Sascha Wil­son

Had the words of the late Prime Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams dur­ing his fa­mous speech 60 years ago been fol­lowed, school vi­o­lence would not have been an is­sue to­day.

Ex­press­ing this view yes­ter­day dur­ing the Dr Er­ic Williams TC Memo­r­i­al Com­mit­tee’s an­nu­al event to mark Williams’ death an­niver­sary, chair­man Regi­nald Vi­dale said Williams would no doubt be turn­ing in his grave be­cause the coun­try is in a “to­tal mess.”

He lament­ed, “Do­mes­tic vi­o­lence out of con­trol, school chil­dren en­gag­ing in vi­o­lent con­fronta­tion with lethal weapons, no re­spect for teach­ers, par­ents, se­nior cit­i­zens. School chil­dren seem to be at war with the so­ci­ety and what is be­ing done to stem this tide of vi­o­lence? What I ask? What can be done? What is be­ing done. The hors­es have bolt­ed from the sta­ble a long time ago and can­not be lo­cat­ed far less to get them back in the sta­bles.”

Re­call­ing that on the eve of the coun­try gain­ing In­de­pen­dence on Au­gust 31, 1962, Williams spoke to over 20,000 stu­dents dur­ing a ral­ly at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah about what is go­ing to be ex­pect­ed of them as the coun­try be­gan its jour­ney as a new in­de­pen­dent na­tion.

“He spoke about re­spect for your par­ents and teach­ers. He spoke about re­spect­ing your na­tion­al flag. He spoke about car­ry­ing the fu­ture of your na­tion in your school bags.”

Di­rect­ing that a record­ing of Williams’ speech be played, he said, “Let this coun­try know that if they were fol­low­ing what Dr Williams had said then the school vi­o­lence and the prob­lems with the chil­dren in this coun­try would not be as how it is to­day.”

He re­called that Williams spoke to the chil­dren like a fa­ther and said he im­plored them to be hon­est cit­i­zens. What do you see to­day? Every­thing that Dr Williams asked to be fol­lowed has turned to ze­ro to zilch and every­one is run­ning like head­less fowls try­ing to re­cov­er the dam­age that is ir­repara­ble by look­ing to­wards find­ing so­lu­tions that are not eas­i­ly at­tain­able.” Claim­ing that the coun­try has tried to bury Williams’ lega­cy, he said af­ter 41 years he is for­got­ten by his own coun­try­men.

“What a shame and school chil­dren are suf­fer­ing to­day be­cause through­out the years no one saw it nec­es­sary to re­mind them of what Dr Williams ex­pect­ed of them,” he added.

Vi­dale opined that Williams would have been hap­py to know that chil­dren are be­ing sus­pend­ed or ex­pelled from schools.

“It is not what he would have want­ed. I say, to­day, fix the sit­u­a­tion now and save our na­tion’s chil­dren be­fore it is much too late,” he said. Speak­ing at Har­ris Prom­e­nade, he not­ed that it was the first time the cer­e­mo­ny was be­ing held in San Fer­nan­do.

“While I am very hap­py to come to San Fer­nan­do, I am and would re­main very dis­ap­point­ed be­cause per­mis­sion was not grant­ed to have the cer­e­mo­ny at He­li­port, Ch­aguara­mas and with no jus­ti­fi­able rea­son or rea­sons.”

He said nowhere else in the world would this lev­el of dis­re­spect, dis­loy­al­ty and dis­hon­our he showed to a leader of Williams’ mag­ni­tude. The high­lights of the cer­e­mo­ny in­clud­ed a wreath-lay­ing event, the dis­tri­b­u­tion of awards to sev­en na­tion­als in var­i­ous fields and a pro­ces­sion along Har­ris Prom­e­nade by the Cadets and Girl Guide As­so­ci­a­tions ac­com­pa­nied by the T&T Po­lice Band.

San Fer­nan­do May­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo and PNM’s deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Joan Yuille-Williams al­so at­tend­ed the event.

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