Part 2
Two important TV clips were probably missed by many win'ing enthusiasts in the run-up to the Carnival-Ancil Roget's unhealthy triumphalism at the OWTU's securing nine per cent for Petrotrin workers, and the organiser of the Canboulay reenactment shouting (on television news) that the Minister of Education should have it taught in schools.
From Mr Roget's attitude, the Canboulay promoters can rest easy. The lesson has been learned in the society at large: a disregard for law and fellow citizens, and violent ignorance in word, deed, and attitude. (Incidentally, these are the traits of a large, illegal immigrant criminal population in the late 19th century, who felt no allegiance to or responsibility for the society. Much like the illegal immigrant population of today.)
That generalised ignorance manifests in many ways, but the clearest in recent times is the attitude of the OWTU in victory. I generally support unions. Whatever brutishness you might perceive in unions' behaviour is generally choir practice compared to management's behaviour. But if in victory Mr Roget was still disposed to trumpet his desire to wage "war" on management, and by extension the country, this displays an animus that has to do with more than labour.
Look around, you see this attitude in individuals and institutions. From driving, to quarrying, to the service commissions, everyone is resisting everything for reasons of ethnicity, class, colour, geography, school, economic status and so on. No one sees him or herself as part of a whole, but as having to struggle to retrieve something taken from, or denied by the others.
But while unfairness and injustice exist here in staggering proportions, their solutions do not lie in promoting violence and ignorance-these, in fact, make them worse, as can be seen in the history of the present. Trinidad's descent into the chaos we know today is relatively recent. It cannot be overstated that between the NAR and the UNC (1986-2000), the society seemed to be improving. When the PNM came back in 2001, all this was reversed.
The message on talk radio (a medium whose destructive force is steadfastly ignored by academics and policy makers), calypso, and "culture" generally, was the same: resist the State, embrace black nationalism, expel "outsiders," take back the "national patrimony." It worked, but with the side-effect of a rapid and ruthless increase in crimes of acquisition and hatred-which (the latter category) is yet to be acknowledged. When the PNM got back in, they ceded the stewardship of culture to the coalition that had created and articulated this message.
Hence the ever-increasing financial disbursements to Carnival, the strengthening of Carnival studies at UWI and UTT, and the generally forcing "culture" into equivalence with "Carnival." The Canboulay reenactment-its currency despite it being 25 per cent history-75 per cent revenge fantasy-is a single event that illustrates the dynamics of this com- plex. Its themes are rage, revenge, us vs them, violence is the answer.
The PP has left the control of "culture" to this same coalition whose purpose now transcends any political party. The coalition is consumed with spreading this pathology with all the single-mindedness of a virus, and no one seems to be aware of the consequences of this infection.
The Government's (and society's) choosing to ignore the realities of the situation constitute an abdication of their responsibility to promote healthy values for the society's welfare, to a crackpot fringe. The PP is terrified to even acknowledge anything that proposes the destructiveness of Carnival. This reticence, which exists in academia, and other institutions, has allowed an offensive set of values to be seen as normal.
How did this happen? Even during the time of the evil oppressor, there was no confusion about right and wrong. Six years after the Canboulay Riots, there was another procession in Port-of-Spain. A peaceful one, in June 1887, in celebration of Victoria's golden jubilee. The procession was of the Freemasons of Trini-dad who marched to Trinity Cathedral for a commemorative service.
This march has "escaped" the notice of every historian in the last half-century, despite its being published in more than one newspaper of the period, like the New Era, owned/edited by Joseph Lewis, a black Trinidadian, on June 24, 1887. New Era reproduced the sermon preached by the Rev RH Moor on the occasion, which outlined the values held by many powerful men of all ethnic groups in Trinidad, as they fit into the general aims of Freemasonry.
Moor said: "No one joins...to benefit himself, but for the benefit of others, for we declare that a desire for knowledge and to be engaged in works for the benefit of our brother men are the ... motives by which we are influenced in seeking to be admitted to the Order."
This might be reasonably called representative of the governing values of the time, and up to 1962, they hadn't changed much. This doesn't mean Trinidad was not brutal and unfair to the mass of the population. However, at one time, there was no doubt anywhere as to what the correct values were. But not now.
The change and confusion in even what constitutes the correct values (again) are clearly signalled by choosing to remember, and invest authority in, a violent event like Canboulay, and promoting its "message" with the authority of the State, and holding its constituent violence and ignorance as desirable.
Apparently I'm the only one who can see this-that preaching violent rebellion in a time where violence and ignorance are eating into the social order, is a bad thing. And a large point that seems to be missed is that we're in a very different country (in spirit, as much as in reality) than that envisioned by the people who might be called our "founding fathers"-CLR James, Albert Gomes, JJ Thomas, Arthur Cipriani, and that lot. I'll look at that in the next few weeks.