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Friday, July 18, 2025

A night in memory of Norman Girvan

by

20140506

The gen­tle rock­ing sound of Black Stal­in's Caribbean Man fad­ed grad­u­al­ly out to si­lence and the room as­sumed a re­spect­ful hush.

It was Nor­man Gir­van's favourite ca­lyp­so, a song about a phi­los­o­phy he spent years push­ing for–the Caribbean as a uni­fied re­gion of com­mu­ni­ties in­stead of the de­tached en­ti­ties that have ex­ist­ed since the break­down of the West In­dies Fed­er­a­tion half a cen­tu­ry ago.

So­cial, eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal in­te­gra­tion was some­thing he re­alised should be not mere­ly achiev­able but es­sen­tial to max­imise the po­ten­tial of the mil­lions of peo­ple liv­ing in the is­lands and coun­tries bathed by the same ocean.

This vi­sion ap­peared for Gir­van, ac­cord­ing to Gre­go­ry McGuire, an eco­nom­ic strate­gist, at a con­fer­ence sev­er­al decades ago where he told a col­league he had en­tered the meet­ing as a Ja­maican na­tion­al­ist and left as a Caribbean re­gion­al­ist.

The Lloyd Best In­sti­tute, aka Tapia House, was filled with great thinkers last week for an evening ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ry of Gir­van.

His think­ing and his words will be deeply missed by his peers, friends and fam­i­ly.

Just last De­cem­ber, Gir­van had been amongst the great thinkers who had flocked to the in­sti­tute to at­tend the posthu­mous launch of Lloyd Best's book Trans­form­ing the Plan­ta­tion Econ­o­my.

Some weeks lat­er, do­ing what he loved, ex­plor­ing the is­lands of the Caribbean–on this oc­ca­sion, Do­mini­ca–Gir­van fell whilst hik­ing and in a few short months he had passed away in Cu­ba, a place close to his heart.

That he went sud­den­ly, with­out fan­fare, and that his pass­ing was marked with deco­rum and pri­vate in­tro­spec­tion from the fam­i­ly he leaves be­hind–wife, Jas­mine, son Alexan­der and daugh­ter Alatashe–was per­haps sym­bol­ic of a man who lacked any sense of pom­pos­i­ty or self-im­por­tance and was com­plete­ly un­pre­oc­cu­pied with sta­tus.

The work he did was to sup­port oth­ers–in­di­vid­u­als, com­mu­ni­ties and na­tions: Haiti, Grena­da, Cu­ba, Venezuela to name but a few.

Mod­est, and hope­ful for fu­ture

He hat­ed be­ing over­ly praised. When he was in­tro­duced at the 2011 CLR James Memo­r­i­al Lec­ture as "the last great thinker in the Caribbean," he was more than bash­ful, he was up­set. If he was the last, he won­dered, then what was left of the Caribbean? An in­stinc­tive sup­port­er and en­cour­ager of youth­ful in­tel­lec­tu­al minds, Gir­van re­fused to ac­cept the no­tion he was the last.

His son and daugh­ter them­selves are an en­vi­ron­men­tal econ­o­mist and law stu­dent, re­spec­tive­ly.

They are young Caribbean thinkers.

There were oth­er young minds at Tapia House, re­mem­ber­ing Nor­man. Nik­ki John­son of the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union re­called see­ing Gir­van at a con­cert, his "white head (of hair) rock­ing back and forth to the mu­sic," amongst the front row of oth­er dig­ni­taries who sat stiff, rigid and un­mov­ing.

John­son read out a let­ter from the Hait­ian Plat­form to Ad­vo­cate Al­ter­na­tive De­vel­op­ment, thank­ing Gir­van for his con­tin­u­ous sup­port for Haiti, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter the dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake in 2010.

Gir­van held up Haiti as cru­cial as the fore­run­ner of post­colo­nial Caribbean po­lit­i­cal ex­pres­sion, even nam­ing his blog 1804 Carib Voic­es af­ter the Hait­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, which end­ed that year with the slaves hav­ing over­thrown French coloni­sa­tion and slav­ery and es­tab­lished the coun­try as an in­de­pen­dent re­pub­lic state.

Shar­ing mem­o­ries

On a night of tears as well as hap­py mem­o­ries, the as­sem­bled well-wish­ers and mourn­ers were wel­comed by McGuire and Suni­ty Ma­haraj, the hosts, to come up to the mi­cro­phone to share their mem­o­ries, which they did in var­i­ous ways and, hav­ing done so, all em­braced Gir­van's wife, sit­ting dig­ni­fied in the front row next to her daugh­ter.

Muhammed Muwak­il, the young rad­i­cal po­et, read a po­em which list­ed Gir­van as one of "so many gi­ants to thank."

Gillian Moor sang a song with the words "Fly me to heav­en, fly me home, it's time to go." In­tro­duc­ing the song, she said she had "nev­er had a chance to tell him I es­teemed him very high­ly. If you es­teem some­one, tell them."

In­grid White-Wil­son of the Crop­per Foun­da­tion fought back tears speak­ing about a (po­lit­i­cal) "be­lief that did not die," thanks to peo­ple like Gir­van.

Ad­dress­ing his daugh­ter, whom she sat be­side all evening, White-Wil­son told her that Gir­van's was "not a life that passed, but a life lived," and spoke of the ado­ra­tion and ad­mi­ra­tion he had for his fam­i­ly.

Nico­la Cross, daugh­ter of the late Ul­ric Cross, said it was an ho­n­our to have known him and that as the daugh­ter of an­oth­er great man she had on­ly lat­er in life learned about the great "non-dad­dy roles" played by fa­thers of the stature of the two men.

She said Gir­van's life work was "a point on a con­tin­u­um," not an end­point, and it was es­sen­tial that younger peo­ple in the Caribbean con­tin­ued the fight to es­tab­lish a com­mu­ni­ty.

Econ­o­mist Ter­rence Far­rell spoke of Gir­van's lu­cid­i­ty and clar­i­ty, de­scrib­ing him as the "con­sum­mate lec­tur­er" and re­call­ing with fond­ness and thanks Gir­van's as­sess­ment of Far­rell's man­u­script for his 2011 book.

"I asked Nor­man to read it, but of course, Nor­man be­ing Nor­man, he didn't just read it as nor­mal peo­ple do. He stud­ied it, dis­sect­ed it and un­fold­ed it."

There were joy­ful con­tri­bu­tions amongst the sad­ness.

Venezue­lan warmth

Venezue­lan am­bas­sador Coro­mo­to Godoy spoke ef­fu­sive­ly with a beam­ing smile on her face about Gir­van be­ing "the great­est thing to hap­pen to her in T&T."

Hav­ing re­cent­ly ar­rived, un­con­fi­dent about her Eng­lish speak­ing, Gir­van had seen her at an event and they had spo­ken.

At the end they hugged, she said, "and that hug stayed with me the whole year."

Gir­van was the first to vis­it her house and the last to leave when Pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez died.

Amongst much praise, she thanked Gir­van for be­ing in­stru­men­tal in bring­ing to­geth­er Venezuela and Guyana.

Bur­ton Sanker­al­li, union­ist and ac­tivist, spoke of Gir­van's so­cial­ist cre­den­tials and un­wa­ver­ing sup­port for Cu­ba and Venezuela be­fore he be­gan to sing, mourn­ful­ly and quite ex­quis­ite­ly, a song by Venezue­lan singer Ali Primera called Los Que Muere Por La Vi­da.

The words, trans­lat­ed in­to Eng­lish are, those who die for life, you can­not say that they are dead.

Caribbean ex­pres­sion

The last speak­er was David Ab­du­lah of the Movemenet for So­cial Jus­tice, who spo­jke­of the re­gion's econ­o­mists "huntin­gin pairs like West In­dies fast bowlers." And rthe night was be­gun by two in­tel­lec­tu­als of the same ilk: Ivan Laugh­lin and Brins­ley Sama­roo.Laugh­lin, a for­mer Tapia man in the 1970s, spoke about the New World Group, ini­ti­at­ed by Best, which met every Wednes­day, "search­ing to find ex­pres­sion out of the minds of Caribbean men and women."

He re­called two of Gir­van's ex­pres­sions, "It takes two to tan­go but on­ly one to reg­gae," and his strong be­lief that "com­mu­ni­ty vi­a­bil­i­ty is pre­req­ui­site sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment."

His­to­ri­an Prof Brins­ley Sama­roo, vis­i­bly moved while lis­ten­ing to Laugh­lin, was re­mark­ably sto­ic when he stood to speak.

He said he had known Gir­van since the 1960s in Lon­don where the two of them, as well as Best and oth­er "dis­ci­ples of CLR James," met every Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon at James' home in Stroud Green, north Lon­don and would stay talk­ing all day and late in­to the night, of­ten fin­ish­ing past 1 am.

"Nor­man was wed­ded to the idea of a Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty, but not as we have it now, dom­i­nat­ed by Chris­t­ian West­ern cul­ture," said Sama­roo,"but rather a 'Caribbean of com­mu­ni­ties' en­cour­ag­ing each to pro­mote it­self, the First Peo­ples, Hin­dus, Mus­lims, Shango, Or­isha, Bap­tists and so forth. Not on the pe­riph­ery but recog­nised and em­pow­ered."

He spoke of Gir­van's frus­tra­tion with politi­cians and econ­o­mists' in­abil­i­ty to bring the re­gion to­geth­er and in­stead en­cour­aged artists, such as tas­sa and hosay mu­si­cians, to move around the is­lands to at­tempt to uni­fy the peo­ple, cul­tur­al­ly.

Look­ing pained, though half-smil­ing, eyes cast down, Sama­roo told the room, "Let us not mope and be sad this evening. Let us cel­e­brate this glo­ri­ous life."

And that is ex­act­ly what hap­pened.


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