CMC – Almost 50 years after the collapse of the West Indian federation, the man who served as the assistant attorney general is still lamenting the fact that the Caribbean is still labouring in the vineyard for true regional integration.
Former Commonwealth secretary general Sir Shridath Ramphal, delivering the 2012 Dr. Eric Williams Memorial Lecture here over the weekend, said that instead of celebrating the milestone on May 31, the federation which brought together the various British colonies into a political union collapsed in 1962, three years into the initiative.
“The immediate cause of the dissolution was, of course, Jamaica’s referendum and Dr Williams’ inventive, and now notorious, arithmetic that “1 from 10 leaves nought”. But these were only the proximate causes. Federation’s failure had many fathers,” Sir Shridath said at the lecture organised by the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago (CBTT).
He said that as assistant attorney general of the federation, he had been drafting a constitution with his vision and mission being “regional – an independent West Indies” adding that despite the trials of the founding fathers he had “never lost faith in real Caribbean unity as our regional destiny”.
But as he wondered whether or not the region would have been better off celebrating later this week the 50th anniversary of the Independence of The West Indies or “given that we abandoned federation, is whether we have rectified what Eric Williams called (in 1969) our disgraceful state of fragmentation”.
Sir Shridath said his answer to the speculative question as to whether or not the region would have been better off had the federation survived would be based on several assumptions, including a West Indian Federal Government headed by Jamaica’s Norman Manley that would have had “minimal, indeed miniscule, powers.
“The Government would be essentially a vehicle for mobilising the people of the West Indies to nationhood – and with Manley at the helm inspiring in them and in the international community confidence in the maturity of the new Caribbean state.
“Five years later, constitutional review, against the backdrop of those first years of nation-building, would give confidence to a process of endowing the Federal Government with more substantive but still limited powers. Perhaps, most important of all, would be the gains in the deepening of our West Indian identity and the enlargement of a West Indian patriotism,” Sir Shridath said.
He said that federation would have also allowed for Caribbean people “getting to know each other as never before” with the Canadian gift of the Federal Palm and the Federal Maple, carrying “them where only their West Indian spirit had been before in their inter-island travels.
“Independence for all of the islands would be achieved within the framework of the federation, and each of the Island States would be autonomous within their substantial powers. On the international stage, The West Indies, though still small in world terms, would have become a sizable player, not least because of the quality and spread of our human resources.
“And would Guyana, which had inexcusably abstained from the federal project, not have been inexorably drawn in? It would, I believe, have become its unavoidable pathway to independence.
“Today, on the eve of its 50th Anniversary our national Federal State (with Guyana and Suriname in it) would have comprised more than six million people; it would have had vast resources of oil, gas, gold, diamonds, bauxite, forestry, uranium, manganese, tourism, and financial services;
“Importantly, it would have had an educated and talented people who have shown by their global accomplishments, and the demand for their expertise, that they could compete with any in the world community.”
Sir Shridath said that the federation, which had expressed an intention to create a political unit that would become independent From Britain as a single state, possibly similar to the Canadian Confederation, would have been a “State that commanded our national pride – and respect of the international community – while keeping alive our several island cultures and values.
“Against what might have been, we have to place what has been. Independence on an Island basis (and I regard Belize and Guyana as islands for this purpose) with our one West Indies formally fragmented into 13 separate states, with as many flags and anthems and seats in the United Nations.”
Sir Shridath said that the region has had up to 44 years of experience of separate independence to judge the situation and that the answer to my speculative question is “Yes’, we would be better off as West Indians, were we celebrating … the 50th Anniversary of the Independence of the Federated West indies”.
But he said that there are other questions not only for Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, the main players of the collapse of the federation.
“Questions which probe whether as independent countries we have done as well individually as we might have done collectively,” he said, adding “had there been a Federation, with a region-wide regulatory agency, could it have done better in preventing the debacle of CLICO and BAICO and the terrible consequences for ordinary people now being felt throughout the region?
“Would we have been in a better position to feed our growing population by mobilising the land resources of Guyana, Suriname and Belize, the capital of Trinidad and the skills of Barbados and other countries to create a viable food economy that reduces our import bill of over US$3 billion?
“Would we have been better able to manage the security of our borders, and to exploit the possibilities afforded by the Exclusive Economic Zone authorised by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, by the establishment of a seamless maritime boundary across much of the Eastern Caribbean island chain? “
Sir Shridath said that in the UN Climate Change negotiations, and at the upcoming Rio+20 Summit on Environment and Development, would the Caribbean “have been listened to with greater respect and attention, speaking as a single voice from a bloc of island states and low-lying countries whose very existence is threatened by climate change?.
He also questioned whether the federation would have “created a larger space for the creativity, productivity and advancement of our people, especially the youth” and “could we not have done better in keeping at home the over 60 per cent of our tertiary educated people who now live in the OECD countries?
“Would not our Caribbean companies been more competitive in the global community than our locally-placed nano-industries,” he asked.
Sir Shridath also wondered aloud what would have been the region’s position in being able to bargain more effectively in the global community, including with the World Bank and in the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the European Union and Canada and China “for better terms and conditions for trade, aid and investment than our individual states with their smaller resources have been able to do”.
“Of course, not all will agree on the answers. Separatism has its beneficiaries: in political establishments, in commercial sectors, among anti-social elements that prosper in environments of weakness. That has always been the allurement of ‘local control’.
“Whatever our speculation – and it can be no more than that – 50 years ago the moving finger of history wrote out ‘federation’, and having ‘writ’ moved on. But in writing out solutions, history does not erase needs.”
But Sir Shridath asked whether as independent states “we acted to change the present disgraceful state of fragmentation of the Commonwealth Caribbean countries”.