Peace­ful tran­si­tion is the term con­sis­tent­ly ap­plied to changes of gov­ern­ment in this coun­try. How­ev­er, it can on­ly de­scribe T&T’s at­tain­ment of in­de­pen­dence in 1962 in the brief pe­ri­od be­tween the col­lapse of the West In­dies Fed­er­a­tion and the in­de­pen­dence talks at Marl­bor­ough House in Lon­don.

On the eve of T&T’s Di­a­mond Ju­bilee, which will be cel­e­brat­ed on Wednes­day start­ing with the pomp and cer­e­mo­ny of a mil­i­tary pa­rade and end­ing with fire­works, it would be his­tor­i­cal­ly in­ac­cu­rate to lim­it our path to na­tion­hood to just a few events in the ear­ly 1960s.

The foun­da­tion for all that is be­ing com­mem­o­rat­ed this week was laid in a past of con­quests, coloni­sa­tion, en­slave­ment, in­den­ture­ship and epic strug­gles for rights.

So, while it is true that T&T did not gain in­de­pen­dence as a re­sult of armed con­flicts, the re­al­i­ty is that this na­tion ex­pe­ri­enced a dif­fi­cult birthing process be­fore that sig­nal mo­ment in 1962 when the red, white, and black was hoist­ed for the first time.

Long be­fore that, cit­i­zens had been chaf­ing un­der the bur­den of life in two tiny is­lands among the many do­min­ions, colonies, pro­tec­torates, and ter­ri­to­ries that made up the then mighty British Em­pire.

That ris­ing dis­con­tent, and Britain’s bruis­ing ex­pe­ri­ences in two world wars, sparked a de­coloni­sa­tion move­ment that by 1960 had led to T&T and oth­er coun­tries in the Caribbean be­ing swept up in winds of change.

His­to­ri­ans, writ­ing from a British per­spec­tive, said that the em­pire prac­ticed a pol­i­cy of peace­ful dis­en­gage­ment from its colonies. Nev­er mind that decades be­fore, the seeds for that sep­a­ra­tion had been sown in the po­lit­i­cal and so­cial up­heavals of the 1930s and 1940s that swept across this re­gion, lead­ing to the even­tu­al grant­i­ng of uni­ver­sal adult suf­frage.

There was an­oth­er land­mark mo­ment be­fore that, T&T's first gen­er­al elec­tion in 1925 and sub­se­quent changes to the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil.

It has not been said of­ten enough that T&T’s peace­ful tran­si­tion from colony to In­de­pen­dent State was pos­si­ble be­cause of the strug­gles of pa­tri­ots such as Tubal “Uri­ah” But­ler, Cap­tain Arthur An­drew Cipri­ani, Al­bert Gomes, Dr Rudranath Capildeo and Dr Er­ic Williams and oth­ers. Through their in­volve­ment in labour and pol­i­tics, they worked to dis­man­tle dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and ex­ploita­tive sys­tems.

Now more than ever, as T&T faces a new wave of chal­lenges, these de­tails, of­ten glossed over in ac­counts of the jour­ney to na­tion­hood, need to be re­in­forced.

Gen­er­a­tions of cit­i­zens, not yet born in 1962, or too young at that time to ap­pre­ci­ate the mag­ni­tude of the tran­si­tion that took place then, tend to take for grant­ed the rights and free­doms that we all en­joy to­day.

This coun­try is turn­ing 60, an age of ad­vanced ma­tu­ri­ty still gripped by grow­ing pains of trib­al pol­i­tics, eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty and the bot­tled-up rage and re­jec­tion that man­i­fests in vi­o­lence and blood­shed.

This ju­bilee is an oc­ca­sion to tell the full sto­ry of T&T in a way that mo­ti­vates and in­spires a deep­er ap­pre­ci­a­tion of how much ef­fort went in­to achiev­ing this state of in­de­pen­dence. The year-long cel­e­bra­tions that go in­to full gear this week should be used to pro­mote the lev­el of pa­tri­o­tism that will en­cour­age more cit­i­zens to build the bet­ter T&T that we all want.