Revisiting the Context
of
West Indian Independence
Text of a Lecture delivered by Cary Fraser, Former President of the University
of Belize, at the Institute of International Relations at the University of the
West Indies on April 14, 2014.
I should start by saying that it is a pleasure to be here again at the Institute of
International Relations – a place for which I have very fond memories due to the
friendships forged during my intellectual sojourn here. St. Augustine has been always
a point of reference for me, in large part because it was here that I met the rest of the
Caribbean on this campus and was able to explore the comparative dimensions of
Caribbean life before going on to work for the Caribbean Conference of Churches in
the early 1980s. In an interesting way, UWI and Trinidad liberated my imagination as
a Guyanese who was alive in 1962 when British Guiana became the metaphorical
“area of darkness” within the Caribbean. When I arrived at St. Augustine in 1977,
Trinidad was in the throes of the ‘oil-don’t-spoil’ fever after the windfall that came
from the first of the oil crises of the 1970s. On the other hand, Jamaica was gripped
by the struggle over transcending the social and economic disparities created by the
post-1945 bauxite and tourist boom. These changes in fortune for the pioneers of
territorial independence reflected the wider shifts that were occurring as a
consequence of independence. The Rodney riots of 1968 in Jamaica, followed by the
Black Power uprising in Trinidad in 1970, and Guyana’s decision to become a
Republic in the same year, all signaled a shift away from the focus upon constitutional
decolonization to a search for strategies to address the inadequacies of nationalist
governance after independence. I came to Trinidad in the closing years of Eric
Williams’ life and that experience led me to begin comparing the politics of nationbuilding in the Guyanese and T&T contexts, and my visits to Jamaica during 1979 and
1980 helped me to think about the rhetoric and practice of socialist advocacy in the
English-speaking Caribbean. These encounters were all part of my engagement with
the wider Caribbean in the critical decade that followed independence in the 1960s.
Today, I will say that if the 1970s were at the core of my intellectual pursuits when I
first came to St. Augustine, I have focused increasingly upon the comparative politics
and history of Caribbean decolonization.
This presentation today should be seen as part of my effort to grapple with
reassessing West Indian decolonization in contemporary context.
When I returned to the region in 2011, I began to reflect about the current state of
the region and I have become increasingly interested in the loss/absence of historical
memory among young West Indians as they confront the challenges of a new century.
It was particularly interesting for me that I arrived in the region a month or so before
the death of George Price and I attended his state funeral. At that funeral, I was
struck by the fact that his death marked the passing of the last of a generation of
nationalist leaders who had reaped the fruits of acceding to political office in the
Caribbean political era defined by the first elections based upon universal suffrage.
Within Belize there were the usual tributes that one would expect of eulogies to his
role in shaping Belizean history but there was very little concrete reflection about his
role within the regional context of both the Caribbean and Central America. It was a
vivid demonstration of the lack of historical memory to which I have alluded.
Like his contemporary, Cheddi Jagan, Price was first elected to Municipal office in
1947 and Price was a founding member of the PUP in 1950 – the year that the PPP in
British Guiana was also formed. Both Jagan and Price remained dominant figures in
their respective countries until the mid-late 1990s when Price surrendered the
leadership of the PUP (1996) and Jagan died in office as President in 1997. These
interesting parallels in their careers form part of a larger context when we remember
that both espoused some version of a “continental destiny” as part of their refusal to
lead their governments into the West Indian Federation – decisions that would
ultimately do much to undermine the viability of the Federation when it was
established in 1958. They were also both political leaders who went to the United
States for advanced education and both were regarded as virulently anti-British in
their early political careers in the 1950s – though Jagan was deeply influenced by his
admiration for the Soviet Union while Price was enthusiastic in his embrace of the
United States. I am touching on these issues as a way of illustrating the complex issues
that shaped the emergence of independent English-speaking states in the circumCaribbean and which continue to influence the development of the sub-region. It is
this level of complexity within and across the region that has led me to think about
ways of exploring the comparative dimensions of West Indian decolonization.
However, the focus of my talk today will be the year 1962 and I will try to explore the
legacies of that year for the region today as I would suggest that 1962 defined the
context within which the region continues to operate in the contemporary context.
I should begin by saying that my comment about historical amnesia in the
contemporary Caribbean has a certain resonance with a theme of Derek Walcott’s
Nobel Prize Speech titled “The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory,” where he said:
“Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its
symmetry for granted when it was whole. The glue that fits the pieces is the sealing of its original
shape. It is such a love that reassembles our African and Asiatic fragments, the cracked heirlooms
whose restoration shows its white scars. This gathering of broken pieces is the care and pain of the
Antilles, and if the pieces are disparate, ill-fitting, they contain more pain than their original
sculpture, those icons and sacred vessels taken for granted in their ancestral places. Antillean art is
this restoration of our shattered histories, our shards of vocabulary, our archipelago becoming a
synonym for pieces broken off from the original continent.”
Walcott’s graphic analysis of the challenges confronting Antillean artists is a reminder
that the politics of the imagination is a domain in which the creative artists of the
region have shown themselves to be very accomplished in their readings and critical
analyses of Caribbean reality. I would suggest that Walcott’s formulation “this
restoration of our shattered histories, our shards of vocabulary, our archipelago
becoming a synonym for pieces broken off from the original continent” captures the
predicament posed by political independence since the collapse of the West Indian
Federation in 1962. Can we as Caribbean people be independent without overcoming
the fragmentation and displacement that defined our condition as colonial subjects
prior to 1962?
I have posed this question as a way to explore the key issues I am going to address
today and I will start with the West Indian Federation which, having been established
with great fanfare in 1958, collapsed in January 1962 after the Jamaican referendum of
1961 set the context and terms of Eric Williams’ equation – “one from ten leaves
nought” – and unleashed the politics of fragmentation that continues to define the
contemporary context. According to the summary assessment of the West Indian
Federation on the CARICOM website:
“The Federation however faced several problems. These included: the governance and administrative
structures imposed by the British; disagreements among the territories over policies, particularly with
respect to taxation and central planning; an unwillingness on the part of most Territorial
Governments to give up power to the Federal Government; and the location of the Federal Capital.”
This summary assessment captures the central issues that shaped the failure of the
Federal Project during its short life. I have explored some of these issues elsewhere
but today I will offer some thoughts about the legacies of the Federation and what
they say about the regional condition. First, the leaders who were part of the Federal
Project could genuinely make the case for the imposition of federal governance and
administrative structures. However, what explanation can we offer for the deficiencies
that are embodied in current governance arrangements within the region – including
the deficiencies that have hindered the development and evolution of CARICOM?
If we take the view that we are independent, and making the relevant
recommendations and/or decisions, we have to move towards implementation of
agreements and changes that are required to demonstrate independence. Given the
challenges of vulnerability and viability that are looming in the next several decades,
particularly in the areas of climate change and food security, can we make an
argument that we have developed the governance and administrative structures that
will enable us to implement the policies and practices that are required to meet those
challenges? In effect, the issue that has to be faced is whether we can formulate and
impose upon ourselves the governance and administrative structures that will enable
us to meet those challenges.
I would suggest that the current saga of the adoption of the Caribbean Court of
Justice as the final court of Appeal in the region offers us a particular insight into the
decisiveness that is absent at a broader level. More than fifty years after the onset of
political independence, have we made the transition from the colonial condition that
would allow us to forge the governance arrangements and administrative structures
that signal the capacity to govern ourselves and ensure the survival of the territories
into the future? I am suggesting that in 1962, there was the decision made to move
towards territorial rather than federal independence. We need to ask ourselves now
whether that strategy of territorial independence has worked effectively and whether
territorial independence will protect us from the challenges of global problems such as
climate change being addressed on the back of vulnerable states and communities – to
their disadvantage.
Second, the issues of taxation and central planning to support West Indian
independence. Have we, either at the individual territory or regional level, found ways
to forge strategies of economic integration and/or collaboration that would ensure
both sustainability and survival? Has there been any regional strategy developed to
forge effective private sector collaboration that will make CARICOM enterprises
capable of competing at the hemispheric and global levels? With the rise of China as
the workshop to the world and as a major source of global investment capital, where
will the Caribbean fit into a world increasingly dominated by the Asia-Pacific region?
In December 1993, I was here at IIR on a panel with Lloyd Best and we were talking
about the changing international context after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. I raised
the issue then that after the end of the Cold War Caribbean leaders would need to
craft strategies to deal with the emergence of an international system centered within
the Asia-Pacific region. Since 2008, the shift in the global axis to the Asia-Pacific
region has gained increasing momentum across the entire system and the Obama
Administration’s pivot towards the Pacific should be a reminder that beyond issues of
security and the drug trade, the Caribbean Community has declined as an area of
importance for many of the major states in the Atlantic world. In effect, the
Caribbean Community member states face the continuing erosion of their claim to
independence and sovereignty – a development that first emerged as a serious threat
in the wake of the oil crises of the 1970s and the onset of the debt crisis of the 1980s.
Effective fiscal management as a platform for achieving and maintaining
independence has been a central problem for the region – as was evident in the failure
of the federal project. Has the situation changed significantly since 1962 with the
onset of territorial independence?
Finally, the issue of striking a balance between the imperatives of territorial and
regional priorities remains at the heart of the current regional arrangements – as was
evident in the federal project, and the lack of sustained foreign policy coordination
and strategic management of the vital tourism sector within the region are two areas
in which these tensions are immediately evident in the contemporary context. These
problems are likely to be compounded by the changes that are beginning to reshape
the domestic context of Cuba in the closing years of the Castro dynasty and the
increasing interest by extra-regional actors in using Cuba as a strategic platform for
trade, tourism and investment within the Americas. The shadow of Cuba hangs over
the region in the contemporary context – just as it has since Cuba’s emergence as a
major sugar producer in the 19th century and thereafter. In the 21st century, how viable
will territorial independence be for CARICOM states when confronted by the
potential of Cuba to out-compete and out-perform the other territories in tourism,
education, scientific research and technical education, agriculture, and use of its
strategic location for Atlantic and Pacific trading partners accessing the expanded
Panama Canal as the volume of inter-oceanic trade increases over the next several
decades? It may be also useful to think about how Cuba can become an offshore port
for the US that can then allow for efforts to restructure the area around the
Mississippi Delta and New Orleans to limit damage on the mainland of North
America from hurricanes.
My discussion has so far focused upon the issues arising out of the federal project and
I would like to turn to the issue of British Guiana in 1962 which, I would argue,
became collateral damage from the breakdown of the federal project. While Eric
Williams’ one-from-ten equation may have been seen as a particular problem for the
other islands in the federation, I would suggest that it also had implications for the
debate over independence for British Guiana. The decision by Cheddi Jagan and the
PPP to avoid active participation in the Federation – because of either ideological or
ethnic considerations – created an insoluble problem for all the ethnic leaders in
British Guiana. There was a profound distrust among them that none would trust the
others to lead the country into independence. The 1957 and 1961 elections in British
Guiana had accelerated the process of ethnic fragmentation that ensued from the split
within the multi-ethnic PPP in 1955. In 1953, the party had been removed from
government because of its “communist” inclinations by British troops. By 1961, it was
obvious that without a Federation, British Guiana would have to proceed to
independence on its own and the central issue (or I dare say, obsession) for the
nationalist leaders was to create the framework for independence.
I would suggest that for Jagan and the PPP leadership, they assumed that having won
two successive elections, independence under the party’s leadership seemed inevitable.
Forbes Burnham and other leaders recognized that the PPP had won the election in
1961 with less than 50% of the total vote and were determined to seek some form of
proportional representation that could serve as a brake upon the PPP’s ambitions and,
possibly, provide the platform for an alternative government. It was in this context
that the riots of February 1962 erupted and shattered the PPP’s image of its own
invincibility. A multi-ethnic coalition among Forbes Burnham’s People’s National
Congress, Peter D’Aguiar’s United Force, and the Trades Union Congress headed by
Richard Ishmael of the sugar industry-backed MPCA, instigated protests against the
PPP budget proposals drafted by the Hungarian-born British economist, Nicholas
Kaldor. The protests triggered the “Black Friday” disturbances and the looting and
burning of sections of the commercial centre in Georgetown. As a consequence of
the February 1962 disturbances, inter-communal violence spread across the country,
British troops were deployed to maintain stability, and American covert intervention
intensified as part of an Anglo-American coordinated strategy to remove the PPP. By
1964 Colonial Office sponsored negotiations had led to the introduction of a system
of proportional representation for future elections, new elections in December of that
year, and the establishment of a coalition government that was American-oriented and
which was entrusted with the responsibility of leading British Guiana into
independence in 1966.
This brief summary does not do justice to a lot of very complex history but the point
I would like to make is that the political breakdown in British Guiana was part and
parcel of the failure of the Federal project to provide a viable framework for West
Indian independence. This period of British Guiana’s history was also evidence that
the political ambitions of territorial leaders were quite capable of provoking the
intervention of external actors that would have damaging long-term consequences for
the individual territories and the wider region. While British Guiana may have been an
extreme example of the problems of territorial independence, it was also a harbinger
of developments in the 1970s and 1980s as American engagement with the newlyindependent territories in the West Indies expanded and British interests became
focused elsewhere.
However, events in British Guiana were part of the larger tapestry of Caribbean
history. The American assumption that the Caribbean was its ‘backyard” had become
a fixture in the American popular imagination. That assumption had led to various
efforts to extend American influence across the region in the wake of the American
Civil War. However, the Second World War and the decline of British global power in
its aftermath had created a context in which the Anglo-American Special Relationship
became a fixture of the post-1945 international order and the West Indian colonies,
with an important strategic asset – large bauxite deposits from Jamaica in the North
and British Guiana in the South that fed the aluminium and aviation industries in
North America, became important targets of intervention to prevent the development
of Communist-influenced trade unions in the region. As a consequence, the
overthrow of the Batista regime by the Fidelistas and the emergence of Cuba as a
strategic ally of the Soviet Union in the Caribbean became a nightmare for American
policy makers in the early 1960s. It was into this context that the PPP leadership
stumbled by feeding American anxieties that BG could become another “Cuba.”
The American obsession with Cuba could not be underestimated in the context of the
virulent anti-Communist hysteria that had been provoked in the US in the aftermath
of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. For the first
Democratic administration since 1952, it became a touchstone of American foreign
policy that another Cuba could not be allowed to occur in the Caribbean. British
Guiana’s proximity to Venezuela – a major oil supplier to the United States – also
evoked concerns about the possibility that the colony could become a point of entry
for Cuban support to its neighbour at a time of increasing instability. The rise of antiAmerican sentiment in Venezuela when the Vice President, Richard Nixon, had
visited in 1958 provided vivid evidence of the estrangement between the United
States and it southern neighbours. The Kennedy Administration, as heirs to the crisis
in US-Latin American relations left by its predecessor, was wary of the challenges that
were posed by nationalist tendencies fueled by anti-American sentiment.
This heightened sensitivity about Soviet influence in the Caribbean helped to set the
stage for the Cuban Missile Crisis that occurred in late 1962. Simply put, the Soviet
Union sent nuclear missiles to Cuba to be used in the event of an American invasion
of the island. The Americans responded by imposing a naval blockade of Cuba after
the missiles had reached the island and were installed. There was a negotiated solution
to the crisis based upon the Soviet decision to withdraw the missiles in return for a
withdrawal of Jupiter missiles from Turkey and Italy and an American pledge to not
invade Cuba. In effect, the United States accepted the extension of Soviet influence
into the Caribbean even as the crisis was used to boost John Kennedy’s reputation as
an effective crisis manager in the weeks before the 1962 mid-term elections. However,
the United States was determined after the Cuban Missile Crisis to ensure that the
Cuban revolutionary experience should not be replicated in the Caribbean.
The Missile Crisis was a critical factor in the hardening of the US position on British
Guiana about the need to remove the PPP from office. US support for the opposition
forces in British Guiana facilitated the ongoing program to bring down the PPP and
to discourage any British hesitation about having Jagan removed before independence
for Guyana would be formalized.
The official record of these developments, the Foreign Relations of the United States
(FRUS, 1964-1968, Volume XXXII, Dominican Republic; Cuba; Haiti; Guyana)
provides a useful summary of American decision-making and policy:
370. Editorial Note
During the Johnson administration, the U.S. Government continued the
Kennedy administration’s policy of working with the British Government to
offer encouragement and support to the pro-West leaders and political
organizations of British Guiana as that limited self-governing colony moved
toward total independence. The Special Group/303 Committee approved
approximately $2.08 million for covert action programs between 1962 and 1968
in that country.
U.S. policy included covert opposition to Cheddi Jagan, the then pro-Marxist
leader of British Guiana’s East Indian population. A portion of the funds
authorized by the Special Group/303 Committee for covert action programs
was used between November 1962 and June 1963 to improve the election
prospects of the opposition political parties to the government of Jagan’s
People’s Progressive Party. The U.S. Government successfully urged the
British to impose a system of proportional representation in British Guiana
(which favored the anti-Jagan forces) and to delay independence until the antiJagan forces could be strengthened. Through the Central Intelligence Agency,
the United States provided Forbes Burnham’s and Peter D’Aguiar’s political
parties, which were in opposition to Jagan, with both money and campaign
expertise as they prepared to contest the December 1964 parliamentary
elections. The U.S. Government’s covert funding and technical expertise were
designed to play a decisive role in the registration of voters likely to vote
against Jagan. Burnham’s and D’Aguiar’s supporters were registered in large
numbers, helping to elect an anti-Jagan coalition.
Special Group/303 Committee-approved funds again were used between July
1963 and April 1964 in connection with the 1964 general strike in British
Guiana. When Jagan’s and Burnham’s supporters clashed in labor strife in the
sugar plantations that year, the United States joined with the British
Government in urging Burnham not to retaliate with violence, but rather to
commit to a mediated end to the conflict. At the same time, the United States
provided training to certain of the anti-Jagan forces to enable them to defend
themselves if attacked and to boost their morale.
Following the general strike, 303 Committee-approved funds were used to
support the election of a coalition of Burnham’s People’s National Congress
and D’Aguiar’s United Force. After Burnham was elected Premier in
December 1964, the U.S. Government, again through the CIA, continued to
provide substantial funds to both Burnham and D’Aguiar and their parties.
In effect, the Cuban Missile Crisis accelerated the efforts of the US to shape the
future direction of West Indian political developments and British Guiana became a
case study in the expansion of American influence over the domestic politics of the
region as decolonization proceeded in the West Indies.
While I have used the case of British Guiana’s decolonization to illustrate the
changing strategic context of the West Indian colonies in the wake of the collapse of
the West Indian Federation, the American concerns about West Indian independence
and its implications for American influence within the region had been evident in the
negotiations over the West Indian decision to establish the proposed Federal capital in
Chaguaramas. Eric Williams’ campaign to force the Americans in the closing years of
the Eisenhower Administration to renegotiate the terms of their base arrangements in
Trinidad had been a source of embarrassment for the United States. The Kennedy
Administration came into office seeking to improve the image of the United States in
the Caribbean and Latin America – the Alliance for Progress – being the best known
expression of that policy. As part of that strategy of projecting a shift in American
attitudes to the region Cheddi Jagan had been invited to the United States and met
personally with President Kennedy in October 1961 to discuss his views and
perspectives on the future of British Guiana. It was a meeting that provided little
assurance that Jagan met the level of ideological flexibility required by the Kennedy
administration and Jagan left the US without a clear endorsement of his leadership by
the Kennedy Administration. It was a moment of revelation for both sides – Kennedy
was less progressive in policy terms than his Administration’s rhetoric suggested and
Jagan less than persuasive in his request for American assistance. Jagan’s lack of
success was a clear signal of the limits of American tolerance for ideological diversity
in the Caribbean especially for the West Indian colonies seeking independence in the
wake of the Jamaican referendum of September 1961 that resulted in the Jamaican
withdrawal from the Federation.
In effect, the end of the Federal project signified the end of a collaborative framework
within which the West Indies could negotiate the path to political independence.
British Guiana under the PPP had opted to bypass the federal project and the
disappointments that attended Jagan’s visit to Washington in the wake of the
Jamaican referendum were a clear indication that the path to territorial independence
was going to be hard. Jamaica and Trinidad were endowed with bauxite and
petroleum resources respectively and there was the hope that these resources would
help to provide a platform for economic diversification by way of the promotion of
industry. Some fifty years on, after the collapse of the Federation as a result of the
September 1961 referendum and Jagan’s failed mission to Washington in October of
the same year, the question that one is tempted to ask is – did the region’s leaders stop
to reflect upon the significance of these two developments for the future of the
region? I would offer an additional observation that may complicate the issue even
further – in January 1962 the Federation came to an end and in February 1962 British
Guiana imploded.
In making these observations and posing the question, I am pushing the limits of our
historical understanding as we think about the challenges facing the Caribbean
Community in contemporary context. 1962 was a year of transition in the Caribbean –
f rom federal to territorial nationalism, from American backyard to theatre of nuclear
confrontation in the Cold War, from the project of nation and community building to
the onset of political disintegration at both the national and regional levels, and from
British colonialism as the dominant frame of reference for the West Indies to
negotiating the parameters of American oversight and engagement within the region.
These multiple developments overshadowed an important legacy of 1962 – the year
that The University of the West Indies was established as an independent University.
It was no longer the University College of the West Indies. This development in the
terminal year of the Federation left UWI as the intellectual repository of regionalism
as project – precisely at the moment that territorial nationalism gained its ascendancy
among West Indian leaders. This conundrum remains at the heart of the evolution of
West Indian life and culture since 1962. It is perhaps time that we explore how
Walcott’s observation – Antillean art is this restoration of our shattered histories –
needs to be applied to the role of the University in articulating a vision for the future
of the region.
In closing, I would suggest that the central challenge facing the region today is the
question of effective governance fifty years after the onset of independence. In
revisiting the context of independence in 1962, I hope we can find a way to induce a
renewed debate about the costs and benefits of federal vs. territorial nationalism –
especially as we confront an era of accelerating climate change and a restructuring of
relations among major states in the Atlantic World within which we have always been
constituents. We have already seen the formation and consolidation of the European
Union and the creation of the North American Free Trade Area – driven in response
to the growth of the Asia-Pacific axis in the international system. It is perhaps time
for us to rethink our own arrangements in the region to escape the growing threat of
marginalization in the wider international system.