Joshua Sur­tees

Have you ever been to Port-of-Spain for Car­ni­val? I asked Nigel, a To­bag­on­ian in Buc­coo. "Nah!" He an­swered sharply. "Too much vi­o­lence in Trinidad."

The next day at Pi­rate's Bay, Char­lot­teville, tourists were talk­ing about a Ger­man cou­ple who two days ear­li­er had been tied up and robbed on the beach. They were res­cued on­ly when their friend's yacht ap­peared, ready for a pre-planned bar­be­cue.

The Char­lot­teville lo­cals were blam­ing Trinida­di­ans for the rob­bery, as To­bag­o­ni­ans of­ten do when some rob­bery has tak­en place.

"I saw the car they were in, it was Trinida­di­an," some­body said. But can you re­al­ly dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween cars reg­is­tered on ei­ther is­land?

It was sym­bol­ic of the sus­pi­cion and re­sent­ment some To­bag­o­ni­ans har­bour to­wards their broth­ers and sis­ters on the larg­er is­land. It's sim­i­lar to Scot­tish or Welsh re­sent­ment to­wards the Eng­lish–the po­si­tion of un­der­dog, the gnaw­ing feel­ing of be­ing ig­nored, un­der-rep­re­sent­ed, even op­pressed.

So, why the re­sent­ment? There is in­equal­i­ty in bud­get and re­sources, yes. But is that not to be ex­pect­ed when one is­land has one-tenth of the pop­u­la­tion of the oth­er?

The fact that the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has no trea­sury of its own and re­lies on the cash dis­tri­b­u­tion of Trinidad's cen­tral gov­ern­ment is a ma­jor stand­point of au­ton­o­mist par­ties such as the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP) par­ty. So is the fact that To­ba­go gets pun­ished ac­cord­ing to the po­lit­i­cal swing of the big­ger is­land. When the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) is in pow­er, there is the be­lief that bud­gets are slashed. Hence why To­ba­go per­pet­u­al­ly swings back to the PNM.

One won­ders if there will ever be suf­fi­cient groundswell of sup­port to hold a ref­er­en­dum on To­bag­on­ian in­de­pen­dence, as will hap­pen in Scot­land in Sep­tem­ber this year.

It would re­quire con­sis­tent po­lit­i­cal vic­to­ries for a sep­a­ratist par­ty–like the Scot­tish Na­tion­al Par­ty has achieved in mul­ti­ple elec­tions–not the re­cent, mo­men­tary vic­to­ry of the TOP which quick­ly ebbed away.

It would re­quire peo­ple like Deb­o­rah Moore-Mig­gins and Ho­choy Charles to col­lab­o­rate and it would need to en­thuse the peo­ple of To­ba­go about pol­i­tics. It is an is­land more ob­sessed with re­li­gion than so­cial is­sues.

Pol­i­tics aside, sep­a­ratism is of­ten root­ed in cul­ture and at­ti­tudes. Po­lit­i­cal­ly, T&T has had a To­bag­on­ian PM. The cur­rent op­po­si­tion leader is To­bag­on­ian and spends most week­ends there. Gor­don Brown, Britain's last PM, was Scot­tish. So was Tony Blair, tech­ni­cal­ly.

But be­hav­iours and cus­toms de­fine "peo­ple." And the peo­ple of the two is­lands that make up T&T look dif­fer­ent, talk dif­fer­ent, lime dif­fer­ent, dance dif­fer­ent. They eat the same things, broad­ly speak­ing.

"Tri­nis come to To­ba­go and treat it like their lit­tle play is­land," a hote­lier from Trinidad who owns a ho­tel in To­ba­go told me.

Many don't get fur­ther than Store Bay let alone the beau­ti­ful, moun­tain­ous, dense­ly-forest­ed parts like Mo­ri­ah, Arnos Vale or Cas­tara.

Videos of Trinida­di­ans "cool­ing down" at Pi­geon Point af­ter Car­ni­val are as em­bar­rass­ing to me as Brits on the Cos­ta del Sol. Coloni­sa­tion by tourists is al­ways un­at­trac­tive, but can you be a tourist in your own coun­try?

As Health Min­is­ter Fuad Khan re­cent­ly claimed, "To­ba­go is part of Trinidad!"

It is that kind of hege­mon­ic at­ti­tude–per­pet­u­at­ed in sim­ple things like peo­ple still re­fer­ring to this pa­per as the Trinidad Guardian–that has ex­ist­ed since 1962 when head­lines de­clared, "Trinidad Is Now A Na­tion," and still ex­ists.

The his­to­ry of the two is­lands–bound to­geth­er at ran­dom by the British in 1889–is en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent.

The two so­ci­eties were thrown to­geth­er even though many be­lieve it would have made more sense if To­ba­go had been twinned with Bar­ba­dos and Trinidad with Grena­da.

But plu­ral­i­ty of cul­ture in a na­tion is nor­mal and ben­e­fi­cial. And T&T has seen lit­tle of the an­i­mos­i­ty that de­fines Eng­land and Scot­land's past.

Eng­land op­pressed the Scots (and Irish and Welsh) for cen­turies. From Ro­man times the Picts in Scot­land and Celts in Wales were beat­en back, colonised, sub­dued, left to dwell in moun­tains and caves where the Ro­mano-British and lat­er the An­glo Sax­ons did not care to ven­ture.

Lat­er, Eng­land con­quered, raped and pil­laged in bloody his­toric bat­tles with the Scots and ruled over them ex­ploita­tive­ly just as in Africa, Asia and the Amer­i­c­as.

In 1706, the Act of Union bound the sep­a­rate en­ti­ties of the UK in­to one.

"What be­gan as a hos­tile merg­er would end in a full part­ner­ship in the most pow­er­ful go­ing con­cern in the world," says his­to­ri­an Si­mon Schama.

This year the union will be test­ed by a ref­er­en­dum on Scot­tish in­de­pen­dence. Ed­u­cat­ed Scots are torn on which way to vote.

For the un­e­d­u­cat­ed, baser rea­son­ing will pre­vail, based on his­toric ha­tred and sec­tar­i­an­ism.

Like most Eng­lish peo­ple, I hope Scot­land votes to re­main in the UK. The days of con­quest passed long ago, re­placed by long­stand­ing friend­ship and re­spect.

Eco­nom­i­cal­ly, Scot­land (and To­ba­go) would strug­gle. Then there are the lo­gis­tics.

Would Scot­land have its own army, stock ex­change and EU mem­ber­ship? If so, what is to stop Cat­alo­nia and the Basque re­gion gain­ing in­de­pen­dence and EU sta­tus?

Should Que­bec se­cede from Cana­da? Texas from Amer­i­ca? Would Wales be next to leave Great Britain and what about Corn­wall, Isle of Man, the Chan­nel Is­lands? Should St Kitts, Nevis, An­guil­la, An­tigua, Bar­bu­da and each of the Ba­hamas and Grenadines is­lands be sep­a­rate­ly gov­erned?

Ja­maica's mot­to is "Out of Many, One Peo­ple." I agree with that sen­ti­ment. It doesn't mat­ter how dif­fer­ent we are, we can all get along, as­pire and achieve.