Jerome Teelucks­ingh

Cur­rent prob­lems fac­ing Caribbean uni­ty are part of a tur­bu­lent past in which dreams of re­gion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty nev­er ma­te­ri­alised. At­tempts at uni­ty were made in the 1950s to cre­ate an en­ti­ty- Fed­er­a­tion.

The Amer­i­can Con­sul Gen­er­al, in a despatch in 1954 not­ed, “It is clear that the fed­er­a­tion is­sue had be­come a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball be­ing kicked back and forth among Trinidad, Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos. None of them wish­es to go on record as re­ject­ing it, none ap­pears to be an en­thu­si­as­tic sup­port­er of the Lon­don re­port, and each seems to be wait­ing for the oth­ers to act first. There is no telling how long this jock­ey­ing may con­tin­ue. The dan­ger for any one of them will re­main that the oth­er two will “gang up” in an agree­ment to act favourably, and leave that one “hold­ing the bag.””

Two years lat­er, the Con­sulate Gen­er­al, in Trinidad, felt some­thing was amiss among the lead­ers, “It was a bit of a sur­prise, there­fore, when the PNM was not in­clud­ed in the re­cent­ly es­tab­lished West In­di­an Fed­er­a­tion of So­cial­ist Par­ties. Mr Man­ley has in­di­cat­ed that the sit­u­a­tion in Trinidad with its pletho­ra of par­ties is so ob­scure at present that it was not pos­si­ble for the found­ing group to set­tle on any in­di­vid­ual par­ty in the Colony.”

This for­eign per­cep­tion of Michael Man­ley, of Ja­maica, might not be ac­cu­rate be­cause Er­ic Gairy (of Grena­da) one of the found­ing mem­bers of the West In­di­an Fed­er­a­tion of So­cial­ist Par­ties, was present on a Peo­ple’s De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (PDP) plat­form in 1956 in T&T. To have a Caribbean leader at one of his po­lit­i­cal meet­ings was a ma­jor achieve­ment for Bhadase Maraj.

Notwith­stand­ing the per­cep­tion of har­mo­ny, there were con­cerns in 1956 at the con­fer­ence in Lon­don on West In­di­an Fed­er­a­tion, “Ja­maica fears that with Cus­toms Union its home mar­kets will be thrown open to Trinidad man­u­fac­tur­ers and that Ja­maican in­dus­try with its rel­a­tive­ly high costs will be un­able to meet the com­pe­ti­tion … Trinidad had sim­i­lar fears that its econ­o­my would be dis­lo­cat­ed by an un­reg­u­lat­ed in­flux of hordes of neigh­bour­ing West In­di­ans in the small­er is­lands.”

Some blame Dr Er­ic Williams as not de­sir­ing Caribbean uni­ty. Op­pos­ing this view is George Lam­ming, who in an in­ter­view with An­tho­ny Bogues, re­called the stance of Williams, “...he was al­ways re­gion­al. He made it his busi­ness to know every ter­ri­to­ry….When­ev­er he spoke, he nev­er spoke about Trinidad and To­ba­go ex­cept with­in the con­text of the re­gion.”

The view of a lo­cal pub­li­ca­tion, The Clar­i­on, was that “moral lead­er­ship in the cause of West In­di­an na­tion­hood has clear­ly passed on to Ja­maica. Trinidad now com­mands no re­spect.” The ad­vice for Trinida­di­ans to seek the fed­er­al cap­i­tal seemed sim­plis­tic, “We must as­sert our­selves as the moral lead­ers….”

Al­bert Gomes in Through a Maze of Colour, dealt with the fed­er­al elec­tions of 1958 in which the Fed­er­al Con­sti­tu­tion al­lowed 10 seats to be al­lo­cat­ed to the re­gion, “…the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Labour Par­ty, the rag-bag of dis­si­dent el­e­ments that we had hur­ried­ly as­sem­bled in 1957, won six, con­vinc­ing­ly de­feat­ing Williams’ Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, just eigh­teen months af­ter it had car­ried the coun­try in a tremen­dous up­surge of racial­ist-na­tion­al­ist sen­ti­ment.” This bit­ter­ness per­sist­ed af­ter the elec­tions.

Win­ston Ma­habir in his au­to­bi­og­ra­phy was crit­i­cal of Williams’ view on Fed­er­a­tion, “He had good cause to be less ex­cit­ed about Fed­er­a­tion as a politi­cian than when he wrote about it as a schol­ar and his­to­ri­an. The re­al­i­ties were not match­ing the dreams. The coup de grace was to suf­fer de­feat at the polls by Bhadase Maraj whom he had tak­en with him to Ja­maica and whose help had “won” the fed­er­al site for Trinidad.”

Ched­di Ja­gan, leader of the Peo­ple’s Pro­gres­sive Par­ty, con­tend­ed that some per­sons in Guyana, with a racial agen­da, were sup­port­ing Fed­er­a­tion. He be­lieved, “I sup­port fed­er­a­tion be­cause I feel that it is on­ly by fed­er­a­tion that our eco­nom­ic con­di­tions will im­prove….Yes, in our in­su­lar­i­ty we are jeal­ous of our ter­ri­to­r­i­al rights, but how are we go­ing to solve our prob­lems un­less we are able to sur­ren­der; to make con­ces­sions which the fed­er­al struc­ture may de­mand?” Not sur­pris­ing­ly, Ja­gan sup­port­ed Grant­ley Adams, of Bar­ba­dos, who want­ed a ‘So­cial­ist Com­mon­wealth with Do­min­ion sta­tus.’

In ret­ro­spect, Fed­er­a­tion was short-lived be­cause of the emer­gence of prob­lems in­clud­ing the clash of per­son­al­i­ties and ide­o­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences that were nev­er re­solved.

Lloyd Best in the T&T Re­view, in 2005, not­ed that af­ter the demise of Fed­er­a­tion, “the in­di­vid­ual ter­ri­to­ries sim­ply floun­dered.” Yes, the dreams of re­gion­al uni­ty were tem­porar­i­ly shelved but the con­cept nev­er died. There would be waves of uni­ty as en­ti­ties such as Carif­ta, Cari­com and CSME emerged.