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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

The February Revolution 1970

by

Dr Fazal Ali
2210 days ago
20190622

The J'Ou­vert of trop­i­cal cap­i­tal­ism in post-in­de­pen­dence 1967 Trinidad glis­tened with the glam­our of Gene Miles fash­ion spec­ta­cles and O’Hal­lo­ran soirees where Tesoro-type let­ters and ledgers were signed and sealed with a kiss. In 1970, Ged­des Granger, a ju­nior civ­il ser­vant, was on schol­ar­ship at the lo­cal arm of the UWI, pur­su­ing a pro­gramme of study in the so­cial sci­ences. He emerged a tac­ti­cal ge­nius ca­pa­ble of march­ing tens of thou­sands of grim-faced fol­low­ers back and forth the length and breadth of Trinidad in per­fect or­der like a bat­tal­ion of Ro­man Cen­tu­ri­ons in a Car­ni­val band.

On Feb­ru­ary 26, 1970, a move­ment of minds as­sert­ed that the Gov­ern­ment was per­pet­u­at­ing the har­vest­ing of ma­te­r­i­al ben­e­fits for the elite mi­nor­i­ty while the over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty of Afro-Sax­ons were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing de­pri­va­tion, un­em­ploy­ment, crim­i­nal­ly low wages, racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in em­ploy­ment in the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors and poor so­cial ser­vices. As the Car­ni­val cur­tain fell, the pre­sumed lull of Lent failed to ma­te­ri­alise. The 1970 Feb­ru­ary Rev­o­lu­tion tran­scend­ed the Dionysian mas­quer­ade tra­di­tion which Cre­ole Trinidad had been dis­till­ing for more than a cen­tu­ry and a half. It was the an­tithe­sis of the Car­ni­val idea in struc­ture, in­tent, and con­tent.

Lo­cal uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents staged a demon­stra­tion urg­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty for West In­di­an stu­dents ar­rest­ed in Mon­tre­al. Nine pro­test­ers were ar­rest­ed un­der an 1844 law. They re­fused bail and were re­leased on March 4. On that day, 10,000 peo­ple marched in Port-of-Spain in a tight­ly dis­ci­plined demon­stra­tion. The tri­al of the nine com­menced on March 5.

Out­side the cour­t­house, demon­stra­tors gath­ered. Out of the blue like bats from hell, ba­tons were fly­ing. The pro­test­ers scam­pered. The po­lice on horse­back gal­loped af­ter them through the city. On Nel­son Street, a young man was shot. The stam­ped­ing crowd picked up stones and de­bris and hurled them at the Roy­al Bank of Cana­da, The Singer Mall, Suzanne’s and Coel­ho’s Patis­serie, Nar­wani’s, Habib’s, Ba­ta, Be­har­ry and Scott, and Maraj Broth­ers. Shops were shut in rapid fire. The pro­test­ers re­grouped quick­ly and marched down Fred­er­ick Street in­to Wood­ford Square. There they were joined by Ged­des Granger.

On Tues­day, April 21, 12 pris­on­ers ar­rived in Staubles Bay in­clud­ing George Weeks and Win­ston Suite to be fer­ried on the Cour­land Bay to Nel­son Is­land. At Teteron Bay, sol­diers were draw­ing am­mu­ni­tion from the main bunker. Un­be­knownst to the mil­i­tary brass, some of the sol­diers were mu­ti­neers and the am­mu­ni­tion bunker was seized. Ma­jor Hen­ry Christo­pher tele­phoned for help. The Coast Guard FPB Trin­i­ty was dis­patched to Teteron and opened fire on the bunker with its 40 MM Bo­fors. The Cour­land Bay was or­dered to get the pris­on­ers to Nel­son Is­land quick­ly.

As the Cour­land tacked back to Teteron, it en­coun­tered the Trin­i­ty shelling a con­voy of trucks, troop car­ri­ers, jeeps, and pri­vate cars on the road­way ex­it­ing Teteron. Short on shells, the Trin­i­ty re­turned to Staubles to pick up all the avail­able am­mu­ni­tion. Dur­ing the load, 50 sol­diers in­clud­ing three of­fi­cers came down to Staubles via Crow’s Nest and sur­ren­dered. To hold Staubles, the Coast Guard de­cid­ed to fire on the con­voy from the sea. The shells blast­ed the hill­side in­to an avalanche but that was in­suf­fi­cient. The con­voy was still ad­vanc­ing. A bus that was used to block the road was pushed aside and was rolled down the hill­side.

By mid-Ju­ly 1970, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Karl Hud­son-Phillips was lead­ing the re­view tri­bunal against the civil­ian de­tainees. A mil­i­tary tri­bunal re­cruit­ed from var­i­ous Com­mon­wealth coun­tries dealt with the in­sur­gents. Pro­ce­dur­al forms were be­ing ob­served and some in­vent­ed to suit the oc­ca­sion. Lloyd Best ar­gued in his March 19, 1970 pam­phlet—Black Pow­er and Na­tion­al Re­con­struc­tion—that Williams’ adop­tion of Lewis’ pre­scrip­tion of in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion by in­vi­ta­tion did not deal with the prob­lems of pe­tro­le­um, sug­ar and the banks and it was these that have kept West In­di­an peo­ple in chains.

Ca­roni Ltd, for ex­am­ple, was a ma­jor sub­sidiary of Tate and Lyle. He sug­gest­ed that any fail­ure to over­look this kind of de­pen­dence in our ter­ri­to­r­i­al con­text amount­ed to noth­ing but ser­vil­i­ty and a shat­ter­ing vote of no-con­fi­dence in the peo­ple of T&T.

Best con­tend­ed that Trinidad was hop­ing for eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion by bor­row­ing cap­i­tal, bor­row­ing man­age­ment, bor­row­ing tech­nol­o­gy and gen­u­flect­ing be­fore every man­ner of alien ex­pert. For Best, the Afro-Sax­on was born, a man steeped in self-con­tempt, dis­play­ing his de­coloni­sa­tion in the colonis­er’s clothes and al­though all cit­i­zens had ex­pe­ri­enced raised lev­els of ma­te­r­i­al wel­fare, there re­mained large swathes of the pop­u­la­tion who had no sense of be­ing the mas­ter in the cas­tle of their own skin.

Best rea­soned that the Gov­ern­ment had adopt­ed ed­u­ca­tion poli­cies, land poli­cies, tax poli­cies and labour poli­cies that made it im­pos­si­ble for en­tre­pre­neur­ship to flour­ish. He ar­gued that the colo­nial sub­sti­tu­tion of im­port­ed cheap labour sup­pressed any pos­si­bil­i­ty of wage in­creas­es for the rest and that the cost of this im­port­ed work­force was to be met by tax­es on im­ports. This meant that cit­i­zens had to pay to keep them­selves in back­ward­ness. A de­con­struc­tive cri­tique of the ideas of Lloyd Best can on­ly il­lu­mi­nate our fu­ture. The 50th An­niver­sary of the Feb­ru­ary Rev­o­lu­tion is in 2020.


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