Walk tall, despite the funny stuff

By Bukka Rennie
August 27, 2003

When the working-class organisation and mass movements occupied the centre stage of political activity in this country (1919-1956), their conception of home rule, ie Independence, was never separated from Federation and Caribbean unity.

The separation of these two objectives was engendered by middle-class officer-seekers and the path of development to which they yielded. We are at great pains not to say "the path of development they chose". In reality, they chose nothing. Yet "independence" is largely about "choices", fundamental choices, that is.

Oh, yes, we chose a flag, an anthem and an emblem, a coat of arms, a national day, and so forth. And we all know what Frantz Fanon had to say in analysing the "pitfalls of national consciousness". True to say we chose nothing! We merely went along with what obtained as given. And therein lies the genesis of our national malaise.

The point to be made on this our 41st "Independence" anniversary is that Independence is not only about being free from direct foreign political control but more so being free of any form of control by any organisation or group or social structure above and beyond the people united in purpose and focus in their communities of bonded interests.

Independence is about taking responsibility for oneself to make the choices, to pose and select the options; it is about taking responsibility for one's deeds as well as misdeeds, for successes as well as failings. It is about being courageous, surmounting one's own crippling, in-depth fears and not flinching to face the new challenges, no matter how gigantic these challenges may appear to be.

The PNM led this country into "Independence" with its slogan of "Massa Day Done" but yet maintained all the existing economic relationships, exchanging a British metropolitan epicentre for an American one. The PNM reflected all the contradictions of the society of the day.

It is often said the PNM endured being in power because of its superior organisation but true to say even the PNM itself had come to recognise by 1964 that its organisational structure had by necessity become an empty shell devoid of content.

A committee was set up headed by ANR Robinson to make recommendations on the role of the party in Independence and how the party was to function in Independence. It was an attempt to deal administratively with what was fundamentally an ideological or philosophical question.

The point is that it was not necessarily PNM's superior organisational structure, though this may have been a plus in a relative sense, the significant other being so dismally poor by comparison, but rather its duplicity in nature, being both autocratic and populist in approach at one and the same time.

This was more evident in the years 1956-1963, when the PNM first made its impression on the minds of the masses of people. First impression being a lasting one, as the saying goes. And no one embodied this duplicity, reflected this contradiction, more than Eric Williams himself.

True to say this populist, left-of-centre, progressive tendency had been planted in the PNM largely through the heavy influence of working-class politics throughout the world from the turn of the century, through the '30s, '40s and '50s, and by CLR James with whom Eric Williams discussed politics, political intervention and philosophy in Paris, France, a fact which cemented their initial friendship and saw Williams inviting CLR to come home to be involved in the West Indian Federal Labour Party and the PNM as editor of The Nation.

As Nicholas Simonette informed us at the conference, "CLR at 100" held at UWI in 2001, CLR worked diligently to build the party groups of the PNM, to imbibe them with a view of the world and to bring them alive to the politics of the times.

How many of us can recall that in almost every community there was a party group, a youth group and a village council with a symbiotic relationship between the three that kept the communities informed on a constant basis.

How many can recall village councils mobilising communities to build community centres in which were housed all cultural, educational and training activity. And if the community party groups and youth groups coalesced easily into the general council and the annual convention, then the village councils had their regional or county-based Association of Village Councils that fed into a National Association of Village Councils, all of which lent strength to the local government system.

At the age of 12, I recall coming into contact with the Monte Grande Consumer Co-operative that operated out of Mrs Davis's shop and which was managed by my father, Percival Rennie, secretary of a party group and a qualified accountant/bookkeeper, and the now deceased Garrick Warner, then principal of Tunapuna AC school.

They purchased goods in bulk so that their membership could obtain better prices. Such kinds of social intervention via structural outreach programmes have long been gone, but it is that which provided the PNM with its progressive populist tendency.

Today, there is no contact and interaction between party structures and the communities. So "Government" has now become everything and so is, in fact, nothing. And the "party" exists but only in minimal form devoid of content. The end result is a constant wavering between this populist tendency and government by autocratic imposition, a legacy of colonial tradition.

Relationship with people is the only issue. PNM built up over the years all that exist here as social infrastructure to the benefit of the whole country and yet people will tell you that they have done nothing.

The pylons of lights from Point Lisas Industrial Estate, the most modern of its kind in this hemisphere, shine constantly in the eyes of the people of Couva, many of whom still maintain that the PNM has kept them in the stone age. In other words you do nothing if you do not touch people in a meaningful way.

True to their populist tendency, true to what was happening then in similar areas of the world, and in order to stay in office by appeasing the mass movement, they implemented a massive programme of nationalisation of the "commanding heights" of the economy: sugar, oil, electricity, banking, communications, manufacturing, textiles, printing and packaging, etc.

Then once again the wheel turns and the demand according to the IMF conditionalities is to privatise or divest State holdings. The PNM decides to begin with NCB (National Commercial Bank). One otherwise competent advisor seeks to bring in a bank from India under the guise that it is the Bank of Burundi. Immediately he is thrown in the dog house.

The word is then sent out that the desire is to sell shares to the public, to the common citizens rather than to a few bigshots. One private businessman organises his workers to buy shares and then by agreement to resell only to him. The PNM cancels that approach and then seeks to find a measure through which the widest possible shareholding could be obtained by the majority of people. Answer: the Unit Trust. Today, the most successful venture ever in T&T's history and a model that is being copied by other parts of the world, eg Belize, Dominica, etc.

If only we can begin to learn from our own history and our own doings, we will most certainly walk tall, despite all the funny stuff going down, to quote Cannonball Adderly.