Eric Williams and the Making of the Modern Caribbean

Chapter 3. The Struggle for Chaguaramas

CHAPTER 3 THE STRUGGLE FOR CHAGUARAMAS * * * * * Nothing could temper the enthusiasm and determination ofthe crowd, not even the torrential showers that drenched it on that warm April morning in 1960. Some sixty thousand strong, it was the largest march that Trinidad and Tobago had ever seen. The banners held high by some told the entire story: "Dignity Is Incompatible with Colonialism," read one. "Road to Independence Passes through Chaguaramas," proclaimed a second, and "WeWant Chaguaramas ... Not Grapefruit" demanded a third. LedbyChief Minister Eric Williams, the "March for Freedom" began at Woodford Square and, as it passed Queens Park on its way to the U.S. consulate, a group of young men broke into a "calypso trot." "Uncle Sam, we want back we Ian," they rhymed.1 The proceedings started on April 22 at 11:00 A.M., the day and hour that Eric Williams had unilaterally set to proclaim the independence of the British West Indies. The crowd went wild as Williams hoisted the flags of Trinidad and the West Indies, an act that symbolized "freedom in fact, if not in law," he said. Addressing the crowd, the chief minister declared: "We have beaten our heads against the forces and agents of colonialism, against the unswerving and often discourteous hostility of the British and American governments, on the one hand, and on the other, against the servile mentality and inferiority complex bred among some West Indians by centuries of colonial rule." But this had been to no avail. "Thus it is," he regretted, "we find ourselves today, on what should have been our historic Independence Day, cheated of our rights and frustrated in our aspirations." The dramatic high point came when Williams identified seven "deadly sins with which we have been afflicted" and consigned them to the flames. He identified these sins as the constitutions of Trinidad and the West Indies, the MudieReport on the site of the Federal capital, the telephone ordinance T H E S T R U G G L E F O R C H A G U A R A M A S 7 7 of 1939, the U.K.-U.S. Chaguaramas Agreement of 1941, a recent statement on race made in the Trinidad Legislative Council by the DPL, and a copy of his persistent foreign-owned critic, the Trinidad Guardian. As Williams threw each offending item into the flames, he intoned, "We consign it to the flames ... to hell with it."2 The nationalist fervor of the crowd was high and the speakers rose to the occasion. Patrick Solomon, Williams's principal lieutenant, read a memorial condemning colonialism and affirming the West Indies' right to independence : "In the world of 1960 colonialism had [sic] no place. The political oppression, economic exploitation, social degradation, cultural inferiority which it brings in its train have been universallyrepudiated." The memorial characterized the British West Indies as "thelast remnants and tatters of the colonialism from which the world has steadily liberated itself." The West Indies Federation was "a glorified crown colony, a 19th century anachronism ." The American base at Chaguaramas constituted "the most deadly menace that has yet appeared to our national interests and our social and political aspirations," the memorial maintained. It ended on a defiant note: We demand an independent Federation. We demand full internal self-government for Trinidad and Tobago. We demand the revision of the 1941 agreement between the United Kingdom and the United States of America in a conferencein which Trinidad and Tobago enjoys direct, separate, equal and independent representation. We demand the return of Chaguaramas and other leased areas ceded without our consent and against our will. We demand the right, the inalienable and imprescriptible right to decide our own destiny. Long live the independence of the West Indies! This anticolonial rhetoric had no precedent in the British West Indian islands. It was one measure of Eric Williams's role in shaping the nationalist mood of his nation as well as an indication of changing times in the Caribbean . As Williams told his listeners on that April morning: "Ourmarch in Port of Spain is the symbol of our march throughout the West Indies. We march legally and constitutionally in a grand politicaldemonstration—without liquor, without jumping up, without calypsoes, without disturbance, without molestation of onlookers, or spectators ... we march with disci- T H E S T R U G G L E F O R C H A G U...