Consider the facts, Quan Soon

04, Jul 2000
IF one is prepared to debate an issue, there has to be some coherency in the logic one applies to arguments advanced. There is always great difficulty attempting to follow a set of unrelated statements.

We started off the exchange with Ian Quan Soon after he advanced the view that the present predicament facing Afro-Trinidadians is a direct result of the brain drain that took place after Independence, due to concomitant "depression and social upheavals then", that colonial/capitalist policies implemented in the previous decades had nothing to do with this predicament of Afro-Trinidadians.

If anything in the colonial days Afro-Trinidadians were "substantially employed" in oil and were "small entrepreneurs", and that what is presently required is that we do everything possible to woo people to return to this country and obviously it was implied that these people would come with their much needed expertise and capital. No amount of fancy footwork can force us away from that premise, those assumptions and conclusion.

We sought to get Mr Quan Soon to look deeper. First at colonialism and what, by dint of its very nature, that system had to accomplish in this part of the world.

Quan Soon refuses to accept that colonialism divided and ruled, and claims he cannot see what the British could have possibly gained from such a policy.

He is unable to comprehend that colonialism was a system of control geared to guarantee that the epicentre (that is, the Mother Country) profited from specific economic arrangements at the expense of the colonies.

That system of control could not be dependent only on its forces of coercion (its police and army) to ensure the success of the enterprise.

That would never suffice. They had to mould cadres of inhabitants, train them to think with a mind similar to that of the coloniser, to design and establish as many artificial barriers as possible - utilising whatever was available: race, religion, etc ­ for the continuance of control.

To claim the divide and rule theory of colonialism has not been proven is to disregard world history. Korea did not become North and South Korea.

Vietnam did not become North and South Vietnam. The Indian sub-continent did not become India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The Congo was not stripped into so many parts and still today seethes as a result.

Have you suddenly gone mad, Mr Quan Soon? Is this the reality you term socialist polemics? How dare you ask what can be gained from a divide and rule policy in light of all the factual evidence existing all over the world.

The British here did everything to pit Africans and Indians against each other, to even subdivide each of the two groups, in order to enhance the system of control. After Independence, we moved from colonialism to a neo-colonial situation. The society opened up. American capital superseded British. New investments and industrial expansion were rapid.

So, too, were social displacement and employment increase. Bata shoe manufacturing in T&T displaced shoemaking artisans. Imported furniture displaced joiners. Multiply that over and over in all the sectors and you will understand the sense of powerlessness and hopelessness that Mr Quan Soon and his generation must have felt in 1964 and why they had to escape.

At the same time, between 1958-1963, oil refining throughput had increased by 100 per cent, crude oil production had increased by 33 per cent and the wage bill in the oil industry had increased by some eight per cent.

Government revenues from taxes (PAYE) moved from $4 million to $20 million. Among the many people who ran to New York were those who did not want to pay increased taxes.

Listen to the Sparrow calypso, it described the situation succinctly: Even if yuh leave and go Yuh cyar get away from de tax Mih fadder say he sharpening he axe Foh wen de collector come, to pay up de income tax!

This is no fixation with the past. It is the past which is the window and eyes to the future. Theoretical analysis is about putting logic to the reality of how people and phenomena moved naturally. If you learn anything from me, Mr Quan Soon, it should be that.

Glad to know that you have been so successful in life. House in Bayside Towers an' t'ing. My concern, though, is with the thousands who are yet to make their lives. As to this particular discourse, it no longer serves any purpose. So I shall be done with it!