Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

It's been in­ter­est­ing how quick­ly the pub­lic at large has seen through the PSC's treat­ment of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er. That au­gust per­son­age is be­ing giv­en the bum's rush for rea­sons which I could spec­u­late about here, but which would be tak­en out by my ed­i­tor. (Li­bel, you know.)

Why the rush to run the sher­iff out of town? Clear­ly it's not com­pe­tence-giv­en his pre­de­ces­sors' lega­cy, he's do­ing OK. And it's not that "we" have any great dis­like of Cau­casians or Cana­di­ans. Calder Hart, to whom we were so gen­er­ous, is from Cana­da, and John­ny O'Hal­lo­ran, who took our mil­lions with him to die there, have achieved near folk-hero sta­tus in lo­cal lore. And there's our his­to­ry of trip­ping over our­selves to be ac­com­mo­dat­ing to "for­eign vis­i­tors"-usu­al­ly as a pre­lude to our mad rush to em­i­grate to their coun­tries.

So what's dif­fer­ent about Dwayne Gibbs, com­pared to the for­eign vis­i­tors "we" seem to pre­fer? From the ev­i­dence, we seem to like peo­ple who would be men's room at­ten­dants in their home coun­tries to come here so we could give them jobs as neu­ro­sur­geons, pub­lish­ers, in ad­ver­tis­ing, and as "con­sul­tants" in every field from acad­e­mia to con­struc­tion.

Many Trinida­di­an writ­ers and so­cial crit­ics have no­ticed this. From Jean Bap­tiste Philippe in the 1820s (in Free Mu­lat­to), to Al­bert Gomes and the Bea­con posse (1930s in the Bea­con), to Edgar Mit­tel­holz­er (1940s in A Morn­ing at the Of­fice), to Wal­cott (1970s in Pan­tomime), and Naipaul (1960s in The Mid­dle Pas­sage), the phe­nom­e­non has been well-doc­u­ment­ed. Mit­tel­holz­er's British over­seer, Sid­ney Whit­mer, who ac­tu­al­ly has a con­science, ful­mi­nates about louts from Eng­land who "would be sniffed at by a Hox­ton char­woman" be­ing giv­en life­time mem­ber­ship in the Coun­try Club, and jobs above lo­cals.

But while Trinidad has at­tract­ed many un­de­sir­ables from the metro­pole, this is not to gen­er­alise about the na­ture of white or for­eign folk, nor is it to in­sin­u­ate that "tha' is how wite peo­ple is." There have been many wor­thy met­ro­pol­i­tan vis­i­tors who have met less than hap­py fates in sweet Trinidad. This is a set of sto­ries which is not so well known, and Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs should pay at­ten­tion, since they con­cern him.

A good ex­am­ple was Jus­tice John Gor­rie, the Chief Jus­tice of Trinidad late in the 19th cen­tu­ry. Gor­rie had some ex­treme­ly odd no­tions about jus­tice. He felt that poor peo­ple were en­ti­tled to jus­tice as much as the rich. In one fa­mous case in­volv­ing an obeah man, Nah­nee, in 1886, Gor­rie over­turned a con­vic­tion from the low­er court-ap­par­ent­ly the po­lice had not been thor­ough in col­lect­ing ev­i­dence, and re­sort­ed to the old "set up" strat­e­gy.

In an­oth­er rul­ing in 1888, Gor­rie ef­fec­tive­ly de­crim­i­nalised the whe whe, which was moaned at by the re­spectable class­es, since he had com­pared it to the games played by them. And per­haps his great­est sin was his ju­di­cial habit of as­sum­ing In­di­an labour­ers were not con­gen­i­tal liars-an as­sump­tion wide­ly held at the time (and still held by many to­day).

Gor­rie's cu­ri­ous no­tions of jus­tice did not find favour with the "up­per class­es" and he was soon dis­pensed with. (Brid­get Br­ere­ton's fine bi­og­ra­phy, Law, Jus­tice and Em­pire, tells the full sto­ry.) A sec­ond ex­am­ple in­volves a duo: Gov­er­nor Murchi­son Fletch­er and his Colo­nial Sec­re­tary, Howard Nankiv­ell. De­spite the pop­u­lar be­lief that every colo­nial of­fi­cial was evil (pro­mot­ed by cor­beaus and cretins pos­ing as his­to­ri­ans and "cul­tur­al ac­tivists"), Fletch­er and Nankiv­ell, who served dur­ing the Labour Ri­ots, were ac­tu­al­ly sym­pa­thet­ic to the labour­ers.

Fletch­er sug­gest­ed to the colo­nial of­fice in Lon­don that im­prove­ments in con­di­tions of Trinida­di­an labour were nec­es­sary and just. Both had their ca­reers ru­ined by lo­cal busi­ness in­ter­ests and their British prin­ci­pals. Nankiv­ell, who sug­gest­ed that com­pa­nies should pay work­ers fair­ly be­fore pay­ing div­i­dends to share­hold­ers, met his death in cu­ri­ous cir­cum­stances.

And this (ru­in, not death) has been the fate of many de­cent, ca­pa­ble non-lo­cals who have left here with lit­tle to show for their ef­forts but two lo­cal predilec­tions: cussing and ste­ups­ing. You hear their sto­ries in air­ports, bars, and the oc­ca­sion­al par­ty in cer­tain homes when the booze starts to flow.

Their dop­pel­gangers, the men and women who were/are wel­comed (as Gor­rie, Fletch­er and Nankiv­ell et al were per­se­cut­ed) seem have a few things in com­mon. In the Port-of Spain Gazette on March 11, 1890, a sto­ry head­lined "An Ac­com­plished Swindler" told of a for­eign vis­i­tor, the Baron Rene de la Mar­tiniere, who passed him­self off as French no­bil­i­ty among lo­cal French Cre­oles, who had dis­ap­peared, leav­ing prodi­gious un­paid bills, and (I'd guess) a few de­flow­ered maid­ens.

A year ear­li­er, an­oth­er il­lus­tri­ous gen­tle­man, this one a cler­gy­man, the Archdea­con Richards, man­aged to con­vince sev­er­al hun­dred In­di­an labour­ers that his spe­cial re­la­tion­ship with God made his care safer than the bank for their mon­ey. The au­thor­i­ties could find no charges to lay against him: the In­di­ans gave him their mon­ey, af­ter all.

Ad­duced to Den­nis Stafford, John­ny O, Calder Hart and their lot, a his­tor­i­cal pat­tern seems to emerge. In 2002, when dis­cussing the PNM's re­turn to pow­er, and what would in­evitably re­sult (crime, de­struc­tion and so­cial col­lapse), I men­tioned a philoso­pher, Gi­ambat­tista Vi­co, whose idea of cyclic his­to­ry posit­ed that hu­man­i­ty, be­cause of our in­trin­sic na­tures, would con­tin­ue re­liv­ing the same plot-lines, if the scripts would change.

The il­lus­tri­ous pub­lish­er of the TnT Mir­ror, Max­ie "Good Luck Patrick" Cuffie, then pos­ing as a jour­nal­ist at CCN, went out of his way to sneer at the ref­er­ence to Vi­co and the very no­tion of "ed­u­ca­tion" that would con­sid­er such knowl­edge use­ful. But that's the PNM's (and oth­er cor­rupt, pet­ty peo­ple's) at­ti­tude to any­thing that ex­pos­es them. In sim­ple terms: keep the crooks who keep the sys­tem as it is; chase those who want to fix it.