DR HAMID GHANY

Hamid.ghany@sta.uwi.edu

Last week, the Sir Arthur Lewis In­sti­tute of So­cial and Eco­nom­ic Stud­ies cel­e­brat­ed the life and work of Sir Arthur Lewis. The is­sue of the role of Arthur Lewis in try­ing to save the West In­di­an Fed­er­a­tion is still alive.

Arthur Lewis was hired as a dol­lar-a-year ad­vis­er to the Prime Min­is­ter of the West In­dies, Sir Grant­ley Adams, right af­ter the Ja­maican ref­er­en­dum of Sep­tem­ber 19, 1961, to come up with a plan to sal­vage the Fed­er­a­tion with­out Ja­maica.

One week lat­er, there was a meet­ing at the Colo­nial Of­fice at which a Fed­er­al del­e­ga­tion from the West In­dies met with the Sec­re­tary of State for the Colonies. Ac­cord­ing to the min­utes of that meet­ing the fol­low­ing was stat­ed:

“13. Pro­fes­sor Lewis said that when he went round the small is­lands he an­tic­i­pat­ed dif­fi­cul­ty in con­vinc­ing the po­lit­i­cal lead­ers that they should en­ter a Trinidad dom­i­nat­ed fed­er­a­tion in which their own sta­tus would in­evitably be di­min­ished. Some of the small is­lands would pre­fer to solve their dilem­ma by re­main­ing colonies; it might af­fect their at­ti­tude if he were able to say that they could not be cer­tain that they could re­main per­ma­nent­ly sub­sidised by the UK: equal­ly it would as­sist this process if no con­trary state­ments were made in the pe­ri­od ahead…”

Lewis had de­tect­ed that it would be a very dif­fi­cult bal­anc­ing act to get the re­main­ing ter­ri­to­ries of the Fed­eraion to agree to par­tic­i­pate in a Fed­er­a­tion dom­i­nat­ed by T&T. Af­ter his tour of the eight ter­ri­to­ries be­sides T&T that re­mained in the Fed­er­a­tion, he man­aged to con­vince them to go along with the re­vised plan.

In a se­cret and per­son­al let­ter from the Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al of the West In­dies, Lord Hailes, to Am­bler Thomas, a se­nior civ­il ser­vant at the Colo­nial Of­fice, dat­ed No­vem­ber 4, 1961, Hailes said in­ter alia:

“…Arthur Lewis has just re­turned from what seems to have been a very suc­cess­ful tour of the eight ter­ri­to­ries. The long and short of what he tells me is that all these ter­ri­to­ries are anx­ious for a con­tin­u­a­tion of a Fed­er­a­tion of nine, are pre­pared to make cer­tain sac­ri­fices of 'sov­er­eign­ty', re­gard Trinidad as their nat­ur­al leader and the seat of Fed­er­a­tion; and in fact seem to have gen­er­al­ly ac­cept­ed the prin­ci­ples of Williams' 'Eco­nom­ics of Na­tion­hood'.”

Lewis was able to pre­pare a re­port for the Fed­er­al Prime Min­is­ter Sir Grant­ley Adams. In a se­cret and per­son­al let­ter to the Sec­re­tary of State for the Colonies from the Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al of the West In­dies, Lord Hailes, dat­ed 1No­vem­ber 10, 1961, the fol­low­ing was said in­ter alia:

“Lewis who has now re­turned to Ja­maica has pro­duced his re­port, and I en­close a copy. Yes­ter­day he dis­cussed it with the Fed­er­al Cab­i­net. At­tached al­so is a note of his talks with Williams over the pe­ri­od 22nd Sep­tem­ber-8th No­vem­ber…”

Lewis' re­port was dat­ed No­vem­ber 9, 1961 and was ac­cept­ed by the Fed­er­al Cab­i­net. In a se­cret let­ter to Colo­nial Of­fice Min­is­ter of State, Hugh Fras­er, on Jan­u­ary 2, 1962, Arthur Lewis' view of the Fed­er­a­tion changed as fol­low:

“Thank you for your let­ter of 14th De­cem­ber. I shall be in Trinidad from Jan­u­ary 13 to 24. I shall see Bird and Bar­row on my way down. I have not seen Dr Williams since the be­gin­ning of No­vem­ber. How­ev­er, from study­ing his speech­es, and from what he said then…My re­ac­tion to this would be to let Trinidad go it alone, and es­tab­lish the oth­er is­lands as a fed­er­a­tion cen­tred on Bar­ba­dos…”

Hav­ing won the elec­tions on De­cem­ber 4, 1961, and form­ing a new gov­ern­ment, Williams turned the PNM to con­sid­er­ing its po­si­tion on the fu­ture of the Fed­er­a­tion. He timed a res­o­lu­tion to be de­bat­ed by the PNM Gen­er­al Coun­cil on Jan­u­ary 14, 1962 which was the day af­ter the Sec­re­tary of State for the Colonies, Regi­nald Maudling, ar­rived in Trinidad for a vis­it. Williams an­nounced that T&T would with­draw from the Fed­er­a­tion.

Arthur Lewis had had a change of heart by the be­gin­ning of 1962 and Williams' po­lit­i­cal ac­tions were con­sis­tent with Lewis' own feel­ings as ex­pressed in his let­ter to Hugh Fras­er. There would nev­er be a Fed­er­a­tion of the Lit­tle Eight for which Lewis had hoped. The re­search con­tin­ues in­to Lewis' ef­forts on the Fed­er­a­tion be­cause those de­bates in 1961/62 are still very rel­e­vant to the re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion move­ment to­day.