Tony Fras­er

Mervyn Critchlow was ini­ti­at­ed in­to a ca­reer in news re­port­ing in the 1960s and 1970s, a pe­ri­od of in­tense in­dus­tri­al and con­tentious trade union ac­tiv­i­ty, po­lit­i­cal ac­tivism and an­gry calls for “Black Pow­er”.

As a counter to the spread­ing and in­creas­ing­ly ag­gra­vat­ed calls for change, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams said or­di­nar­i­ly he would have no prob­lems with the “Black Pow­er move­ment in its con­struc­tive as­pect.” He, how­ev­er, warned the young “ide­al­ists” about in­fil­tra­tion by “com­mu­nist” trade union lead­ers.

Mervyn could hard­ly have found a more dy­nam­ic, in­ter­est­ing and po­ten­tial­ly ex­plo­sive news en­vi­ron­ment in which to be­gin his ca­reer, with a wealth of sto­ries to pur­sue.

As if not suf­fi­cient­ly blessed by the times, young Critchlow had as his se­niors and teach­ers a most ex­act­ing and ex­pe­ri­enced group of ed­i­tors, in­clud­ing Owen Bap­tiste, “who in­sist­ed that I did not re­port what was ini­tial­ly pre­sent­ed, but I need­ed to in­ves­ti­gate fur­ther.”

In Patrick Chookolin­go, Raoul Pan­tin, David Ren­wick, George John and John Babb, Mervyn could not have asked for a bet­ter learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment. How­ev­er, you had to be am­bi­tious and res­olute to ab­sorb the teach­ings from that group.

“Be­ing a news­pa­per re­porter from my teens and tu­tored by some of the best in the me­dia and in ed­u­ca­tion, I learned to write well, fast and with clar­i­ty,” Mervyn states in his au­to­bi­og­ra­phy, A Jour­ney Through Par­al­lels.

His dai­ly news­pa­per beat “was a crash course in man­ag­ing dai­ly dead­lines and the vi­cis­si­tudes of life. This helped me think an­a­lyt­i­cal­ly about how sto­ries and nar­ra­tives should be or­gan­ised.”

His learn­ing is re­flect­ed in the text of the book: clear and eas­i­ly read, notwith­stand­ing the com­plex sit­u­a­tions and en­coun­ters it de­scribes.

In ad­di­tion, re­gion­al­ism was in one of its most pro­duc­tive pe­ri­ods, with Carif­ta (the Caribbean Free Trade As­so­ci­a­tion) be­ing up­grad­ed in­to the more sub­stan­tial Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com).

Mervyn al­so had an ex­pe­ri­ence of the in­ter­na­tion­al are­na when US Am­bas­sador to the Unit­ed Na­tions An­drew Young, the first Black man to hold the post, passed through Trinidad fol­low­ing a vis­it to South Africa. Young had pre­dict­ed the ul­ti­mate demise of the apartheid regime.

Robert Mc­Na­ma­ra, the US Sec­re­tary of De­fense dur­ing the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis in­volv­ing the Unit­ed States and the So­vi­et Union, al­so gave Mervyn a feel of in­ter­na­tion­al af­fairs.

Apart from those ex­cit­ing ex­pe­ri­ences, “In 1971, frus­trat­ed by the fick­le tenure of jour­nal­ism in pri­vate­ly-owned me­dia, I suc­ceed­ed in gain­ing a po­si­tion as a press of­fi­cer in the Pub­lic Re­la­tions Di­vi­sion of the Prime Min­is­ter’s Of­fice. My ap­point­ment was not po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed but based on the nor­mal re­cruit­ment cri­te­ria of the Pub­lic Ser­vice,” Mervyn writes, ex­plain­ing his de­par­ture from the pulse-rais­ing tin­gle of be­ing on the “beat” for the Gov­ern­ment In­for­ma­tion Ser­vice.

His ac­count of that ex­pe­ri­ence is in­ter­est­ing, as his job, along with that of George John and se­nior broad­cast of­fi­cer Leslie Fitz­patrick, re­quired them to un­rav­el and make un­der­stand­able in­for­ma­tion com­ing from min­is­ters and their min­istries.

One gold­en mo­ment for him came when he took notes from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams. As de­scribed, that en­hanced his sta­tus and must have been a bit in­tim­i­dat­ing.

Mervyn was awak­ened to broad­er pos­si­bil­i­ties as a jour­nal­ist and com­mu­ni­ca­tor, en­gag­ing be­yond find­ing the dai­ly sto­ry by deep­en­ing his un­der­stand­ing of the lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment through aca­d­e­m­ic train­ing in jour­nal­ism, in­ter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics and eco­nom­ic re­la­tions.

The Caribbean In­sti­tute of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Mona, Ja­maica, train­ing at a Ger­man in­sti­tute and a full de­gree pro­gramme in the Unit­ed States at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty in Wash­ing­ton en­hanced his growth and de­vel­op­ment.

At the lat­ter in­sti­tu­tion, Critchlow had to come to terms with what he per­ceived as the Amer­i­can cul­ture of su­pe­ri­or­i­ty.

“I ob­served what I would char­ac­terise as the emo­tion­al re­sponse to for­eign stu­dents … At the suc­cess­ful end of my un­der­grad­u­ate ex­pe­ri­ence, I found my­self over­whelmed and at times be­mused by the vi­cis­si­tudes of Amer­i­can lifestyles, the in­tel­lec­tu­al and method­olog­i­cal pre­dis­po­si­tions and the con­cept of the role of ‘for­eign’ stu­dents, es­sen­tial­ly ‘black’ stu­dents.”

The aca­d­e­m­ic and so­ci­etal ex­pe­ri­ence is re­flect­ed in Critchlow’s in­tel­lec­tu­al growth and the broad­ened frame of ref­er­ence ev­i­dent in sev­er­al an­a­lyt­i­cal es­says writ­ten dur­ing his uni­ver­si­ty years in the US and in­clud­ed in the book.

These in­clude Slav­ery and Some Myths in Amer­i­can In­sti­tu­tion­al Life, From Colo­nial­ist Press to Im­pe­ri­al­ist Me­dia, Mass Me­dia and De­vel­op­ment in the Com­mon­wealth Caribbean – The Case of Ja­maica and Trinidad-To­ba­go, De­vel­op­ment and De­pen­dence in the Caribbean, Mar­ket­ing, Pub­lic Re­la­tions and the New Chal­lenges, Ar­rival to Eman­ci­pa­tion Days and the Sub­tle At­tempt to Rewrite Our His­to­ry, In­di­an Ar­rival Day – May 30 and Chris­tian­i­ty Ver­sus Athe­ism, The Fool Hath Said in His Heart There Is No God.

“A very thought­ful treat­ment of a dif­fi­cult top­ic. You ar­gue your point with an im­pres­sive ar­ray of sources,” was the re­sponse of one of his pro­fes­sors to an es­say ad­dress­ing the “de­hu­man­is­ing as­pect of slav­ery…”

On his re­turn to Trinidad, Mervyn gives a deep in­sight in­to his sub­stan­tial ca­reer as an in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer in a range of po­si­tions.

These in­clud­ed work in the en­er­gy in­dus­try, a stint at the In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, es­tab­lished to ex­pand the base of eco­nom­ic pro­duc­tion, and work at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion with Min­is­ter Hazel Man­ning.

He al­so de­vel­oped a pro­gramme at the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion aimed at cul­ti­vat­ing hon­esty and fair deal­ing as prin­ci­ples for young peo­ple to in­cul­cate in school.

Mervyn’s book takes an­oth­er un­usu­al turn, fo­cus­ing on hu­man life away from the bright lights of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, in­clud­ing his ex­pe­ri­ence play­ing the stand-up bass and pro­duc­ing green veg­eta­bles through hy­dro­pon­ic farm­ing.

Most dra­mat­i­cal­ly, and a long dis­tance from track­ing news sto­ries and dis­pens­ing in­for­ma­tion for pub­lic con­sump­tion, Mervyn opens vis­tas in­to his life away from news gath­er­ing and re­port­ing: his fam­i­ly life with a beau­ti­ful wife, chil­dren and an ex­pand­ed fam­i­ly with roots in the deep south of Trinidad.

He al­so gives a per­son­al in­sight in­to his church con­nec­tions and his af­fil­i­a­tion with the Ma­son­ic fra­ter­ni­ty.

Critchlow’s book con­veys some­thing of the hu­man­i­ty of a man whose ca­reer might oth­er­wise sug­gest that chas­ing news sto­ries and com­mu­ni­cat­ing in­for­ma­tion was all that life was about. There is much in his jour­ney from which those of us in the pro­fes­sion can learn.

Al­to­geth­er, A Jour­ney Through Par­al­lels is a wor­thy read.

The book has not yet hit the shelves, but read­ers can call Mervyn at 708-0245 to get a copy.