NEED FOR LOK JACK RETHINK

The charge made on Saturday at the Principles of Fairness Conference by businessman, Arthur LokJack, that Afro-Trinidadians were not enterprise-minded and were merely satisfied with "a good public service job" ignores the well documented role of Afro-Trinidad-ians in business after slavery and up to this day, and the efforts to frustrate their economic progress and independence.

And while I do not question the sincerity of LokJack, nonetheless his statement is a stereotyping, however unconsciously, of Afro-Trinidadians. There have been countless reasons for this stereotyping, for which LokJack, himself, may be unaware as indeed are most Trinidadians.

They include cynically laid down policies to prevent freed slaves from leaving the plantations and heading for urban areas to, inter alia, establish businesses rather than continue to work on sugar estates, as well as much later a lack of enthusiasm by some financial institutions (up to a few decades ago) for lending money to most Afro-Trinidadians to set up businesses. Consumer durables yes, but not for the establishing of business.

The unconscious stereotyping of Trinidadians of African descent, not simply by LokJack, but scores of others, would have been, perhaps, unwittingly the result too, of arch British imperialist, James Anthony Froude, Arnold Toynbee and the French Anthropologist, Paul Topinard among others.

There are thousands of Afro-Trinidadian entrepreneurs ranging from persons selling at the roadside, to parlour and shopkeepers, to heads of insurance company agencies, to small manufacturers to industrial mayors. The list is formidable and in a larger manner should include investors in companies whether or not publicly listed and including the Trinidad and Tobago Unit Trust Corporation. Insurance company branch or agency managers, who have distinguished themselves, and whose names are household words include E F "Telly" Paul, Ralph Coutain and Raymond Tim Kee.

The key figure, thinker and planners behind Trinidad and Tobago’s international industrial giant, C L Financial, Lawrence Duprey, is of African descent. So too, is another industrial mayor, Robert Yorke. In the media, the nation has seen Ken Gordon and Therese Mills. There have been stalwarts such as the late Raymond Dieffenthaller, Cyril Duprey, founder of Colonial Life Insurance Company, which gave birth to C L Financial; and Cyril Montano.

Afro-Trinidadians own or are joint owners of furniture manufacturing enterprises, advertising agencies, funeral homes, brokerage firms, haberdashery and hardware stores, small manufacturing companies and the list goes on. The process of African descent entrepreneurial involvement in Trinidad and the wider Caribbean began even before the end of slavery, when freed slaves bonded together to purchase sugar estates. Regrettably, apparently LokJack’s offered sample of Afro-Trinidadians not being enterprise-minded has been that of a young Afro-Trini who had, reportedly advised him he had been told by his parents to seek a "good public service job." It is unfortunate that LokJack had not offered a far wider sampling to bear out his charge.

Late Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago Dr Eric Williams, in his work "From Columbus to Castro" (Page 337) quotes a British Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord John Russell, as stating in a despatch to the Governor of then British Guiana in 1840 that the emancipated slaves "have become shopkeepers and petty traders and hucksters, and small freeholders....."

Slavery, emancipation and economic advance must not be seen purely in terms of Trinidad but in a wider Caribbean context. William G Sewell, a journalist with the New York Times in the mid-19th century, said of freed slaves in Trinidad, Dr Williams has noted in his book referred to, that they had moved "step by step not downward on the path of idleness and poverty, but upward in the scale of civilisation to greater independence."

This had been all the more remarkable when it is considered that while slave owners were granted by the British Government 20 million pounds sterling under the Abolition of Slavery Act 1833 for their slaves, the slaves were given nothing on receipt of their physical freedom, it was a brutally cynical dismissal of the human rights, long since trampled upon of the African slaves.

Let me quote for the benefit of students of Caribbean history extracts from the Act, described as "An Act for the Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Colonies; for promoting the Industry of the manumitted slaves; and for compensating the persons hitherto entitled to the services of such slaves."

"Whereas divers persons are holden in slavery within divers of his Majesty’s Colonies, and it is just and expedient that all such persons should be manumitted and set free, and that a reasonable compensation should be made to the persons hitherto entitled to the services of such slaves for the loss which they will incur by being deprived of their right to such services..." And it went on ad nauseam. Note, however, the emphasis on the so-called right of the slave owners to slaves. Not too long after the end of slavery the then colonial Government of Trinidad began encouraging the immigration of persons from several of the British colonies in the Eastern Caribbean to Trinidad to assist in making up for the shortfall in labour on the sugar estates, as this was a cheaper and faster method than bringing in indentured labourers from, for example, India and Madeira, among others. This would lead much later to problems which would bedevil Trinidad to this day. The influx would continue, unassisted by the Government for considerably more than a century, with many from, say, Grenada and St Vincent attracted by reports of well paying employment opportunities, coming in illegally.

Today, there is an undetermined number of illegal immigrants and their children residing here. An uncomfortable percentage of the children of illegal immigrants are without formal schooling. The laws of Trinidad and Tobago re illegal immigrants, as with any other country, are strict, and have created a problem. Parents wishing to have their children enrolled at school are required to enrol them, Birth Certificates have to be produced and the parents’ nationality determined. Many illegal immigrants, fearful of their status being exposed do not bother to seek registration of their offspring, who are then denied an education and a chance at upward mobility. But I have strayed.