National celebrations, but Region’s Loss?

Over the past weekend Trinidad and Tobago wound up its celebrations to mark the 62nd anniversary of its reclamation of national independence on August 31, 1962. Three weeks before, the Jamaicans celebrated a similar occasion, having preceded T&T in that same year.

The independence celebrations were the first for English-speaking Caribbean countries since British colonialism wrapped us in the Union Jack as though hiding the horrors of its genocidal behaviour and its inhuman acts of slavery of African people. Left in their wake though were the shattered hopes of Caribbean people in a string of islands reaching down to the South American mainland of Guyana. There, the nationalist hopes of the Guyanese people were being frustrated as Britain refused to accede to its quest for independence because of the leadership of the late Cheddi Jagan, an avowed Marxist.

While in general Caribbean people must have welcomed the breaking of the colonial mould, the circumstances were tinged with disappointment over what turned out to be a missed opportunity. For most of the 20th century Caribbean nationalist pioneers not only campaigned tirelessly for an end to colonial rule, but, in the British colonies advocated for a unification of the colonies, a united and independent Caribbean.

Over the years, all sorts of solutions were advanced but all had at their core some form of unification of the people of the Caribbean. The term Federation was the umbrella seemingly favoured as the anti-colonialists pursued their relentless campaign for freedom from the British yoke. Amid many frustrations this vision of an independent, united Caribbean did not die. It had to confront the constant challenges of petty, insular and personal ambitions skilfully exploited by the colonialists.

In the long run, a British-concocted West Indies Federation was launched in 1958 bringing together the Leeward and Windward Islands with Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, but excluding Guyana. Amidst all the fanfare, there was ominous warning when the prominent leaders of several islands opted not to participate in the federal government and in the constant bickering about power-sharing.

The seeds of division began to germinate under the Federal soil, so rapidly that in the space of three years the Federal bubble burst. Jamaica organized a referendum and voted to leave the other nine members.

Trinidad and Tobago’s response was, in considering the smaller islands an economic burden, to sound the death knell, announcing in the words of the late Dr. Eric Williams that “one from ten leaves nought”.

Thus heralded the birth of the two independent states at the northern and southern extremities of the island chain and their 1962 celebrations. It left the resource-strapped and underdeveloped eastern Caribbean islands to fend for themselves amid all sorts of political concoctions.

They were over the next two decades to become independent mini-states by themselves. Yet the desire for Caribbean unification did not die. It resurfaced in the trade cooperation agreement of CARIFTA (1968), and later CARICOM (1973), and continues up to today.

Yet as we congratulate our northern and southern neighbours on their 62nd independence anniversaries and continue to keep the regional dream alive, one cannot help but hark back to 1962 and wonder, “What if?”