THE POISON OF RACE

“All your strength is in your union/All your danger is in discord”: Henry Longfellow: Hiawatha.

Even though it is as plain as the proverbial pikestaff that the globalisation thrust of the World Trade Organisation [WTO], along with the impending end of the Lome Convention, has made Government’s restructuring and divestment of State owned Caroni [1975] Limited a must, yet there are a cynical few who, for political reasons, shout that the restructuring has a racial intent. They refuse to publicly blame the policies of the WTO; they fight shy of blaming the around the corner end of Lome, and steer clear of condemning the Government of the United States for its attack on preferential entry of Caribbean bananas to the European Union, a clear signal that sugar was next, for Government’s decision to restructure the sugar company. If they are interested in why there is a need to restructure and divest Caroni [1975] Limited, among other State Enterprises, I can refer them to the November 21, 1989 Memorandum and Recommendation to the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s [IBRD] Executive Directors on the time proposed Structural Adjustment Loan [SAL] to the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.

Yet it was not the IBRD that would in the end dictate how the present Administration would act, but rather the United States of America — controlled World Trade Organisation, which cynically provided the rationale for the move on bananas by the United States, and ipso facto the implied threat of similar action by 2005 or 2006 on the question of sugar. As early as 1992 the United States had attacked the favoured entry status of Caribbean bananas to the European Union, which the Americans argued gave an edge over the Central American banana industry, dominated, incidentally, by American companies, for example United Fruit and Chiquita. The WTO ruled against preferential entry, and the United States was empowered to impose sanctions on relevant European Union countries. A stay was granted, however, following discussions between the US and the EU.

What was particularly cruel about the intervention of the mighty United States against the preferential entry of Caribbean bananas, for example those of peewat St Lucia, Dominica and St Vincent and the Grenadines, is that the banana exports of these CARICOM countries represent only a miniscule five per cent of banana imports by the European Union, as against the American companies’ 45 percent! But preferential entry of sugar and bananas to the European Union will end no later than 2006, regardless of the intervention by the United States. The difference, however, is that the US wanted preferential entry of bananas to end much sooner, indeed more than ten years ago. Had it not received a rebuff and serious challenge from the European Union, preferential entry of bananas would have been history, and so would have been that of sugar. Yet, despite all the published evidence of United States and other international manoeuvring, there are persons in Trinidad and Tobago, who insist on repeating the falsehood that Government is seeking to restructure Caroni [1975] Limited on the grounds of race. All that these people have not done was to state that the Government of Trinidad and Tobago connived with the World Trade Organisation to insert clauses against preferential entry; with the European Union to bring about an end to the Lome Convention, and with the United States to have it pursue its strategy on bananas.

It is an insult to the intelligence of sugar workers of Indian descent to infer and/or cry race on the sugar situation.  Or, is it that they prefer to veer away from attacking Europe, which brought our forbears here as slaves and indentured labourers, or for that matter the United States, which is predominantly of European descent, for placing the Govern-ment of Trinidad and Tobago in the position where it was forced to restructure Caroni.  Or, has this veering away anything to do with the reality that there is not much political mileage in that, as there appears to be in inferring that Trinbagonians of African descent are vindictively restructuring Caroni to pressure sugar workers and others generally of Indian descent? As I said in an earlier column, the restructuring of Caroni [1975] Limited has less to do with national politics, than it has to do with the politics of globalisation. This appeal to race, tied in as it is with economics, may only serve to create doubts in the minds of a substantial percentage of a people - the Trinidad and Tobago people - who have lived in relative harmony for 158 years. And although the appeal is cheap, yet it cannot and should not be dismissed lightly, for it carries with it an emotional content.

My Barbados-born father, the late C G Alleyne, could never understand why there were some Trinidadians and Tobagonians of West African and Indian descent, who were always willing to blame members of the other ethnic group for any and every thing that went wrong with them. He was shocked at the use of such derogatory terms as “nigger” and “coolie”, and banned their use in our home, along with others such as “limey”, “chiney”, “dirty Shylock”, “baccra” and so on. Sometimes, the derogatory terms are used by a member of an ethnic group against a person of the same group. A few years ago, a member of the People’s National Movement, who was of Indian descent called me to protest that a prominent member of the United National Congress had called him a “Mandingo coolie” because of his PNM connections. He refused to be cowed by that, and remains to this day a member of the Party of his choice. In the 1940s, Albert Gomes had warned Victor Bryan during an election campaign, in which they were on opposite political sides, that “the seeds of racial discord being sown today will be reaped in bitter harvest in the years to come”. Bryan had been unduly critical of Gomes because he, Gomes, had been a member of the then Executive Council, and had made unnecessary and unkind references to Gomes’ acting on the basis of ethnicity. Ironically, in 1950 they would both serve in the same Administration, as two of Trinidad and Tobago’s first Ministers of Government.

In 1956, there were members of the European descent community, who had objected to the advent of the People’s National Movement, fearing that a Party of predominantly African descent would come to political power. When the United National Congress won the General Election of 1995, there were fears expressed privately by some persons that it would adopt an extremely partial position in favour of persons of Indian descent. Recently, persons of Indian descent who had supported the ruling Party were described, albeit by inference, as neemakharams. Seven years earlier, the reverse had applied. In each instance the poison of race was introduced. It is for a younger generation to consciously seek and apply the antidote for the senseless poison. Already, the sugar workers of both Indian and African descent, have, however indirectly, come out in favour of the restructuring of Caroni, and are insisting that they should be allowed to receive the benefits promised them. Economics is triumphing over the narrow and poisonous, divisive poison of race.