Revered or reviled, our late Prime Minister, even approaching the centenary of his birth in the coming year, continues to be an attractive and interestingly complex personality that could still merit national and possibly international attention. As a case study, he could be found to be a fascinating, if intriguing, figure. Love him, hate him, he can't be ignored. Even his detractors sullenly concede that "the man was what he was and that's simply about the size of it." Calypsonian Lord Funny once sang that "different things does remind me of different things and some things does remind me of nothing at all." That possibly reminds us of the calypso/politics confluence when Dr Eric Williams and the Mighty Sparrow virtually exploded, simultaneously, on the local scene.
In their own right, they were both dominant figures with their own overlapping constituencies. Williams in politics and Sparrow in calypso. They both had a unique flair for showmanship and a "cock-of-the-walk" public posturing. They both seemed to satisfy certain indefinable, or amorphous, psychic or psychological needs of their respective constituencies. They were both, in my view, "like the curate's egg-good in parts." But don't try telling that to their adoring fans. Dr Gordon Rohlehr averred that "Afro-Trinidadians (had) awaited their deliverer, their intellectual superman whose academic achievements would both prove and guarantee the evolution of the tribe. They were to discover him, so many believed, in Eric Williams."
Like other calypsonians, Sparrow was caught up in the general euphoria that attended Williams' dramatic entry on the political scene. It was inevitable that Williams and Sparrow should have instinctively discovered that their respective talents could have been mutually beneficial in a sort of symbiotic fashion.
Inevitably, Williams' charismatic figure and Messianic halo aroused expectations that could hardly survive the cold douche of political and economic reality. However, given our penchant for not being able and/or willing to count our blessings and operating on the assumptions that the heavens will never fall and manna, if not cathedrals, could conceivably fall, it was only natural that the maximum leader would be expected to produce a plaster for every sore or even self-inflicted suppurating wounds.
The Mighty Striker encapsulated the "dependency syndrome" thus: "Anabela stocking wants stitching/ She want de doctor (Williams) help she wid dat, good lawd!/ Johnson's trousers falling/ He want de doctor help him wid dat, mamayo!/ Now Dorothy lose she man,/ She gone to complain to Doctor William."
Be that as it may, the calypsonians rallied to Dr Williams' defence, whatever his and our cluster of weaknesses, none more so than the prolific Sparrow. Both Sparrow and Duke (Kelvin Pope) consistently produced compositions which chronicled social conditions that impacted significantly on the society and were in need of clarification and/or attention. Duke appeared to have had a distinct social conscience and was moved more by his creative impulses than ethnic or political party affiliation. Now I may well be wrong about this, but to the best of my knowledge, I'm not aware that Sparrow ever eulogised, in death, the man he so lionised in life. Could it be that "those two kindred spirits eventually went their separate ways?"
Truth be told, Sparrow's immense popularity and keen sense of humour and occasion had played an enormous part in putting a sugar-coating on Williams' bitter political and economic pills. Dr Williams was fully cognisant of this. Sparrow seemed to be more than eager to spring to the defence of the Doc. It was left to the likes of Chalkdust, Black Stalin, Valentino, Lord Shorty et al to grumble and nibble at Williams' political robes and intimate that "the emperor was not fully clothed." I have reason to believe that Williams paid meticulous attention to reflections of the public mood as discerned by the more insightful calypsoes-his oft quoted "let the jackasses bray" comment being mere "robber talk." Sparrow had, rightly or wrongly, been seen as a sort of PNM Fidei Defensor (Defender of the Faith). When it was not "William de Conqueror," it was "Leave de damn Doctor, what he do, he well do," or where Williams had acted arbitrarily, as was his wont, Sparrow appeared to justify it by "taking a lag in we tail...and how dis place too damn democratic."
Towards the twilight of the Williams era, Sparrow became more equivocal about his political sympathies, to the extent that Lord Kitchener upbraided him for "sitting on the river stone and talking de river bad," in ingrate fashion. An apparently disillusioned Sparrow was probably caught in the political maelstrom of the moment and was no more immune to Williams' mesmeric spell than CLR James or Dr Winston Mahabir, say. Sparrow's Good Citizen, denial notwithstanding, strikes me as a scathing indictment of his erstwhile political hero. Did the Birdie desert the balisier or was it the other way around? Was it a case of kindred souls going their separate ways? Tell me, if you can.
Michael Delblond