiana, but he disdained the "empty
flamboyance" of Grenada's Chief Minister Eric
Gairy. He also lacked the quiet and more controlled
persona of the equally brilliant Norman Manley of
Jamaica, and he had little in common with the "seemingly
passive, indecisive and politically accommodating
Grantley Adams of Barbados."
These
are among the most definitive of the personal assessments
made by Palmer, the Jamaican professor of history,
author of Eric Williams and the Making of the Modern
Caribbean, the latest biography to be published
on the late former Prime Minister of Trinidad and
Tobago. Williams died in office in 1981, after 25
unbroken years at the helm of government in this
country.
In
a yet to be published other biography, political
scientist Professor Selwyn Ryan is alleging that
Williams may have suffered from bipolar disorder,
a mental condition which explained what is described
as his severe mood swings, and the erratic behaviour
he displayed in the treatment of many of those closest
to him over these years.
Admirers
have challenged Ryan's claims.But whereas Palmer
offers no such psychological or psychiatric profiling,
his portrayal of the Williams personality from personal
insights as well as from the correspondence he uncovers
in the colonial records provide unflattering glimpses.
Williams
is revealed to be duplicitous, as in his promoting
proportional representation as a solution for Guyana's
racially charged politics, but ruling out its relevance
to Trinidad and Tobago. His strident anti-colonial
and anti-imperialist persona is contrasted with
his determination not to hesitate in seeking help
from the Americans, if there was "army trouble"
in Trinidad. This consideration is revealed in correspondence
between Norman Costar, the then resident British
High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago and Edwin
L. Sykes, at the Commonwealth Relations Office in
London in 1964, nearing the end of the negotiations
for this country's full reacquisition of the US-
held Chaguaramas naval base.
Costar
had told Sykes he doubted whether Williams would
want to see the naval base moved entirely from Chaguaramas,
regarding it then as "a source of stability
for the country." Alongside his other image
as a firm believer in democracy, an informed and
involved population, Williams is further revealed
in more of Costar's correspondence to have had "private
leanings towards a presidential system and a one-party
state."
"He
told me that it was his deliberate policy not to
waste his time attending meetings of the House of
Representatives, to answer futile questions or attend
stupid debates." Costar was revealed to have
described Williams on another occasion as "not
by normal standards a rational man," with Palmer
concluding that the British diplomat was a confirmed
Williams critic, but "at times an astute observers."
The
first British High Commissioner to Trinidad and
Tobago after independence in 1962, Costar emerged,
in Palmer's view as the diplomat who went furthest
in seeking to understand the personality and the
psychology of Eric Williams. In a long memo to the
Colonial Office in 1963, he described the Prime
Minister as possessing two faces.
One,
he said, was external in which he "often appears
as the far-sighted and patient, if somewhat schoolmasterly,
statesman with solutions for most of the problems
of the Caribbean..and has words of wisdom for the
smaller and less developed countries." In the
other face, Costar portrayed Williams looking inward,
as "the bad tempered bottleneck through which
all the administration of Trinidad and Tobago has
to pass. He is also for good measure incalculable
and inaccessible, and unwilling even to listen to
arguments with which he is not disposed in advance
to agree."
Always
advancing his own ideas for a Pan Caribbean family
of nations and working unceasingly to bring this
about, Williams nevertheless was an anti-communist
who deeply suspected the motives of Cuba's Fidel
Castro and personally disliked Cheddi Jagan and
Forbes Burnham, the two contestants for power in
Guyana.
Mere
hours after Trinidad and Tobago became independent
on August 31, 1962, Williams is revealed to have
declared his intention to devote his attention to
the problems in Guyana where ,he said, "both
Africans and Indians are acting foolishly".
He was to complicate matters along the way, after
getting involved in March 1963, declaring one month
later that they were "not ready for independence".
Not long after this he referred to Jagan as "a
frightful, frightful man," speaking about him
in what the Commonwealth office recorded as "a
very disparaging way".
Burnham,
on the other hand, was equally disrespectful and
mistrustful of Williams and his motives, accusing
him of only wanting to "pontificate" on
the Guyana question. His vacillation, ambivalence
and unpredictability were intensified in the eyes
of the British diplomats with whom he had been dealing
on these issues during the period. At the height
of his campaign for unitary statehood with Grenada
in 1964, for example, Williams was to declare that
he was not enthusiastic about the project, but that
it was politically advantageous for him to pursue
it. Whereas British officials considered Herbert
Blaize weak, ineffective and indecisive, gullible
and compromising as a leader, Williams thought Eric
Gairy, the chief minister, was someone who "should
be in gaol."
But
contrary to the allegations and the accusations
he faced from the opposition at home, and which
continues to be part of the litany of criticisms
against his motives, Williams harboured real fears
over the possible influx of Grenadian nationals
into Trinidad and Tobago. Records for this period
reveal that more than twice the number of people
from Grenada and St Vincent in particular came to
this country as those who went to the UK.
The
population of Grenada in 1962 was 87,000. At that
time there were more than 40,000 Grenadians living
and working in Trinidad. Between 1958 and 1960,
6,046 Grenadians came to Trinidad while 3,083 went
to England. Over the same period the figures for
Vincentians who made the same journeys were 4,106
and 1,452 respectively.
Williams
estimated that overall more than 7,500 other West
Indians came to Trinidad and Tobago annually during
this period. If that trend continued, he feared,
it would exacerbate population pressures and further
inflate the cost of providing jobs for them. In
such a context, the idea of freedom of movement
was a nightmare for him. It was one of the things
which led to a breakdown in the relationship between
himself and Jamaican premier Norman Manley.
From
the disastrous Lancaster House conference in 1961,
the "two old friends" left without saying
good-bye to each other and their wounds "bled
for years", Palmer declares.
With
the exception of Barbados, he had also told Costar
in 1963, the other islands did not merit independence
and that the British government should not feel
pressured into granting this.
The
author was to declare in his own assessment of the
Williams personality that he was "ostensibly
not given to humility", that he was not born
to play a secondary role to anyone. He quoted Costar
to the effect that Williams was not given to tolerance
"despite the lip service he paid to it,"
and that he was a man who "likes to be on top",
an ambition that undermined his
effectiveness,
especially in his dealings with other Caribbean
leaders.
In
the end, however, Palmer said of Williams that he
was "unquestionably more effective in articulating
a larger vision than in realising its actualisation
in a Caribbean-wide context. Personal limitations
aside, he was the greatest leader his people produced
in the 20th century. What Palmer called his domination
of the political arena, though at times halting
and unsteady, was no historical accident, he said.
He
had earlier referred to the period of social discontent
in Trinidad and Tobago which culminated in the Black
Power revolt in 1970, saying in essence it was a
severe psychological blow to Williams, of inestimable
proportions.
In
the ferment at the time, leading to the declaration
of a state of emergency, the arrest and detention
of scores of activists, Palmer recalls Geddes Granger
(now Makaandal Daaga) a leader of the National Joint
Action Committee which spearheaded those protests.
He had referred to Williams in one speech as "that
bitch," saying that the country was being run
by "a black puppet in office presiding over
the white exploitation of the island."
Such
a pejorative remark Palmer concluded, must have
been a bitter pill for Williams to swallow. "After
all, he was largely responsible for the high degree
of political consciousness in Trinidad and Tobago,
and those who denounced him and sought his removal
were his progeny."
It
was a case, he said, of children repudiating their
intellectual father, a case of attempted patricide,
concluding, however, that "the measure of a
political leader should not be his or her personal
idiosyncrasies." Rather, it should be based
on "the capacity to imagine a different and
better future and the possession of the will to
challenge and lead them to their possibilities.
Seen in this light Eric Williams' place in the history
of the modern Caribbean is secure."
Andy
Johnson
writes for the Trinidad Express. Petroleumworld
not necessarily share these views.
Editor's
Note: The preciding article is a two part article
publish by Trinidad Express,
Sunday, October 29nd 2006 (The
first installment of this two-part account appeared
last Sunday, October 22- Why
'Federation' really fell apart). Petroleumworld
reprint this article in the interest of our readers.
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Petroleumworld
10/29/06
Copyright
©2006 Andy
Johnson.
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