Chance for T&T to set wrongs right

May 15, 2002
By Bukka Rennie

We ended the last column with two rhetorical questions: How do we go about translating all that's happening culturally throughout the region as a new basis upon which to transform Caribbean political-economy?

How do we utilise all these cultural manifestations, that has forced the whole world to pay attention to us, to forge the Caribbean Single Market and Economy that we all claim to know is an absolute imperative? How do we dare to continue to address the whole world, when we are so scared shitless to inculcate a regional perspective of ourselves?

The major reason for what appears to be our lack of political will to effect any fundamental change in the Caribbean stems from our failure to rigorously examine the past attempts to forge regional unity and to expose our shortcomings and lay blame squarely where it ought to be laid.

History is supposed to be our guide, otherwise we are destined to keep "spinning top in mud", getting nowhere.

In the '40s and '50s, no one in the Caribbean envisaged "political independence" from British colonialism without federation of the islands. All the major players on centre stage then, all the people's institutions and organisations that sought to coalesce people's interests and launch them onto various paths of social development, had federation of the islands as a cardinal principle of their programme.

There was no fundamental difference in programme and policy between the then existing parties and trade unions, for the social consciousness that prevailed in both these formations of the people was still proletarian in nature and perspective.

One is amazed today to read the manifesto of the 1958 West Indian Federal Labour Party to which people like Williams, Adams, Manley, Burnham, Jagan expressed their commitment.

That manifesto stated that the fundamental aim of the WIFLP was "...the creation in the West Indies of a democratic socialist society wherein is secured for workers, by hand and by brain, the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution possible..."

The major planks outlined as the means towards fulfilling the fundamental aim quoted above were as follows:

A Customs Union to integrate trade policies; equitable distribution of capital investments for industrial development throughout the region; closer ties with the wider region involving islands such as Puerto Rico, Cuba, Haiti, Suriname, British Honduras (now Belize), etc which have some cultural and geo-political affinity to the West Indies; the establishment of a UWI; a Federal Bureau of Standards and a Central Economic Planning Division, etc.

One needs to be reminded that all this was being advanced at a time when the European countries had not yet even envisaged a European Union. Though these ideals were indeed illustrious and noteworthy for the Caribbean region, nevertheless, within two years of the launch of the WIFLP, middle-class professional and large and medium-size business interests, with their handmaiden of racial/ethnic considerations, would rise to the fore and kill the regional initiatives in their tracks.

The petty jealousies and squabbles that arose were not the fundamental reasons for the destruction of the Federal movement. The question of the site of the Federal capital and seat of the Federal government and so on was of little significance.

The Jamaican business class, which at the time was the foremost and most aggressive business sector in the region, saw the rest of the West Indian islands as burdensome rather than as opportunity for expansion of Jamaican capital and commercial investments.

Or better put, even though they may have recognised investment possibilities in the region, they were nevertheless of the view that the trade-off in context of the free movement of labour within the Federation would bring enormous pressure on the leading West Indian economy, which was then Jamaican, and probably be thereby destructive to the Jamaican social infrastructure.

The Jamaican business class initiated the anti-Federal move and was supported by Indian business elites both in T&T and Guyana who operated with a minority psyche, felt they had a class position and wealth and property to defend, and feared that Indo-Caribbean people would be swamped by Afro-Caribbean culture and numbers within the Federal paradigm.

The T&T response after the Jamaican inspired debacle, the "one from ten leaves nought" irrational mathematics, was merely to cover the pique, pain and disappointment given all the hard work that was done in the interest of the bigger picture.

As a result of the demise of the Federal move, the political independence that was granted by British colonialism could bring no fundamental, objective change in the system of relationships and arrangement of things that existed.

The economic structures remained intact, dependency on the British was exchanged for dependency on the USA, and we continued the process of producing primary commodities for direct and productive consumption elsewhere and unrelated to the specific demands of any integrated home economy.

According to CLR James, having, within a Federal context, to work out new inter-island economic and trading relationships would have meant in reality having to break structurally with the old colonial system. We chose instead to leave the old political-economy intact but with the covering veneer of sovereign "flag and anthem".

The structural breakaway is still screaming to be done. All that has happened is that local private business elites have entrenched themselves in the region, sometimes in partnership with private foreign capital, sometimes via State-controlled sectors and moreso in areas where there was room left by direct foreign investors.

Today, given the global considerations, the demand for a Caribbean Single Market and Economy has once again taken centre stage. This time however it is not the Jamaican business class, but Trinidadian and Tobagonian counterpart that has found itself in the driver's seat.

Will we in T&T set the wrongs right? Will we accept the moral responsibility that comes with our present economic dominance in the region?

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3