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March 2011
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PART I As all Grenadians know, it was here in St. George’s 95 years ago that T.A. Marryshow flew from the masthead of his pioneering newspaper The West Indian the banner: The West Indies Must Be Westindian. On that banner, Westindian was symbolically one joined-up word – from the very first issue on 1 January 1915. What was ‘Teddy’ Marryshow signaling almost a century ago? That first issue looked to “the day when, our islands linked together in an administrative and fiscal union, the West Indian Dominion will take its place, small though they may be, in the glorious Empire.” Marryshow was not alone; there were others from other islands, like Capt. Cipriani of Trinidad and Rawle of Dominica and Critchelow of British Guiana and Grantley Adams of Barbados and Bradshaw of St. Kitts. They were a collective – these early regionalists – not yet bound by a blueprint of structured unity – but united by an intuitive awareness that, if they were to go forward to the goal of freedom from a still cramping colonialism in their several homes, they had to struggle together in their regional homeland: that the West Indies had to be West Indian. In the slogan was a double entendre. To be West Indian was both the goal of self-determination attained and the strategy of unity for reaching and sustaining it. That was the 1920s and ’30s. It is intriguing to remember that at that same time, today’s united Europe had just fought one civil war and was about to fight another. Our goal of freedom kept changing its form as the world changed: internal self-government in the pre-war years; formal independence in the post-war years; the reality of freedom in the era of globalization; overcoming smallness in a world of giants. But the strategy of regional unity, the strategy of oneness, would not change, at least not nominally: we called it by different names and pursued it by different forms – always with variable success: federation; integration, the OECS, CARIFTA, CARICOM, the CSME, the CCJ. It is that ‘variable success’ that today begs the question: IS THE WEST INDIES WEST INDIAN? Nearly 100 years after Marryshow asserted that we must be, are we yet? Worse still, are we less so than we once were? As West Indians, we have always faced a basic contradiction of oneness and otherness, a basic paradox of kinship and alienation. Much of our history is the interplay of these contrarieties. But they are not of equal weight. The very notion of being West Indian speaks of identity, of oneness. Today, CARICOM and all it connotes, is the hallmark of that triumph, and it is well to remember the processes which forged it – lest we forget, and lose it. Throughout history our geo-political region has known that it is a kinship in and around an enclosing Sea. But, through most of that time it suited local elites – from white planters, through successor merchant groups, to establishment colonials – to keep the Sea as a convenient boundary against encroachment on their ‘local control’: to ensure that the West Indies did not become too West Indian. Times changed in the 1920s and ’30s – between the ‘world wars’. The external economic and political environments changed; and the internal environments changed – social, political and most of all demographic. Local control began to pass to the hands of local creoles, mainly professionals, later trade unionists, and for a while the new political class saw value in a strategy of regional unity. It was a strategy that was to reach its apogee in the Federation of The West Indies: due to become independent in mid-1962. It is often forgotten that the ‘the’ in the name of the new nation was consciously spelt with a capital ‘T’ – The West Indies – an insistence on the oneness of the federated region. But, by then, that was verbal insistence against a contrary reality, already re-emerging. The new political elites for whom ‘unity’ offered a pathway to political power through ‘independence’ had found by the 1960s that that pathway was opening up regardless. In any event, regional unity was no longer a pre-condition to ‘local control’. Hence, Norman Manley’s deal with McLeod and the referendum in Jamaica; and Eric Williams’ self-indulgent arithmetic that ‘1’ from ‘10’ left ‘0’; even ‘the agony of the eight’ that ended the dream. Despite the rhetorical passion that had characterized the latter years of the ‘federal movement’ the imperishable impulse for local control had revived, and the separatist instincts of a controlling social and political elite had prevailed. Within four months of the dispersion of the Federation (on the same day in May 1962 that it was to become a single independent member state of the Commonwealth) Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago became so separately. We can act with speed when we really want to! In an interdependent world which in the name of liberalization made no distinctions between rich and poor, big and small, regional unity was compulsive. West Indian states – for all their new flags and anthems – needed each other for survival. Only three years after the rending ‘referendum’ came the first tentative steps to ‘unity’ in 1965 with CARIFTA; tentative, because the old obsession with local control continued to trump oneness – certainly in Cabinet Rooms; but in some privileged drawing rooms too; though less so in village markets and urban street corners. Despite the new external compulsions, the pursuit of even economic unity, which publics largely accepted, has been a passage of attrition. It has taken us from 1965 to 2010 – 45 years – to crawl through CARIFTA and CARICOM, through the fractured promises of Chaguaramas and Grand Anse, and through innumerable pious Declarations and Affirmations and Commitments. The roll call of unfulfilled pledges and promises and unimplemented decisions is so staggering that in 2011, a cul de sac looms. At Grand Anse in 1989 West Indian political leaders declared that “inspired by the spirit of co-operation and solidarity among us (we) are moved by the need to work expeditiously together to deepen the integration process and strengthen the Caribbean Community in all of its dimensions” They agreed a specific work programme “to be implemented over the next four years” with primacy given “towards the establishment, in the shortest possible time of a single market and economy”. That was 22 years ago. The West Indian Commission (also established at Grand Anse) confidently charted the way, declaring it a “Time for Action.” West Indian technicians took their leaders to the brink with the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas. But there was no action – no political action, no political will to act. In 22 years, nothing decisive has happened to fulfill the dream of Grand Anse. Over those two decades the West Indies has drawn steadily away from being West Indian. Not surprisingly, when Heads of Government meet here in Grenada next month [February] it will be at a moment of widespread public disbelief that the professed goal of a Single Market and Economy will ever be attained, or even that their political leaders are any longer “inspired by the spirit of co-operation and solidarity” or “moved by the need to work expeditiously together to deepen the integration process and strengthen the Caribbean Community in all its dimensions” as they proclaimed at Grand Anse in 1989. The West Indies cannot be West Indian if West Indian affairs, regional matters, are not the unwritten premise of every Government’s agenda; not occasionally, but always; not as ad hoc problems, but as the basic environment of policy. It is not so now. In the 21st century, despite all we know of the brutality of the global environment and the need for collective action to survive it, the isolationist claims of local control still smother the demands of unity of purpose and action. We are still so many plantation enclaves obsessed with outdoing each other. It is puzzling that it should be so; for we have assuredly made large gains in what ‘unity’ most demands: identity. It is not an identity crisis that we face. We are a family; we know we are. But our family values are less sturdy than they should be – those values that should make regional unity real, should move it from rhetoric to reality, should make integration an intuitive process and the CSME a natural bonding. Until we live by these values, smoothing out the wrinkles so that all the family prospers, we degrade that identity. PART II Nothing speaks louder of this current debilitation than our substantial denial of the Caribbean Court of Justice. The Bar Association of Grenada is host to this Lecture Series which is a memorial to a great West Indian lawyer. It is poignant that the Inaugural Lecture in this series delivered in 1996 by J.S. Archibald Q.C. was entitled: Essentials for a West Indies Supreme Court to replace the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as the final Appellate Court for Commonwealth Caribbean States and Territories. Fifteen years later, it is still apposite that I address this issue when we talk of being West Indian. In 2001, 12 CARICOM countries decided they would abolish appeals to the Privy Council and establish their own Caribbean Court of Justice to serve all the countries of the Caribbean Community with both original jurisdiction in regional integration matters and appellate jurisdiction as the final court of appeal for individual CARICOM countries. As of now, only Guyana (which had abolished appeals to the Privy Council on independence, believing it to be a natural incident of sovereignty), Barbados and now Belize have conferred on the CCJ that appellate jurisdiction. It is instructive that Guyana, in adopting the CCJ as its final court of appeal, dispensed with its national final Court of Appeal, subordinating its own sovereignty to the logic of a Community Court of Appeal. Constitutional amendment is required for the abolition of appeals to the Privy Council. In practical terms, this means bipartisan political support for the CCJ. In Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago (where the Court has its much sought-after location) that political consensus does not exist – because the political party now in office in each of those two major regional jurisdictions has turned its back on its regional court. In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a referendum last year rejected the transference of appeals to the CCJ. The situation has been complicated by the issue of the death penalty on which the Privy Council, reflecting contemporary English (and EU) mores and jurisprudence has been rigorous in upholding Caribbean appeals in death sentence cases. Someday, the Caribbean as a whole must accept abolition of the death penalty; I believe we should have done so already; but, in a situation of heightened crime in the region, popular sentiment has induced political reticence. Even so, however, the Privy Council’s anachronistic jurisdiction persists; and the Caribbean Court of Justice remains hobbled in pursuing its enlightened role in Caribbean legal reform. It is almost axiomatic that the Caribbean Community should have its own final Court of Appeal in all matters – that the West Indies at the highest level of jurisprudence should be West Indian. As a West Indian I despair, as a West Indian lawyer I am ashamed, that the West Indies should be a major reason for the unwelcome retention of the Privy Council’s jurisdiction within the halls of the new Supreme Court in England. Having created our own Caribbean Court of Justice it is an act of abysmal contrariety that we have so substantially withheld its appellate jurisdiction in favour of that of the Privy Council – we, who have sent Judges to the International Court of Justice, to the International Criminal Court and to the International Court for the former Yugoslavia, to the Presidency of the United Nations Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (from Grenada); we, from whose Caribbean shores have sprung in lineal descent the former and current Attorneys General of Britain and the United States respectively. This absurd and unworthy paradox of heritage and hesitancy must be resolved by action. In law, as in ourselves, the West Indies must be West Indian. Those countries still hesitant must find the will and the way to end this anomaly, and perhaps it will be easier if they act as one. The alternative to such action is too self-destructive to contemplate. But let me add what we all know, though seldom say: to give confidence to our publics in their adoption of the CCJ as the ultimate repository of justice in the West Indies, our Governments must be assiduous in demonstrating respect for all independent West Indian constitutional bodies (like the Director of Public Prosecutions) lest by transference, Governments are not trusted to keep their hands off the CCJ. And Courts themselves, at every level, must be manifestly free from political influence and be seen to be sturdy custodians of that freedom. In the end, the independence of West Indian judiciaries must rest on a broad culture of respect for the authority and independence of all constitutional office holders: for the Rule of Law.
There is another major respect in which the West Indies in not being West Indian in the Marryshow manner; is not being true to itself. We are failing to fulfill the promise we once held out of being a light in the darkness of the developing world. Small as we are, our regionalism, our West Indian synonymy, inspired many in the South who also aspired to strength through unity. We have all but withdrawn from these roles, and in some areas like the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with Europe we have fallen into the trap of not preserving unity with our brothers and sisters in other countries of the South, whatever their own lapses. Recently, the former President of Tanzania, Ben Mkapa, who was our brother in arms in the North-South arena, was warning Africa against the same EPA of which we have made Europe such a gift. Solidarity has been lost not only amongst ourselves, but also collectively with the developing world. Were we making a reality of our own regional unity we would not be false to ourselves and we would have inspired others who, in the past, had looked to us as a beacon of a worthy future. Instead, we are losing our way both at home and abroad. Have we forgotten the days when as West Indians we were the first to daringly bring the ‘Non-Aligned Movement’ to the Western Hemisphere, when we pioneered rejection of the ‘two China’ policy at the United Nations and recognised the People’s Republic; when, together, we broke the Western diplomatic embargo of Cuba; when we forced withdrawal of the Kissinger plan for a ‘Community of the Western Hemisphere’; when we were in the front rank (both intellectual and diplomatic) of the effort for a New International Economic Order; when from this region, bending iron wills, we gave leadership in the struggle against apartheid in Southern Africa; when we inspired the creation of the ACP and kept the fallacy of reciprocity in trade at bay for 25 years; when we forced grudging acceptance in the United Nations and in the Commonwealth that small states required special and differential treatment? In all this, and more, for all our size we stood tall; we commanded respect, if not always endearment. Is it not a sad commentary on our present lack of cohesion and, indeed of collective courage, that today we have succumbed to threats from the EU into signing a full EPA while other ACP regions have not, and have failed to build in the WTO and in the IMF on our previous success in convincing the UN and the Commonwealth that, as small states, we should be given special and differential treatment? Today, amid rampant globalization, those failures are already taking their toll on our Caribbean economies. The burden of my message tonight is that we have become casual, neglectful, indifferent and undisciplined in sustaining and advancing Caribbean integration: that we have failed to ensure that the West Indies is West Indian, and are falling into a state of disunity which by now we should have made unnatural. The process will occasion a slow and gradual descent – from which a passing wind may offer occasional respite; but, ineluctably, it will produce an ending. Collectively, we must recover our resolve to survive as one West Indies – as one people, one region, one whole region. Imbued by such resolve there is a future that can be better than the best we have ever had. Neither complacency nor resignation nor empty words will suffice. What we need is rescue – by ourselves, from ourselves and for ourselves. We cannot be careless with our oneness, which is our lifeline. As it was in St. George’s in 1915, so it is now: The West Indies must be Westindian! |
This is an abridged version of the Eleventh Sir Archibald Nedd Memorial Lecture, delivered by former Chancellor of The University of the West Indies, Sir Shridath Ramphal in Grenada on January 28, 2011. 