Race, Class And Ideology in Post-colonial Trinidad

CHAPTER

21
Kelvin Singh

Race, Class And Ideology in Post-Colonial Trinidad, 195691

he term post-colonial in this paper is employed in a strictly political and chronological sense, meaning the period after the island of Trinidad (together with its political adjunct, the island of Tobago) was conceded almost complete political independence, almost because it is a political independence still circumscribed by the retention of the British Privy Council as the final court of appeal in judicial matters (including the interpretation of the islands constitution). Ideology refers to the corpus of ideas and values, whether logically integrated or not, promoted by representatives, self-appointed or not, of two or more competing groups, about how the society should be organised and towards what ends. Race is employed largely as a sociological rather than a biological concept, though visible phenotypical group differences have been the main criteria employed by the local population to distinguish its major components: African, Indian, Chinese, Syrian-Lebanese and European, as well as the miscegenated components that have emerged from the cross-over sexual merging of individuals from the major groups. These are popularly known by such creole designations as dougla, (of Afro-Indian ancestry) or red (of Afro-European ancestry and referred to in most anglophone post-colonial Caribbean histories as Coloureds, though now officially categorised as mixed). Class is used here as a strictly politico-economic category, based on the relationship of three major strata of the population to the ownership and/or control of the means of production and distribution and to the state. They comprise a ruling class of economic, political and professional elites, with shared basic material interests and ideological values; a middle class (a larger composite class made up of different occupational groups and ethnic fragments,

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generally literate, involved in the public services, the teaching profession, and small-scale commercial enterprises, but not politically united); and a working class (also occupationally differentiated and multi-ethnic, made up principally of skilled and unskilled manual workers, as well as small-scale food producers, but again not politically united). These classes are, of course, convenient analytical categories and do not imply any rigid demarcation in the populations perception of social reality. Indeed, most of the population were either not class conscious or only marginally so. The situation was quite different with regard to race consciousness. Of the three major classes categorised in this essay, the ruling class experienced a major change in its ethnic composition once political independence was conceded to the two-island colony by Great Britain in 1962. The black and coloured middle class at last gained a preponderant voice in the Legislative Council, though the former white colonial ruling class retained considerable political influence through the constitutional arrangements that allowed for a nominated rather than an elected Senate or upper house. They also maintained control over the private corporate sector, financial and commercial, as well as (before 1973) the plantation sector. They likewise retained some degree of influence over the coercive arm of the state and the judiciary. With the expansion of a light manufacturing sector, they became the leading investors, sometimes in collaboration with entrepreneurs of the Syrian-Lebanese community, whom they had perceived in the late colonial period as menacing commercial competitors.1 In all these sectors, moreover, they continued and strengthened the external linkages they traditionally had with British and Canadian investors, who were shortly to be reinforced by American investors. In other words, the leading members of the former white colonial ruling class could count on powerful white allies in the North Atlantic economic, political and military environment within which the newly autonomous two-island state was enmeshed. The transition to political independence between 1956 and 1962 was inevitably a tension-filled one. The Indian sector of the society comprised approximately 35 per cent of the population in 1956, the African population approximately 47 per cent, the population of mixed ancestry around 14 per cent, while the European sector, inclusive of the Portuguese, comprised a little less than three per cent, the Syrian/Lebanese less than one per cent and the Chinese approximately one per cent.2 With the concession of adult franchise to the population in 1946, it was just a matter of time before the middle class leaders of the African and Indian sectors of the population would be presiding over two consolidated ethnic blocs reflecting the islands demography. Race, or more accurately, ethnicity (since the cultural dimension of race was important, especially with regard to the Hindu and Muslim segments of the Indian population), had been the fundamental criterion of political and economic management during the colonial period. Race and class
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practically coincided during this period since non-Europeans were alleged by all the European colonial powers to be in various stages of unfitness for the exercise of political and economic management of their societies, and at best would have to undergo a long process of acculturation to European in this case, British standards and values. Only that minority of Africans and Indians fortunate enough to gain a secondary or tertiary education would be able to fulfil this requirement.3 In this respect, Africans and those of mixed-African descent had a significant head-start over Indians, since the latter did not become numerically significant as permanent settlers in the society before the last decade of the nineteenth century. The latter were also largely confined to the rural areas, forming the bulk of the plantation labour force, and over half their numbers were functionally illiterate in the English language as late as 1956. Additionally, the majority remained firmly attached to the core elements of their Asian culture, particularly to the Hindu and Muslim religions, marriage patterns, music and dance. In all these respects, added to their phenotypical differences from both the African and European segments of the population, they were perceived by the latter as a distinctive and alien segment, except for the minority of westernised, largely Presbyterian-educated, middle class elements who were emerging from within the Indian segment of the population in the first half of the twentieth century.4 Had the emerging westernised middle class Indians in the crucial transition period between 1946 and 1956 retained the political hegemony they had exercised in the first half of the twentieth century over the Indian segment of the population, the subsequent political evolution of the society might have been significantly different in terms of ethnicity, for they were not the carriers of what the non-Indian population considered alien cultural symbols. Yet there was a certain inevitability about what subsequently happened. It was precisely because of their western acculturation that this Indian middle class would be rejected by the rural Indian masses as authentic representatives of their cultural interests, though they had often articulated their material and cult ural grievances.5 This was also a decade of fluid political alignments. The working class movement which initially appeared to be consolidating across ethnic boundaries in the late 1930s and early 1940s had begun to fragment, once strike and other protest action were contained within the imposed institutional framework of industry-specific trade unionism. The charismatic, but temperamental Tubal Uriah Butler, a working class leader, was presiding over an odd coalition of middle class Indians and African working class devotees located mostly in the islands oil belt. Trade unionism, western style, was proving to be a source of division rather than unification of the islands African and Indian working masses. Moreover, the colonial administration was making a last-ditch effort to preserve as much of the colonial order as it could in the new era of universal franchise, and this meant the containment of radical populists like Butler and the socialist-oriented trade union leaders like John
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Rojas and Quintin OConnor. Political competition between the Butlerites and their former colleagues in the Oilfield Workers Trade Union, whose ideology was basically socialist, only served to compound the fragmentation of the working class movement in this critical transition period. This, of course, worked to the advantage of the colonial elites who were able, through the governor, to put together a quasi-ministerial team of elected representatives who could be relied on to pursue economic and labour policies compatible with traditional colonial interests.6 Equally important, working class fragmentation also facilitated biracial political consolidation. The rural Indian population, over 70 per cent of whom were Hindu, locked into the plantation sector by white colonial policy, and the objects of contempt from western-acculturated Africans and those of mixed African ancestry, who had internalised the negative British imperialist stereotypes of Indian civilisation, had found a leader in Bhadase Sagan Maraj, a Brahmin caudillo, to represent their long-neglected cultural interests. Maraj was able to unify the major competing Hindu sanatanist factions under his leadership and, as an elected member of the Legislative Council in the period 195055, established a working alliance with the Syrian-descended Roy Joseph, minister of education, who supported a rapid school-building programme launched by Marajs religious organisation, the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS), in several rural districts with substantial Hindu residents who had long resented the prosely tising role of the schools r un by Christian denominations. Maraj also became a major player in the trade union rivalry taking place in the sugar industry and by 1956 would assume the leading role over the predominantly Indian sugar workers.7 With the approach of the 1956 general elections, by which time he had formed his own political organisation, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Maraj appeared to be a major contender for legislative influence in the period that was to usher in full internal self-government to the two-island colony. Like Butler, his African counterpart, he was a charismatic leader, but was clearly presiding over a more ethnically consolidated base, aligning an Indian petite bourgeoisie, an emergent Indian professional middle class (predominantly teachers), an influential Hindu priesthood and the sugar workers (the core of the Indian working class). The Port-of-Spain-based, western-acculturated African and mixed-African middle class saw the emergence of Marajs party as the principal threat to their bid for political hegemony as the imperial power began its tactical retreat.8 As they had done periodically since the 1880s, some members of the mixed-African middle class had entered into a loose coalition with declasss elements of the white segment of the Port-of-Spain population, led by Albert Gomes, a Portuguese creole, to form the Party of Political Progress Groups. It had the support of the colonys economic and professional elites, mostly of white and mixed ancestry, and was based primarily in Port-of-Spain, the colonys capital.9 But the mass base that Gomes had enjoyed through his
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earlier involvement in trade unionism was being rapidly eroded as he increasingly appeared to have been co-opted by the colonial establishment. The political groups still espousing the ideology of socialism inherited from the 1920s and 1930s no longer had, ironically, a mass base in this transition period.10 It was into this scenario that Dr Eric Williams, the first local student to earn a doctorate in history, entered, carrying with him the kind of charisma that was bound to appeal to the urban middle class, inclusive of some Indian professionals, who had been nurtured in the culture of academic achievement as the principal avenue to upward mobility. The story of Williams dismissal from the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission and his subsequent decision to enter the political arena, with the avid support of a middle class intelligentsia, is narrated elsewhere and need not be repeated here.11 The critical factors in the subsequent evolution of the Trinidad and Tobago polity was the decision of his party, the Peoples National Movement (PNM), not to enter into any alliance with any other political faction, nor to accept any candidate who had formal links with the Hindu-based SDMS.12 This set the stage for the strategy Williams would then employ to win the 1956 legislative council elections. This strategy consisted of projecting the ideology of West Indian nationalism, whose ethnic implications could not be missed by representatives of the Indian population; launching a bitter attack on the SDMS and its school-building programme, as well as its linkage with Bhadase Marajs PDP; and at the same time signalling to the African population that he was about to terminate the era of white dominance in the two-island colony.13 At first he did not succeed in winning the consolidated support of the African and mixed-African population, especially in the oil belt in the south of Trinidad, where there was still a lingering loyalty to Butler. Nor was he successful in the cocoa-growing districts in the north-east of Trinidad, where Victor Bryan, the leader of the revitalised Trinidad Labour Party (the legacy of the deceased Arthur Andrew Cipriani, that exceptional white creole), held his own. Nor did he as yet win over the island of Tobago, where Tobagonian insularismo, represented by A.P.T. James, prevailed over Williams West Indian nationalism. But by focusing his attack on the SDMS, he was able to detach a substantial number of Muslim and Presbyterian Indians from Bhadase Marajs Hindu-based PDP and win a slender majority for his PNM in the Legislative Council elections of 1956, enough to enable him to form a cabinet with the approval of Sir Edward Beetham, the colonys last governor, and the Colonial Office.14 The next five years, however, would witness a dramatic rally around Williams by the African and a large proportion of the mixed-African population, as Williams, smarting under his partys narrow defeat in the subsequent federal elections of 1958, and ignoring the feelings of those members of his party who were of Indian ancestry, widened the range of his attack beyond the Hindubased SDMS to incorporate the whole Indian segment of the colonys
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population. They were now portrayed as a recalcitrant minority standing in the way of West Indian nationalism despite the fact that the PDP was now part of a West Indian federal party, the Democratic Labour Party (DLP), led by the Jamaican, Alexander Bustamante.15 Williams also engaged in menacing rhetoric against the white elite, which appeared to be aligning with the PDP (soon to be merged into a more trans-ethnic party named after the federal DLP) to contain the rise of Williams Afro-centric nationalism.16 It was in this period, too, that the first public signs of an element of political thuggery emerged as part of the PNMs electioneering strategy, intensifying in the runup to the 1961 general elections, and culminating in the declaration by the PNM administration of a limited state of emergency in some of the constituencies heavily populated by Indians, when it appeared that communal violence might erupt there.17 Williams was engaged in realpolitik, calculating that political contestation between an Indian-based and an African-based party would virtually ensure an indefinite tenure in office of the African-based party by virtue of the numerical superiority of the African and mixed-African populations, and the ability of the governing party to gerrymander electoral boundaries on the basis of the geographical residency of the two largest voting blocs (Africans and Indians).18 Such a polarised pattern of ethnic voting provided both opportunities and dangers for the smaller non-Indian ethnic groups. They could overtly or covertly support the Indian-based party to contain the drive towards African hegemony, as they were to do between 1956 and 1961. Their main interest was to ensure that Afro-political nationalism was not transformed into Afro-economic nationalism. So long as the African-controlled state did not espouse the socialist ideology in word or deed, they could abide by and indeed collaborate with it. In this respect, despite his occasional threatening rhetoric, Williams had already indicated that he was impressed by the Puerto Rican model of development, and he looked forward to American investments.19 This might not have been welcome to a white colonial elite which was historically tied to British lines of trade and investment, but it was certainly in their eyes a more attractive option than the socialist one or one based on an ideology of African political and economic hegemony. Besides, it was becoming obvious that the British, faced with their own post-war problems, were in a process of tactical retreat from the Caribbean. Indeed, as is well known, once the British West Indies Federation had collapsed in 1962, they quickly proceeded to grant Jamaica and Trinidad/Tobago, the two largest of their West Indian colonies, political independence, albeit circumscribed by the retention of the British Privy Council as the highest court of appeal and the British Crown as the highest nominal symbol of authority.20 The biracial system which pitted a succession of Indian-led parties, whose main electoral support was in the constituencies with high concentrations of
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Indian voters, against the Williams-led PNM, whose base of support was in the constituencies with a high concentration of African and mixed-African voters, ensured the unbroken ascendancy of the PNM for a period of 30 years (195686). The politics of race played the major role in sustaining the PNM in power for this period. The Indian middle class leadership was drawn increasingly from a rising Indian professional elite after 1961, when Bhadase Maraj was jettisoned in favour Dr Rudranath Capildeo, a London-trained mathematician/physicist.21 During the politics of transition to independence the Indian-based DLP received support from the colonial white elite in undertaking the role of opposition party. In the circumstances that support was predictable, Williams anti-white rhetoric coinciding as it did with his attack on the Indian-based political leadership. However, once the Indian-based part y had performed its role of containment of the African-based PNM, the white elite was able to effect a reconciliation with the latter as the first post-independence constitution permitted them nominated representation to the senate. Williams also coopted a few whites as advisors and intermediaries with the white business world,22 a necessary move if he hoped to attract foreign capital to fulfil his Puerto Rican development strategy. Indeed, Williams was also successful in co-opting the Chinese and the Syrian-Lebanese ethnic minorities into a collaborative role with the PNM. A substantial proportion of the Muslim sector of the Indian population also threw in their lot with the PNM when he made Kamaluddin Mohammed, an Indian Muslim, a key member of his cabinet. That meant that the electoral opposition was, for the most part, a Hindubased opposition after 1962, when political independence was conceded to the two-island colony. This is not to say that the PNM regime did not come under class challenge. From 1965 class-based challenges to the political system began to be mounted, mainly by disaffected trade unionists who recognised that Williams government was failing to alter significantly the colonial social structure. His Puerto Rican model of development was, in fact, reinforcing the economically ascendant position of the white business elite, and the ethnic profile of business management remained unchanged in an economy that was still basically an oil- and sugar-based one. Investment in the oil and petrochemical sectors were capital-intensive and the enormous concessions granted to this sector were leading to a net outflow of foreign exchange.23 The light manufacturing sector, while providing some additional jobs, was largely of the assembly-type, which required a substantial recurrent draw-down on foreign exchange reserves to pay for the necessary imported components and to facilitate profit remittances to parent companies abroad. With a rising population, reinforced by a steady stream of West Indian immigrants, and the expansion of a white-collar middle class that the PNMs programme of expanded secondary and tertiary education was creating, the Puerto Rican model could not solve the neo-colonial problems
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of dependency and underdevelopment, with their inevitable social concomitants of high unemployment and deficient social services. It was in this context that working class ideologues within the trade union movement, as well as from an emergent post-independence intelligentsia, sought to transcend the limitations of race politics. Most of the new intelligentsia came from the newly established St Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies. Williams, however, had won over the key Port-of-Spain-based trade unions those representing the dockworkers, the public service and a large section of the teachers. These unions were based in the capital city, the geographical core of the PNM. The industry-specific mode of trade union negotiation inherited from the colonial power allowed the state to reward collaborative unions while minimising concessions to opposing ones. Therefore, the trade union movement was never able to mount a unified challenge to the regime throughout the whole period of its ascendancy, and whenever it resorted to the anarcho-syndicalist tactic of strike action, Williams did not hesitate to pass restrictive industrial legislation and employ the armed apparatus of the state against the radical unions, even declaring a state of emergency if he thought it necessary.24 The radical unions also had to deal with a further complication: after 1965 Bhadase Maraj, already ousted from the leadership of the Indian-based opposition, began collaborating with Williams. But as boss of the sugar workers union, Maraj failed to win any substantial concessions from Tate and Lyle, the British-based multinational corporation which still controlled the Trinidad sugar industry. When disgruntled workers finally overthrew him as their union boss, he was replaced by a young Indian lawyer/economist, Basdeo Panday, who proceeded to make the sugar workers union the base of a new political party, the United Labour Front (ULF), in opposition to the PNM regime.25 That meant, in effect, that although the new Panday-led political party had the support of the leading cadres of the radical African-led unions, especially the Oilfield Workers Trade Union, which since 1937 had repeatedly aligned itself with the sugar workers, the new party was still identified in the minds of the African population including a substantial section of the membership of the radical unions as an Indian-based party, and the PNM propaganda machine did not fail to remind them of this.26 As the general elections of 1966 and 1976 were to demonstrate, the ideology of socialism based on the workers state proved to be insufficient to break the pattern of racial solidarity as the basis of political mobilisation in the newly independent two-island state. In 1966 every candidate of the C.L.R. James-inspired Workers and Farmers Party lost his deposit, while in 1976 the ULF won just ten of the 36 seats contested and these were in the predominantly Indian-populated ones.27 We must now examine the other factors that contributed to the sustenance of the pattern of racial political mobilisation and voting. One such factor was the resurgence of the Garveyite movement under the name of Black Power. In
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its initial phase under Garvey himself during the 1920s and the 1930s, the movement had focused on African initiative and collective effort within the private sector of the economy, while preaching the virtues of Pan-African solidarity. In its post-independence phase, beginning in the late 1960s, the movement looked primarily to the African-controlled state to play a leading role in the economy, while facilitating the rise of an African bourgeoisie at corporate, retail and huckstering levels within the private sector. In a series of street demonstrations, led by a section of the new university-based African intelligentsia, the movement generated a local political environment, which coincided with, and drew inspiration from, a similar environment in the United States of America.28 The movement was almost analogous to that which had been stimulated by Williams himself in the later 1950s and early 1960s. However, there was one significant difference from the tactics adopted by Williams: the new African intelligentsia avoided antagonising the Indian population and indeed sought to convince the latter that it was representing their cause as well. It focused its attack exclusively on the white economic power structure and the failure of the PNM regime to replace it with a black one. But only a minority of Indians were persuaded enough to participate actively in the demonstrations. Those in the historic sugar zone received the demonstrators with politeness and even offered hospitality. But the majority of Indians were uncertain, and some remained apprehensive about the real objectives of the Black Power Movement.29 Historical and recently experienced antipathies between Africans and Indians could not be eradicated by a few days of symbolic street demonstrations urging African-Indian solidarity. Moreover, at the existential level, it was becoming evident that the movement, apart from its focus on the structure of economic control, was also preoccupied with other essentially African dilemmas: those of African cultural identity, aesthetics, and somatic norm image.30 The symbolic appeal of the movement for the Indians was thus bound to be limited. The Black Power Movement had no organic connection with the labour movement. Though some of the more radical union leaders, like George Weekes of the Oilfield Workers Trade Union, did identify with it, probably because they too wished for the state to assume control of the commanding heights of the economy, most of the Port-of-Spain-based unions distanced themselves from it and, indeed, urged Williams to declare a state of emergency. Nor was the aborted uprising by the countrys small military regiment an integral part of the movement, though the environment of unrest might have been a precipitating factor. The ill-fated insurgency by a small band of middle class guerilleros, known as the National Union of Freedom Fighters, probably was also inspired by the unrest but had little ideological connection to the Black Power Movement, which did not advocate armed struggle but was essentially a movement to put pressure on the African-based government to use the power of the state to pursue more African-oriented economic, social welfare and
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cultural policies.31 The unrest of the early 1970s was suppressed by the PNM regime without much difficulty. But Williams knew that unless he acceded to some of the demands of the movement, the political base of his party could be seriously eroded, especially among the younger generation of Africans. Already in the midst of the turmoil one of his young cabinet ministers, A.N.R. Robinson, had tendered his resignation and would henceforth become one of the leading opponents of the PNM regime with his own solid two-constituency base in the smaller island of Tobago. A wide cross section of the new African intelligentsia, even when they disagreed on ideology and tactics, were nevertheless entering the ranks of political opposition.32 Williams response was to convince the African electorate that he was identified with their aspirations and that he differed only in tactics. As evidence of this, he demanded and received from the white economic elite a place for the state in the banking sector. He set up a Workers Bank in which the trade unions would be significant shareholders. He also established a state-owned National Commercial Bank and levied a special tax to promote an extensive public works programme to cater for the mainly urban unemployed. A stroke of luck, the surge in oil prices from late 1973, just when the local economy seemed to be in crisis and he had proffered his resignation as political leader of the PNM, enabled him to widen dramatically the area of state control in the economy, opening up in the process vast opportunities for the rise of an African managerial elite.33 But even as the state was extending its range of economic ownership and management, Williams publicly repudiated socialist ideology and gave up economic planning, making in the process unfavourable comparisons between the capitalist and socialist countries.34 Whether this was intended to pacify the western capitalist countries, especially the USA, on whose market the Trinidad petrochemical sector was heavily dependent, or was simply part of his much-vaunted pragmatist ideology, is difficult to say. As the ideological war in the Caribbean intensified, he consistently called for the reintegration of Cuba into the Caribbean and Latin American polity. When, however, Cuban troops went to the rescue of Angola from encroaching South African contingents in 1979, he refused to allow Cuban planes to land at Piarco International Airport,35 although he had been one of the leading critics of the apartheid regime in South Africa. Again, when Maurice Bishops New Jewel Movement overthrew the thuggish Gairy regime in Grenada and proceeded to establish a socialist regime on the Cuban model, he steadfastly refused to establish diplomatic relations with it.36 If all this was intended to reassure the United States government that his regime was not socialist, nevertheless the local white economic elite was becoming apprehensive at the steady incursion of the state into areas of the economy traditionally regarded as the proper sphere of private enterprise. It was in this context that the white economic elite gave covert support to a new
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political party, the Organisation of National Reconstruction (ONR). The latter quickly drew substantial support from the Indian middle class, which was becoming increasingly convinced that the politics of Indian opposition was leading only to the marginalisation of their interests. Led by Karl HudsonPhillips, a former attorney-general in Williams government, and containing a significant cadre of defectors from Williams PNM, the new party appeared at one point to be gaining such momentum that it seemed that it would at least replace Basdeo Pandays Indian-based ULF (which itself suffered from a severe factional split) as the new official opposition.37 Should that happen, it would be more difficult for the PNM and its newly entrenched state capitalist managerial elite to win African mass support by projecting the spectre of an Indian party as the only alternative to the PNM. But before that new political scenario could unfold, Williams died unexpectedly at the end of March1981, to be succeeded as leader of his party by George Chambers, one of his three deputy leaders and his minister of finance.38 Benefiting from a wave of shock and public sympathy from Williams death, the leading cadres of the PNM were able to rally once more the African masses to the partys fold, helped by an overt and covert campaign that focused on the issue of race on the eve of the 1981 general elections.39 Though receiving a larger percentage of the popular vote than the Indian-based ULF, the new party suffered from the ethnic demarcation of constituency boundaries and failed to win even one seat in the elections. But it could boast that it had a significant trans-ethnic base, even though that was mostly middle class and not concentrated enough in any one constituency.40 The electoral humiliation made its supporters implacable opponents of the PNM regime, which was now to suffer from the down-swing of the petroleum-based economy. If the white economic elite expected that the Chambers administration, under the new adverse conditions in the petroleum-based economy, would begin a process of state retreat from the economic sectors it controlled, they were mistaken. Instead, the Chambers administration sought to widen the states share holding stake in the private sector through the establishment of a stock exchange and a state investment agency known as the Unit Trust, a move which spokesmen for the large corporate sector interpreted as further evidence that the state was incrementally heading in a socialist direction without officially espousing socialist ideology.41 Despite assurances from the new minister of finance that the Unit Trust would limit its shareholding to no more than 10 per cent of any companys shares, the private corporate sector feared that the linkage of the Central Bank with the National Insurance Board and the Unit Trust, all now under state control and African management, would give to the state a preponderance of economic power. When, in addition, the Chambers administration passed a retrenchment and severance bill that would have given to retrenched workers a prior claim over stockholders and creditors on the assets of the companies with whom they had been employed,
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the private corporate sector saw this as a threat to the capitalist system.42 Not surprisingly the Chambers administration came under increasing attack from the private corporate sector as its five-year term wore on. The exception was a Chinese-led conglomerate, which appeared to be prospering under the administration.43 In the meantime, some elements within the African intelligentsia emphasised the need for continued African support of the regime, arguing that Africans did not have an entrepreneurial culture and therefore had to depend on the state for employment and entrepreneurial support. There was good reason for adopting this position. The regime had not only expanded opport unities for an African managerial class in the proliferating state enterprises, but it had created a large public works programme for the urban, mostly African, unemployed, and had patronised the growth of an African retail sector in the heart of Port-of-Spain. In contrast, units of the police and military began a campaign of destroying the wayside stalls of Indian vendors, an action which was bound to keep the Indian masses in a state of alienation from the regime.44 If the intention of all this was to maintain the biracial system of party politics, it could only be sustained by efficient management of the state sector, especially in the context of declining petroleum prices. But corruption and mismanagement of the state sector had already become notorious. Press disclosures of corrupt deals, sometimes involving key cabinet ministers, coincided with a precipitous fall in oil revenues in the latter half of the Chambers administration.45 Falling oil revenues not only made it more difficult for the state to maintain its patronage of the African lumpenproletariat through its extensive public works programme, but also forced it to devalue the local currency, with the consequent rise in consumer prices. At the same time, the weaker companies in the private sector began collapsing, thereby putting greater pressure on the labour force.46 These developments provided a new opportunity for opposing political factions to make another bid to topple the regime. Among these were not only the traditional Indian-based opposition, but the Tobago-based opposition (the Democratic Action Congress), led by A.N.R. Robinson, the former PNM finance minister; the middle class ONR, led by Karl Hudson-Phillips, the former PNM attorney-general; and the politically romantic African/mi xed-African intelligentsia known as the Tapia House Movement. But they all understood that not one of them had as yet a sufficiently wide electoral base to defeat the PNM. They were therefore forced to merge their parties into a single entity known as the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR), entrusting the leadership to the Tobago-based Robinson. The formation of this party of parties, as the Tapia House Movement described it, led to an overwhelming victory over the PNM in the 1986 general elections, the PNM winning just three seats out of the 36 contested. Attended by unprecedented scenes of euphoria from the mass of the NARs trans-ethnic supporters, the victory
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appeared to mark the end of the biracial system of politics.47 But in their moments of euphoria few of the NARs supporters bothered to consider whether the interests represented within the new party were compatible, especially if the leadership of the long-marginalised Indian sector was to demand equity in appointments to the new cabinet and to state boards, and if the strong corporate interests that lay behind the ONR were to press ahead with their demand for divestment of state enterprises and retrenchment in the public sector. Within a year the party of parties was in travail. Its sentimental slogan of one love proved to be ideologically barren since it was intended simply to mask the race and class cleavages that existed in the society and were reproduced in the party. The struggle for the distribution of portfolios within the cabinet, state boards and state enterprises was both a race and a class struggle. It was a struggle between the African and Indian factions of the middle class.48 In the context of the struggle over ministerial and statutory appointments, ethnic consciousness was heightened over the proposed construction of a cultural centre by the government of India, following precedents set by the Venezuelan and some other governments.49 The Indian demand for equity in the distribution of portfolios was soon interpreted by the African faction as a ULF grab for power, which was equated as a move towards the Indianisation of the Government.50 The distribution of the chairmanship of the state boards, however, did not reflect this. Out of 41 boards Indians were assigned to the chairmanship of six, and these were considered minor. Persons of African descent were assigned to 28, while seven, the really big plums, according to Selwyn Ryan, the academic/feature columnist, were assigned to French Creoles, the local collective designation for persons of European ancestry.51 In the cabinet, Indians at first fared somewhat better. Though they were in a minority there as well, the important Ministry of Energy was assigned to Kelvin Ramnath, an Indian member of the ULF; the Ministry of External Affairs and Immigration went to Basdeo Panday, the leader of the ULF; Local Government was also assigned to Brinsley Samaroo, an Indian. But the bickering continued and was precipitated by the personal animosity that developed between John Humphrey, the white Creole ULF minister of housing, and A.N.R. Robinson, the prime minister, over such issues as a harbour development contract for Tobago and the creation of a new local currency the brainchild of Humphrey to be called the Trinity Dollar. Amidst the bickering, towards the end of his administrations first year, Robinson not only relieved Humphrey of his ministerial portfolio, but also took away the energy portfolio from Kelvin Ramnath, and the immigration section of Pandays portfolio, a move that was bound to be regarded as a personal affront by the ULF leader. This move by Robinson only served to intensify the public criticism of his leadership by the alienated members of his cabinet, to which Robinson responded in February
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1988, by removing the ULF leader and his alienated colleagues from the cabinet. It was a move that won the approbation of the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Commerce, the Manufacturers Association, and the Employers Consultative Association all representative of the larger business interests in the country. Also welcoming the move were the two leading newspapers, the Trinidad Express and the Trinidad Guardian.52 The demoted ULF members did not resign from the party but proceeded the following month to form a party caucus called Club 88. In March 1989, by which time it was clear that the NAR was becoming unpopular with African middle and working classes because of its economic policies, Club 88 was launched as a full-fledged political party called the United National Congress (UNC). The NAR was nevertheless able to retain three prominent Indians, all former academics at the St Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies, while Robinson was able to co-opt from the campus Department of History another who resigned his lectureship with alacrity to fill the ministerial position from which Panday, until then his political leader, was peremptorily removed. The fact was that with its overwhelming electoral victory in December 1986, the leadership of the NAR and its advisers could have risked losing the alienated ULF representatives without the NAR losing its parliamentary majority. But the leadership miscalculated on the electoral appeal of its remaining middle class Indian members and would pay a heavy price for this in the 1991 parliamentary elections. A sign of mass Indian disaffection with the NAR was the surge of Indian migrants to Canada between 1988 and 1990, seeking asylum as refugees.53 Adding to the racial polarisation between the two largest ethnic communities was the race-based mobilisation that was being urged on the African community by neo-Garveyites and other Black Power advocates, assisted by the Nigerian envoy, who urged the formation of an umbrella organisation of all African groups to promote African interests. This culminated in the formation of the Confederation of African Organisations of Trinidad and Tobago on August 1, 1988, coinciding with the celebration of Emancipation Day and the visit of the Oni of Ife, spiritual head of the Yorubas. At the same time, ethnocentric leaders of the Indian community began mobilising to demand a national holiday in recognition of the first arrival of Indians in Trinidad, completely oblivious to the conditions under which those Indians had arrived and to the indirect panegyric that was being cast on British imperialism.54 The rivalry and mutual apprehensions of the two largest ethnic groups helped to strengthen the leverage that was being exercised by the smaller ethnic groups, particularly those of European descent, who had the closest links with foreign corporate interests in trade, finance and industry. They now successfully pressured the NAR administration to reduce the public sector wage bill through a cut in public sector wages and retrenchment; to dispense with the cost-ofliving allowance built into most industrial agreements; to abandon legislation
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Race, Class And Ideology in Post-colonial Trinidad

that would have given retrenched workers a first claim on the assets of companies; to impose a 15 per cent sales tax (misnamed value added tax) on items of mass consumption; to engage in the phased transference of state enterprises to the private sector; and to devalue the Trinidad and Tobago currency.55 While the mass of the population were required to bear these austerities, the banks and conglomerates continued to register substantial profits and to expand their economic power by destroying or absorbing weaker rivals.56 In ethnically homogenous societies, such conditions would have inevitably led to class conflict. But in the ethnically polarised society of Trinidad and Tobago this was almost impossible. Attempts by the more radical unions to mount demonstrations and protests against the NARs policies proved futile.57 Yet, in a most unexpected and dramatic way, the NAR administration was subjected in late July and early August 1990 to its most traumatic experience. In the context of an unresolved land dispute with the Jamaat al Muslimeen, a Black Muslim organisation, and an intense controversy over the signing of a maritime treaty with Venezuela that demarcated the waters of the Gulf of Paria between Trinidad/Tobago and Venezuela, the parliamentary building was stormed by armed members of the Jamaat, who also bombed the nearby police headquarters and seized control of the countrys sole television station. In the parliamentary building, a number of ministers, including the prime minister, were held hostage, as were the occupants of the television station.58 During the insurgency, one policeman and several civilians were killed by the armed rebels. Prime Minister Robinson, and Selwyn Richardson, his attorneygeneral, had been physically abused during the ordeal. In the midst of the crisis, a wave of arson and looting engulfed Port-of-Spain. The uprising had no mass support, and it had no connection with organised labour; yet there was some grim satisfaction among the politically alienated and economically frustrated sections of the population at the turn of events. In return for the release of the hostages, the acting president and government ministers who were not in the parliamentary building at the time, agreed to an amnesty for the rebels. Subsequent attempts to keep the latter in indefinite detention were nullified by a British Privy Council decision, and it was later revealed that the rebels had received their military equipment from the United States, not from Libya as alleged in the local and international media during the crisis.59 Nothing, however, underscores the widespread unpopularity of the NAR administration, which was built on the nebulous ideology of one love than its humiliating defeat as a political party in the parliamentary elections of the following year. The party lost every seat it had won in Trinidad in 1986 and retained only the two Tobago seats associated with Robinsons dissolved political component of the NAR, the Democratic Action Congress. As a political party, the NAR, the party of the trans-ethnic middle class and corporate business interests, was annihilated. But the result was not the emergence of a working class or populist party, but a return to the biracial form of political mobilisation
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Race, Class And Ideology in Post-colonial Trinidad

associated with the African-based PNM and the latest incarnation of the Indianbased political formations, the UNC. The PNM won the 1991 parliamentary elections, but with a smaller majority than in its period of greatest ascendancy (196181). The UNC, like its previous incarnations, formed the opposition.60 The two major ethnic groups were once again politically counterposed not an unattractive political situation for the elite elements in the society and their foreign allies, since it had repeatedly proved to be the most effective antidote to working class mobilisation and socialist ideology.

Notes
1. 2. 3. 4. Kelvin Singh, Race and Class Struggles in a Colonial State: Trinidad 1917 1945 (Kingston: The Press, UWI., 1994), 10104, 10911. These estimates are derived from the Trinidad and Tobago Statistical Digest, 19351955, Table 8, p. 7. Bridget Brereton, Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad, 18701900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), Chap. 4 passim. M.D.S. Ramesar, Survivors of Another Crossing: A History of East Indians in Trinidad, 18801946 (Port-of-Spain: UWI School of Continuing Studies 1994), 14143; Carl Campbell, Colony and Nation: A Short History of Education in Trinidad and Tobago, 18341986 (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 1992), 1718. Kelvin Singh, Conflict and Collaboration: Tradition and Modernizing Indo-Trinidadian Elites (1917-56), New West Indian Guide, 70 (1996): 232. Selw yn Ryan, Race and Nationalism in Trinidad and Tobago (St Augustine: Institute of Social and Economic Research, UWI, 1974), 8999. Singh, Conflict and Collaboration, 244. Ryan, Race and Nationalism, 130. Ibid., 8687. These were the West Indian Independence Party and the Caribbean National Labour Party. Ryan, Race and Nationalism, 10709; Paul Sutton, ed. Forged From the Love of Liberty (Port-of-Spain: Longman Caribbean, 1981), 26980. The candidature of Jang Bahadoorsingh, a Vice-President of the SDMS and an early member of the PNM, was rejected by the PNM group of Laventille, while S.B. Dolsingh, another member of the SDMS was expelled from the PNM, though Dolsingh claimed that he had resigned before he was expelled (Guardian, July 14, 1956). For his attacks on the SDMS see the Guardian, August 1 & 2, 1956. Also PNM Weekly Special Supplement, August 9, 1956. Bridget Brereton, A History of Modern Trinidad, 17831962 (Port-of"#'

5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

Race, Class And Ideology in Post-colonial Trinidad

Spain: Heinemann, 1981), 237. 15. Guardian, April 3, 1958, editorial. 16. On white fears, see F.E. Brassington, The Politics of Opposition (Diego Martin: West Indian Publishing Company, 1976), 83-84. 17. On PNM thuggery, see Ibid., 20; Ivar Oxaal, Black Intellectuals Come to Power (Cambridge Mass.: Schenkman, 1968), 172. Both give eyewitness accounts. See also the recollections of Margaret Hector in Sunday Express, January 11, 1987. 18. Williams confidence about winning an election fought on a racial basis emerges in a 1961 campaign speech: Indians as a group may not be with us and may be against us. So what? We beat them in 1956 and we will beat them again (Cited in H.P. Singh, The Indian Struggle for Justice and Equality, The India Review Press, 1993, 43). 19. PNM. Weekly, June 25, 1956. 20. In 1976, the PNM government adopted a republican constitution, but retained the Privy Council. 21. On the intrigues within the DLP and the replacement of Maraj by Capildeo, see Brassington, 87-89, 10608. 22. Perhaps the most influential was John OHalloran, who later became enmeshed in corruption scandals. 23. See, for example, details of the enormous concession made to Federation Chemicals in 1958, whose US-based parent company was W.R. Grace and Company. Under an agreement signed by John OHalloran, the Trinidad and Tobago government even had to make foreign exchange available for the company to import plant and equipment (Express, February 1, 1981). 24. D. Abdulah, The Role of Labour in the Development Experience, in Selwyn Ryan, ed., The Independence Experience, 19621987 (St Augustine: Institute of Social and Economic Research, UWI, 1988), 11819. 25. Basdeo Panday became President of the All Trinidad Sugar Estates and Factory Workers Union in March 1973. The ULF was formed in February 1975 and became a political party in March 1976 (Selwyn Ryan, Pathways to Power, St Augustine: Institute of. Social and Economic Research, UWI, 1996, 64). 26. Typical was the alarm sounded by J.A.Bain, and given prominence by the Guardian, who argued that if Indians captured political power they would merge it with economic power (Guardian, April 25, 1976). But the real fear of the interests represented by the paper was that the ULF might adopt socialist policies if it won the elections (See Ibid., September 11, 1976, editorial). 27. For a comprehensive account of the 1976 elections, see Ryan, Pathways to Power, Chap. V passim. 28. James Millette, Towards the Black Power Revolt of 1970, in The Black
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Race, Class And Ideology in Post-colonial Trinidad

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34. 35. 36.

37.

38.

Power Revolution of 1970, ed., Selwyn Ryan. (St Augustine: Insititute of Social and Economic Research, UWI, 1995), 7071. Millette traces other influences as well, but judged by the clenched-fist symbol and such adopted names as Black Panthers, it is clear that in Trinidad the Civil Rights Movement in the United States had the most influence. John La Guerre, The Indian Response to Black Power, in Ryan, ed., The Black Power Revolution, 273307. La Guerres insinuation that the movement operated within a partial Marxist framework is difficult to reconcile with the explicit repudiation of class struggle by the National Joint Action Committee (NJAC), the leading organisation in the movement. African clothes, African hair styles and an appreciation of African physical beauty were all advocated (See the National Joint Action Committees paper East Dry River Speaks, 1970). The local Black Panthers Organisation best exemplified the pressure tactic when it declared that Williams must govern or get out (see their White Paper, in the Express, March 11, 1970). A good example is the New World Group, which split in 1968, with its two leading members on the St Augustine campus forming their separate organisations. James Millette, of Marxist/Leninist persuasion, formed a political party, the United National Independence Party, while Lloyd Best, denouncing doctor politics and conventional politics, formed the Tapia House Movement. J. Harewood, and R. Henry, Inequality in a Post-Colonial Society: Trinidad and Tobago, 19561981 (St Augustine: Institute of Social and Economic Research, UWI, 1985), 7374. Sunday Guardian, October 17, 1976: Report of House of Representatives debate on Presidents Message. Express, December 19, 1975. Williams did not even open the letters written to him by Maurice Bishop. According to Senator John Donaldson, his Minister of National Security and External Affairs, Williams action was guided by a Cabinet directive a dubious claim made in the midst of local criticism both inside and outside the Trinidad and Tobago Parliament (see the Guardian, November 22, 1979). The author was initially co-opted into the executive of the ONR as First Vice-Chairman, but withdrew when he became convinced that the party was being manipulated by big business. It was alleged that Williams corpse was left lying on a couch at his official residence for over fourteen hours, while the President and the PNM cabinet haggled over who should be his successor (Express, April 13, 1981: Letter from Martin Kavanaugh). For a more detailed examination of Williams death see H. Ghany, ed., Kamal: A Lifetime
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Race, Class And Ideology in Post-colonial Trinidad

39.

40.

41. 42. 43.

44. 45.

46.

47. 48.

49.

50.

51. 52. 53. 54.

of Politics, Religion and Culture (Port-of-Spain: K. Mohammed, 1996), 37677. On the eve of the elections, Selwyn Ryan portrayed the contest essentially as one of White/Associate White vs African (Express, October 25, 1981). The PNM received 53 per cent of the popular vote, ONR 22 per cent and the Alliance (comprising the ULF, the Tapia House and the DAC) 20 per cent (Express, November 12, 1991). See, for example, the charges made by Alvin Chow during the Senate debate on the Unit Trust Bill (Guardian, May 4 & 6 , 1981). Express, October 20, 1985; also Guardian, November 7 , 1985. The bill was later emasculated by the High Court. The Chinese business interests had formed a conglomerate, the Associated Brands Ltd., which attempted to take over the whitecontrolled McEarnerny/Alstons group (Express, August 6, 1986). Express, May 28, 1984. D. Alleyne, Petroleum and Development (19621987), in T he Independence Experience 19621987, ed., Selwyn Ryan. (St Augustine: Institute of Social and Economic Research, UWI., 1988), 22. By October 1986, more than 20,000 persons had been retrenched in the private sector, according to Hilton Clarke, President of the Employers Consultative Association (Express, October 16, 1986). For a description of the euphoria, see Ramdath Jagessars A Night to Remember, Guardian, December 17, 1986. For comments of Carl Parris on the composition of state boards see the Guardian, June 3, 1987; for Selwyn Ryans comments on the growing rift within the NAR see Sunday Express, June 7, 1987. See, for example, comments of G. Frankson in the Express, March 14, 1987. In September 1990 the issue was still unresolved (Guardian, September 15, 1990, editorial). Interview with an anonymous technocrat, who argued that African technocrats were in the firing line (Sunday Express, December 13, 1987). However, a spokesman for Lloyd Bests Tapia House Movement felt that the interview, given front-page headline by the newspaper, was an attempt to stampede Afro-Trinidadians into supporting the NAR and its political leader. On the alleged Indianisation of the Government, see the Sunday Express, April 19, 1987. Sunday Express, January 17, 1988, Section 2. Express, February 8, 1988; Guardian, February 10, 1988. Guardian, December 11, 1990, editorial. In November 1987, Mohammed Z. Anka, the Nigerian High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago, called on all African organisations to close ranks, promising that his Mission would firmly

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Race, Class And Ideology in Post-colonial Trinidad

55.

56.

57. 58.

59.

60.

collaborate with a formidable association of African people in this country (Guardian, November 12, 1987). For the launching of the Confederation of African Organisations and the arrival of the Oni of Ife, see the Express August 1 & 14 , 1988. By June 1990, Indian Arrival Day had become a major issue among ethnically-driven Indians (see comments of S. Capildeo in the Guardian, June 4, 1990). See, for example, the praise lavished on the governments economic programme by David Renwick, the pro-business columnist (Sunday Express, July 30, 1989). One of the victims of this economic war was the conglomerate of Ram Kirpalani, the pre-eminent Indian tycoon, whose entrepreneurial activities had gone beyond merchandising and into manufacturing and finance. On the collapse of his empire following his death in a motor crash, see the Express, July 30, 1989. Express, March 6, 1989; Guardian, April 7, 1989. For a fairly detailed narrative of the uprising, see V.E.T. FurlongeKelly, The Silent Victory (Port of Spain: Golden Eagle Enterprises, 1991), Chapter 3 passim. Ibid.. Chap. 4 passim. Mr. Robinson subsequently suggested that the uprising was connected to a concurrent debate on corruption, involving a former PNM minister and an American oil company. It is this writers view, however, that the real linkage was the maritime treaty with Venezuela, which had serious economic and geo-strategic implications not only for Trinidad and Tobago, but also for US and British interests in the Gulf of Paria. For Robinsons views, see the Guardian and the Express, October 16, 1990. For the maritime treaty controversy, see the Guardian, July 21, 23 & 27, 1990. The PNM won 21 of the 36 seats contested, the UNC 13, and the NAR 2 (both in Tobago). For an ethnic profile of the results, see Ryans Pathways to Power, 21519.

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