Dr Glenville Ash­by

That no man knows what to­mor­row will bring is a tru­ism played out day af­ter day. In an un­sea­son­ably cold spring af­ter­noon I am on the phone with Er­i­ca Willams-Con­nell, the daugh­ter of Dr Er­ic Williams, the first Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go al­so re­ferred to as the Fa­ther of the Na­tion. We are dis­cussing the Er­ic Williams Memo­r­i­al Col­lec­tion Re­search Li­brary, Archives and Mu­se­um (EWMC) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and re­al­ly, the lega­cy of her fa­ther. I am lis­ten­ing and am moved by her pas­sion and com­mit­ment to en­sur­ing that the na­tion to which her fa­ther ded­i­cat­ed his life, will ho­n­our the Cen­te­nary of his birth in a man­ner be­fit­ting a po­lit­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal vi­sion­ary. As a stu­dent of his­to­ry and in­ter­na­tion­al af­fairs, it is an ex­change I am em­brac­ing. I am not an un­bri­dled de­fend­er of all of Dr Williams' poli­cies and ideas, but the man con­tin­ues to in­trigue me. And the ques­tions re­mains: How should we as a na­tion cel­e­brate Dr Williams' Cen­ten­ni­al and tow­er­ing lega­cy?

De­cid­ing on such a mat­ter of na­tion­al im­por­tance should not be mired in po­lit­i­cal squab­bles, racial prej­u­dices and pet­ty jeal­ousy among acad­e­mia. The cri­te­ri­on for great­ness is not per­fec­tion. Dr Williams' worth must be judged with­in the con­text of his po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship be­tween 1956-1981. His scholas­tic and po­lit­i­cal ac­com­plish­ments are un­de­ni­able and well doc­u­ment­ed; and his short­com­ings and even mys­tique will al­ways be fod­der for live­ly de­bates. His great­ness, though, is mea­sur­able by the im­por­tance and rel­e­vance of his ideas in to­day's con­text. So of­ten are the ghosts of Lin­coln, Wash­ing­ton, Rea­gan, Bo­li­var and oth­ers in­voked by po­lit­i­cal pun­dits on ei­ther side of the po­lit­i­cal aisle, es­pe­cial­ly when crises emerge that re­quire an ex­i­gent re­sponse. As fig­ures tran­scend­ing pol­i­tics, they are revered. Ronald Rea­gan, a stal­wart cred­it­ed with star­ing down the USSR dur­ing the Cold War was cel­e­brat­ed by all Amer­i­cans-Re­pub­li­cans and De­moc­rats alike-on the Cen­te­nary of his birth last month. In fact, it was a De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pres­i­dent Oba­ma who signed in­to law the Bill cre­at­ing the bi­par­ti­san Cen­ten­ni­al Com­mis­sion to ho­n­our Rea­gan, a Re­pub­li­can pres­i­dent.

In­deed, for every hero there are naysay­ers. But on this oc­ca­sion in Amer­i­can his­to­ry there wasn't any room for po­lit­i­cal nit-pick­ing. My ex­change with Mrs Williams-Con­nell ends and I re­vis­it some doc­u­ments in the Er­ic Williams Memo­r­i­al Col­lec­tion, again. It is tes­ta­ment to a larg­er-than-life fig­ure who tran­scend­ed lo­cal and re­gion­al pol­i­tics. In an era where all pol­i­tics is po­ten­tial­ly glob­al in scope and where the past, present and fu­ture are per­fect­ly in­te­grat­ed, Dr Williams' bril­liant the­ses on colo­nial­ism, im­pe­ri­al­ism, na­tion build­ing, con­flict res­o­lu­tion and geopol­i­tics are per­ti­nent now more than ever. Yes, in a world con­vuls­ing with re­li­gious, eth­nic and trib­al con­flicts, what would Dr Williams say? And in a world where re­gion­al blocs are jock­ey­ing for po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic lever­age, how would he ad­vise his Caribbean coun­ter­parts? In­deed, in­ter­est­ing sce­nar­ios. Dr Williams' glob­al reach seems un­der-ap­pre­ci­at­ed in his own coun­try. He was ap­proached as a suc­ces­sor to UN Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al U Thant in 1971; played a piv­otal role in the in­de­pen­dence of Be­lize and me­di­at­ed the Venezuela-Guyana bor­der dis­pute.

And there is more. He was one of on­ly 73 world lead­ers asked to write mes­sages to be placed on the moon by the Apol­lo 11 as­tro­nauts. Fur­ther, he was em­braced as a peer by Nehru, Nass­er, Churchill, Ben Gu­ri­on, Ford, John­son and oth­er glob­al ti­tans. For­mer US sec­re­tary of State, Col­in Pow­ell states, "No one was a greater fight­er for jus­tice and equal­i­ty." The Er­ic Williams Memo­r­i­al Col­lec­tion cel­e­brates its 13th an­niver­sary this month. It is cur­rent­ly housed in two small rooms at UWI with a sin­gle cus­to­di­an. De­spite over­whelm­ing con­straints and among oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties, it con­tin­ues to fa­cil­i­tate sym­posia, book pub­li­ca­tions, con­fer­ences, re­gion­al es­say com­pe­ti­tions, an oral his­to­ry project, two an­ti-teen preg­nan­cy and geno­cide/holo­caust pi­lot projects in sec­ondary schools, and plans to col­lab­o­rate with Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty to cre­ate a schol­ar­ship in Dr Williams' name. Does Dr Er­ic Williams' work de­serve more? Sure it does. Wouldn't the un­oc­cu­pied Li­brary on Knox Street, op­po­site Wood­ford Square (where he sound­ed his first po­lit­i­cal salvos) be a more fit­ting home? The point is, there is no rea­son why the EWMC shouldn't be tai­lored along the lines of US pres­i­den­tial li­braries, hous­ing a state-of-the-art con­ser­va­tion lab­o­ra­to­ry for stu­dent in­terns; digi­ti­sa­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ty; au­dio vi­su­al, pho­to­graph­ic and news­pa­per archives; a mu­se­um; a re­search de­part­ment and a schol­ars-in-res­i­dence pro­gramme. It is an un­der­tak­ing well worth con­sid­er­ing by the Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.