PNM IN A CARIBBEAN CONTEXT

The People’s National Movement which was formally launched at the “University of Woodford Square” on January 24, 1956, while it may not be the Caribbean’s oldest continuous political party, has the distinction of contributing more to the economic and social progress of the Region most than any other political party, including the many that are its senior through longevity. In turn, unlike all of the Region’s major parties, the PNM was neither spawned by a trade union as for example Jamaica’s People’s National Party or the Jamaica Labour Party; Guyana’s People’s Progressive Party; the Barbados Labour Party and the Antigua Labour Party, among others. Nevertheless, at its inception the PNM shared a common and uncomfortable platform with most any other Caribbean political party, in which it was dominated by the personality of its leader, particularly where the leader had been the founder. 

The situation of a Caribbean political party being spawned by or allied to a trade union or being dominated by its founder-leader had been so not only with the Jamaica Labour Party led by William Alexander Bustamante, and a creature of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union. It has also been so with the PNP - Norman Washinton Manley; Guyana’s PPP, whose leader was the charismatic Dr Cheddi Jagan, and in Barbados, Grantley Adams and the Barbados Workers’ Union, but in Antigua, St Kitts-Nevis, St Lucia, Grenada and the list goes on.  Perhaps I should add to the list the seemingly no longer operational (Trinidad and Tobago) British Empire Workers and Citizens Home Rule Party, founded by the leader of the June 19, 1937 Social Revolution, the late Tubal Uriah Butler.

Five years after the collapse of the short lived West Indian Federation, rhe PNM Government saw the need for another attempt at regional unity and proposed the idea of a Caribbean Economic Community, which would have embraced a wider Caribbean Free Trade Area than initially proposed. Three of the English speaking countries — Barbados, Guyana and Antigua — were then moving in that direction, but it would have been a regional structure that would have seen them as members, and excluding Trinidad and Tobago, at least at the start. The Government, through its Minister of West Indian Affairs, Mr. Kamaluddin Mohammed, moved with dispatch. Much later the Region would see the formation of the Caribbean Community of Nations, a meaningful successor to a widened CARIFTA.  Meanwhile, in the context of  regional unity and cooperation the PNM Government continued to advance the argument that BWIA  should be recognised by the English speaking Caribbean as the regional carrier. 

Unfortunately, although the airline remains the principal link between the Region and the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe and certain countries in Latin America, the argument for BWIA as the regional carrier has not yet been accepted by Caricom States other than Trinidad and Tobago. The stand taken by the PNM Government that there should be no outside interference in the internal affairs of the English speaking Caribbean, and given full meaning by the George Chambers Administration in October  of 1983, when it objected to a then planned United States invasion of Grenada, will be discussed and commented upon by students of Caribbean history decades from now.  The fact that other Caribbean States appeared not to appreciate the full import of the PNM Government policy decision was unfortunate.  Even more unfortunate was that even as US warships sailed from Beirut with the intention of invading Grenada some Caribbean countries allowed themselves to be persuaded by the Americans to go through the motions of “inviting” the US Government to invade the country. The publicly offered pretext was that the Maurice Bishop Government of Grenada had been overthrown and that assistance was being sought of the US to “restore democracy.”

When the US imposed a trade embargo on Cuba and urged other Western nations to trump and follow suit it was the PNM Administration which insisted and followed through with a full resumption of trade with the fellow Caribbean country.  Today, TT enjoys not merely a cordial relationship with Cuba, but also an immensely favourable balance of trade with the Spanish speaking island nation.  For the record, TT’s major exports to Cuba over the years have included bars and rods of non alloy steel, anhydrous ammonia, gas oil and other petroleum products, liquefied butane, liquefied propane and aerated beverages. Meanwhile, Caricom is TT’s second largest export market after that of the US. TT in a clear and sensible bid to strengthen the Region, directly and indirectly, has for years set aside hundreds of millions of dollars “to provide assistance to Caricom countries”. The Fund stands in this Financial Year, as it did in the last, at TT$300 million.

The late Dr Eric Williams, founder of the PNM, had called in 1970, in his monumental work, “From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean 1492-1967” (Page 497) for a Caribbean Economic Community, (far broader than at first envisaged,) and “the extension of CARIFTA (now Caricom) to the entire area, to work out a rational system of interchange between the Caribbean territories, a common external tariff, and the establishment of regional integrated industries as far as possible owned and operated by the Caribbean people themselves in their own interest”. A belated 50th birthday salute to the People’s National Movement.  I look forward to the day(s) when, if not I, then others can do the same for other political parties with a Caribbean vision.