Tony Fras­er

?The French, Amer­i­can and Hait­ian Rev­o­lu­tions are sta­ple el­e­ments of his­to­ry cours­es at sec­ondary and ter­tiary-lev­el ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions; and right­ly so as they mark sig­nif­i­cant epochs in the his­to­ry of mod­ern man.

But what of the 1970 Black Pow­er Rev­o­lu­tion which took place here in T&T and the Carib-bean? Un­for­tu­nate­ly, there is lit­tle on the syl­labi of our own sec­ondary and ter­tiary-lev­el in­sti­tu­tions to put in­to per­spec­tive the cir­cum­stances of 1970. What were the ob­jec­tives of the Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee, the in­sti­tu­tions and in­di­vid­u­als who led the rev­o­lu­tion, and what were the con­se­quences there­after? Yes, 40 years is a short time pe­ri­od in his­tor­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and per­haps 100 years from now 1970 would be stud­ied by aca­d­e­m­ic his­to­ri­ans and re­searchers. But can the so­ci­ety wait for a thor­ough un­der­stand­ing of this im­por­tant pe­ri­od of time giv­en its present seem­ing way­ward­ness, un­con­scious­ness and dis­in­ter­est in self, suf­fer­ing from the same old self-de­pre­ci­at­ing com­plex bred by colo­nial­ism, slav­ery and in­den­ture­ship? There is lit­tle knowl­edge of 1970 by the gen­er­a­tions af­ter the pe­ri­od. An oil boom, a gas boom, easy mon­ey, the pol­i­tics of po­lar­i­sa­tion, ground­less po­lit­i­cal lead­ers in­ter­est­ed on­ly in self and par­ty have con­spired to large­ly elim­i­nate the con­scious­ness that was ini­ti­at­ed by a gen­er­a­tion that found that po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence had left un­touched a de­sire for self-knowl­edge and ac­tu­al­i­sa­tion.

In the 1970 epoch, the youth in the ur­ban towns were read­ing El­dridge Cleaver, Mal­colm X, Franz Fanon and se­ri­ous­ly re­flect­ing on the Lit­tle Red Book. Then there were the "ground­ings" with Wal­ter Rod­ney and the New World Group preach­ing a re-ori­en­ta­tion of West In­di­an so­ci­ety. Sec­tions of to­day's gen­er­a­tion of young men and women are oc­cu­pied with au­to­mat­ic weapons, co­caine, bling and gang war­fare. So too has the vi­o­lence of dub mu­sic with its fo­cus be­neath the waist­line be­come pre­dom­i­nant. To be­gin the un­der­stand­ing of 1970 would be to ap­pre­ci­ate that hav­ing had a na­tion­al gov­ern­ment come in­to of­fice in the 1950s, and hav­ing achieved po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence in the ear­ly 1960s, the econ­o­my re­mained for­eign owned and de­pen­dent. Be­yond the con­tin­u­ing re­liance on sug­ar and oil as the ma­jor ex­ports of the econ­o­my, the lo­cal econ­o­my, the on­shore sec­tor, ac­cord­ing to Lloyd Best, was still the pre­serve of the new plan­ta­tion class. More­over, the colo­nial or­der with all its so­cial priv­i­leges had not changed. As the study on em­ploy­ment prac­tices in the pri­vate sec­tor would show in the wake of 1970, the man­age­r­i­al and pro­fes­sion­al jobs were the pre­serve of those who had been his­tor­i­cal­ly in pow­er since abo­li­tion and the end of in­den­ture­ship. Ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ty was still dis­pensed, in large mea­sure, on the ba­sis of skin colour and eth­nic­i­ty; the so­cial clubs pre­vailed; Shan­ty Town and Wind­sor Park in Cal­i­for­nia housed "the wretched of the earth," and 45-pound chains were the con­tin­u­ing yoke of old frail men and women in the sug­ar fields of Tate and Lyle.

Sus­pi­cion be­tween the two dis­pos­sessed eth­nic groups was be­ing pro­mot­ed in the in­ter­est of par­ty pol­i­tics by po­lit­i­cal lead­ers whose main am­bi­tion was to win of­fice and re­tain it. The es­tab­lished church­es still sought to re­tain colo­nial priv­i­leges, the hi­er­ar­chy solid­ly in place. Trade union­ist Clive Nunez makes the point that gov­ern­ment re­pres­sion of the union voice, much like what hap­pened in the 1930s in oil and sug­ar, forced the move­ment to at­tach it­self to Black Pow­er. In the US, the Civ­il Rights Move­ment had tak­en on the es­tab­lish­ment; to be fol­lowed by the more mil­i­tant Black Pow­er align­ment. That a Trinida­di­an, Stoke­ly Carmichael, was in the front of the protes­ta­tions in­spired and stim­u­lat­ed the pulse in Port-of-Spain. The trig­ger to the demon­stra­tions and protest hap­pened to be the provoca­tive and racist acts at the Sir George Williams Uni­ver­si­ty in Cana­da, but it could have been any one of the hang­overs from colo­nial­ism. Hav­ing re­trieved the pow­er at the point of a gun and with the promised as­sis­tance of the US, the Williams Gov­ern­ment round­ed-up and in­car­cer­at­ed the lead­ers on Nel­son Is­land in a man­ner that had been done in 1937 by the colo­nial gov­ern­ment. As CLR James had said, Carib-bean lead­ers knew that to raise the Amer­i­can red flag by iden­ti­fy­ing "com­mu­nist and sub­ver­sive el­e­ments" was a sure way to re­ceive as­sis­tance from Wash­ing­ton.

But Williams was al­so po­lit­i­cal­ly wise enough to know that he had al­so to at­tempt to fi­nal­ly do some­thing about the old or­der to come to terms with the call of the rev­o­lu­tion. Na­tion­al­i­sa­tion of the en­er­gy sec­tor fol­lowed; the Na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Bank was cre­at­ed and Williams in­flu­enced in­to be­ing the lo­cal­i­sa­tion of parts of the fi­nan­cial sec­tor. Williams in­sti­tut­ed too a study on em­ploy­ment prac­tices in the pri­vate sec­tor against the re­al­i­ty that there con­tin­ued to be dis­crim­i­na­tion there. But those at­tempts at po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion apart, the re­al rev­o­lu­tion was re­flect­ed in the cul­ture. Ca­lyp­son­ian Duke had de­clared that Black is Beau­ti­ful, the Jaycees Car­ni­val Queen show which es­tab­lished beau­ty as be­ing white, af­ter de­clar­ing a brown-skinned queen went out of ex­is­tence. A pletho­ra of ca­lyp­soes around the sub­ject of self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion by blacks were sung. Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans such as Stal­in and Valenti­no took on the es­tab­lish­ment in a man­ner not known be­fore. In the pre­vi­ous era Spar­row, en­rap­tured by Williams and na­tion­al­ism, had sung Leave de Damn Doc­tor. Now Stal­in threat­ened Mr Di­vider that it is "man talk­ing to man" and he, like the so­cial up­per-crust, had to share in the oil bread.

In the decade of the 1970s, ca­lyp­so­ni­ans moved out of the two-ca­lyp­so syn­drome dur­ing the tent sea­son and be­gan per­form­ing in con­certs, re­pro­duc­ing the wealth of ca­lyp­soes over the decades. Seen through a new per­spec­tive, one cre­at­ed by NJAC's Black Tra­di­tions in Art, these cul­tur­al prod­ucts of the pre­vi­ous decades had val­ue. The bards them­selves be­gan chal­leng­ing the "right" of the lo­cal ra­dio sta­tions to drop ca­lyp­so, steel­band and in­dige­nous mu­sic off the play list the day af­ter Car­ni­val end­ed. Prof Gor­don Rohlehr is right, we do not know what came out of 1970. The ob­jec­tive of this col­umn is to stim­u­late the aware­ness of young peo­ple to go af­ter the in­for­ma­tion and bring their own analy­sis to the con­se­quences of 1970.