Existential threats in the Caribbean

‘CLR James was arguably, one of the outstanding personalities of the 20th century. In a life that spanned nine of the century’s decades he embraced most of its great social movements with passion, eloquence, and brilliant insights. His impact extended far beyond his native Trinidad and Tobago to the entire Caribbean, Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States and Africa.

‘To some, CLR is best known for his tireless struggles against, colonialism, imperialism, racism and Stalinism; inspired by an overarching and infectious vision of the possibilities of establishing a just, human and participatory society. Others will remember him for the scope of his knowledge and appreciation of literature and philosophy, and for his ability to illuminate their relationship to politics and the worker day world. No one exposed to him or his work is ever quite the same again.’

THE CLR JAMES I KNEW

I was privileged to first hear CLR at a lecture he delivered on the Mona Campus of the UWI in late 1959. I was a first year student, an impressionable youth, and the experience was unforgettable. His subject was ‘The Artist in the Caribbean’; and he brought art, literature, politics, philosophy, and economics together within a single unified vision of the world and of human society. ‘The great artist,’ he said, ‘is universal because he is national’ - rooted in his or her society and reflecting and relating to the social forces of their time and place. It was not just his content, but his style. James spoke with knowledge, feeling, authority, fluency and poetry. The words seemed to flow like a great river from the mountain to the sea, sometimes changing direction and speed, sometimes digressing, but always confident that it was headed towards some glorious rendezvous with history. A first impression, a lasting impact.

Years later, as a graduate student in London, I was part of a CLR James study group that met every week at his house in London to sit at his feet - intellectually and even literally. The subjects ranged from democracy in advanced industrial society to West Indian politics, literature and society. There were people some of you may know or know of, like Wally Look-Lai, Ken Ramchand and Raymond Watts from Trinidad, Richard Small and Orlando Patterson and Joan French from Jamaica and Walter Rodney from Guyana.

Individuals from the James Study Group were to develop ideas, scholarship and activism that influenced the course of development in the English-speaking Caribbean in the early post-colonial years.

Young people today don’t know enough about CLR James and the other greats of our history. If this knowledge, this consciousness was steeped in their bones there wouldn’t be so much confusion in the region today about who we are, about where we are coming from, and where we are going. I remember once wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Uriah Butler on the front and someone thought that the image was that of Col. Sanders of KFC! Of course I did grow up believing that the real Lord Kitchener was a Trinidadian Calypsonian, and only later learnt that he was a British General whose name had been adopted by Mr Alwyn Roberts as his sobriquet! And by the way, I got it right the first time around.

CLR JAMES ON FEDERATION

James was an ardent West Indian nationalist at a time when to be a nationalist and to be a regionalist were one and the same. (That is still the case; I have always held that people who see a contradiction between nationalism and regionalism are either unaware of our history, or choose to deny it.) James’s return to the region in 1958 after an absence of 36 years was to attend the ceremonies inaugurating the West Indies Federation. He stayed on to be General Secretary of the West Indies Federal Labour Party; the party of Manley, Williams and Grantley Adams; the nationalists and social democrats. He edited the PNM newspaper, the Nation; from which platform he carried out an ultimately successful campaign to have Frank Worrell named captain of the West Indies cricket team - the first black captain. He travelled and lectured in various parts the region; he held classes, he published.

Three months after his return there is a record of his having given several lectures in British Guiana, as it then was. The date is June 1958. At least one of those lectures has survived; the title is ‘Federation (The West Indies and British Guiana)’. James published the lecture himself: he had an eye for political education, and for history. The foreword to the pamphlet was written by Forbes Burnham; it is significant that James should have invited him and what Burnham had to say was also very significant. It reads in part:

‘A special invitee to the opening of the first Federal Parliament in Trinidad last April, (Mr. James) took the opportunity of visiting British Guiana, and his public lectures on ‘Federation’, ‘Literature and the Common Man’, ‘Political Institutions in the advanced and underdeveloped countries and the relations between them’ were a source of controversy and education for many Guianese. Many of the latter for the first time recognised the possibilities and scope of our national movement and its intimate relation to that in the Caribbean in particular and the colonial world in general’.

I very much doubt that in later years James would have been proud of this association with Burnham. But this was 1958, Federation was a hot topic in B.G.; and when you read on you begin to see why James spoke as he did and why Burnham said what he said. The reason can be summed up in a single word: race. James: ‘In Europe and the United States we discussed Federation for years before World War II and I cannot remember a single occasion in which it ever crossed our minds or the issue was raised that British Guiana would not join the Federation…But after the war, and especially during recent years, there began to be sounded a note which has grown in intensity. We heard that the East Indians in British Guiana were opposed to Federation (because)…They had a numerical majority over the other races, they hoped to establish an Indian domination of the colony; Federation would bring thousands of Africans (or people of African descent) from the smaller islands to British Guiana…They would place the Indians in British Guiana in an inferior position…We heard also that the African population of British Guiana was now eager for Federation particularly for the reason that it would bring this reinforcement from the smaller islands…I have heard these arguments constantly repeated. That is to reduce the great issue of Federation to a very low level.’

He goes on to say: ‘It has been observed that when a colonial country is approaching national independence, there are two distinct phases. First, all the progressive elements in the country begin by supporting the national independence movement. Then when this is well under way you have the second stage. Each section of the nationalist movement begins to interpret the coming freedom in terms of its own interests, its own perspectives, its own desires. Thus the accentuation of racial rivalry at this time is not peculiar to British Guiana or to Trinidad…This political excitement, however, carries with it certain dangers…’

He points out that in British India, Hindus and Muslims lived together in relative peace and harmony. ‘Yet in the days before World War II there sprang up the movement for a Moslem state which finally succeeded and resulted in the formation of Pakistan. I do not wish to say that there were not honest and sincere elements in the movement. But in it there were three types against whom I want to warn you here in British Guiana - fanatical racialists, scheming and ambitious politicians, and businessmen anxious to corner for themselves a section of industrial and commercial possibilities.’

I do not think James could have said it any more plainly. It was a warning about those who fan the fires of racial or religious animosity for reasons that are less than noble. The ethnic violence that broke out in Guyana in the early 1960s lay in the future. James was prescient in the way that only a man of his genius could be. He was warning the Guyanese, he may well have been warning Trinidad and Tobago. He was probably in the presence of Forbes Burnham and I would guess that his audience was mainly Afro-Guyanese. In 1958 Burnham had already split from Jagan and the PPP. We do not know if he was one of the ‘scheming and ambitious politicians’ that James was talking about - CLR was a master of oblique reference where he trusted his audience to know the meaning. I would guess that he meant his audience to understand people from both sides of the political divide.

His observations clearly continue to have resonance. An ethnic sub-text continues to lie beneath the discourse on integration. But that subject is for another occasion. What I propose to do is to look at James's position on Federation in the light of what has happened since then and the situation today.

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* This is an extract from a longer essay entitled 'Existential Threats in the Caribbean: Democratising Politics, Regionalising Governance. Click here to read the full essay.
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