Assessing Westminster in the Caribbean: then and now

Abstract

This paper offers a personal reflection on 50 years of independence in the Commonwealth Caribbean. It critiques the Westminster model as part of a larger ‘independence pact’ designed to maintain the status quo in the English-speaking Caribbean, and assesses the major challenges facing the region today. It argues for a broader conceptualisation of sovereignty and calls for the invention of a new Caribbean democracy.

Keywords:

• Westminster model
• Caribbean
• democracy
• sovereignty
• participation

¹At the time that Jamaica became an independent nation on 6 August 1962, I had just turned 21. Coming of age at the same time as Jamaica's assumption of nationhood, I was left with little choice. My life vocation would be the national project. For those of my cohort at the West Indian University, ‘national’ meant regional. The West Indies was – and is – our nation.

We were not enamoured of the so-called Westminster model. Our circle of students and young faculty, drawn mainly from the social sciences and history, called itself ‘The Society for the Study of Social Issues’. We wrote papers that critiqued colonial economy, society, and polity. We proposed the corresponding anti-colonial models. The politics of colonialism was the politics of exclusion; the politics of Independence would be the politics of participation (Walter Rodney was the author of this paper). The population would be mobilised for the tasks of nation-building and the creation of a just society. This had nothing to do with the Westminster model.

The ‘Independence Pact’

In my reading, Westminster was an element in a package – the Independence Pact in the British Caribbean. That pact was not about Independence; it was about preservation of the status quo. Its essential features (referring to the Jamaican case which was true with minor variations for most of the other territories) were:

• First, the entrenchment of property rights in the Constitution.

• Second, entrenchment of the two-Party system.

• Third, preservation of the laws, institutions, and symbols of the colonial state.

• And fourth, alliance with the Western powers in the Cold War.

I will illustrate this by sharing some personal recollections and observations.

In early 1962, several of us attended the sessions held in Kingston to solicit the views of the public on the design of the Jamaican Independence Constitution. Our main concern at the time was the retention of the Monarchy. We argued that it was contrary to the psychological necessities of nation-building that the Queen of England should be the Head of State of Independent Jamaica. Looking back, I have to confess to a feeling of grudging admiration for this ingenious device. It had the effect of embedding the core symbol of colonial governance into the institutions and rituals of the Independent state. It connoted continuity rather than rupture. And I would argue that it institutionalised a fractured psyche of political allegiance among those who were to be responsible for running the affairs of state. What does it do to the state of mind of the Governor-General, Prime Minister, ministers of government, parliamentary secretaries, members of parliament and of the judiciary when, as a condition of assuming and holding office, each is required to take an oath ‘to be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Her Heirs and Successors’?

This feature of the Constitution was the target of a scathing polemic by Orlando Patterson, who accused Jamaica's political leaders of a cynical betrayal of the masses, declaring that they had been ‘Brainwashed in the rank urine of British culture’.² Regarding public consultation, my distinct recollection is that these sessions were attended by a mere handful of individuals; and that no one believed that they were meant to be taken seriously.

The template of the Constitution was, I presume, supplied by the Colonial Office. There was a joke that they printed them all somewhere and just substituted the name of the newest country. The details were negotiated by a Joint Select Committee of the House – representatives of Jamaica's two main political parties that had emerged from the labour and the nationalist movements of the 1930s. It is structured in such a way that the two are virtually guaranteed an indefinite duopoly of political power. It is almost impossible to change the Constitution without the agreement of both parties.

I recall that the entrenchment of property rights was inserted at the insistence of one of the richest men in Jamaica, owner of the island's single daily newspaper. I remember Sir Alexander Bustamante, the first Prime Minister, saying that when he saw the last British soldiers departing from Jamaica, ‘Tears almost came to my eyes’. I recall that when he was asked what Jamaica's foreign policy would be, he declared simply: ‘We are with the West!’ I remember him saying that Communism would come to Jamaica ‘Over my dead body’. And that one of his first actions was to offer the USA a military base.

Bustamante's own relationship with the British legacy was a quaint mixture of fulsome admiration and self-serving manipulation. In 1946, he had been freed on a charge of manslaughter; and on leaving the court, he shouted to an adoring crowd, ‘Long Live British Justice. Long Live the British Empire. And Long Live me!’

The implanting of colonial ways of thinking into native elites was one of the outstanding successes of British policy in the Caribbean. It was key to the entrenchment of Westminster government in the soon-to-be-independent states. In an insightful essay on ‘The Myth of Independence’, Jamaican political scientist Louis Lindsay quoted from a speech delivered by then Premier Norman Manley five months before Jamaica's independence. Mr Manley

declared that the “British constitution is the best in the world … the only good system of government” … Holding this belief [says Lindsay], Mr. Manley expressed pleasure and satisfaction that Jamaican leaders had done nothing which would have jeopardized the country's chances to receive use the institutions of Westminster government. (Lindsay, 1975, p. 99)

Mr Manley firmly asserted:

I make no apology for the fact that we did not attempt to embark upon any original or novel exercise in constitutional building … . Let us not make the mistake of describing as colonial, institutions which are part and parcel of the heritage of this country. If we have any confidence in our own individuality and our own personality, we would absorb these things and incorporate them into our own use as part of the heritage we are not ashamed of. I am not ashamed of any institution which exists in this country merely because it derives from England. (Lindsay, 1975, p. 99)

Over in Trinidad and Tobago, Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams, the fierce critic of colonialism, capitalism and slavery, was declaring ‘if the Parliamentary system is good enough for England, it is good enough for us’.

Consider the striking contrast between the sentiments of Caribbean leaders and those expressed by Patrice Lumumba at the ceremony marking the Independence of the Congo just two years earlier. Speaking in the presence of the King of Belgium, Lumumba said:

Although this independence of the Congo is being proclaimed today by agreement with Belgium, an amicable country, with which we are on equal terms, no Congolese will ever forget that independence was won in struggle, a persevering and inspired struggle carried on from day to day, a struggle, in which we were undaunted by privation or suffering and stinted neither strength nor blood.

It was filled with tears, fire and blood. We are deeply proud of our struggle, because it was just and noble and indispensable in putting an end to the humiliating bondage forced upon us.

That was our lot for the eighty years of colonial rule and our wounds are too fresh and much too painful to be forgotten. (1960, June 30)

A few more comments on the Jamaican Constitution. Reading it today is a surreal experience. There is great difficulty in thinking of it as the Constitution of an independent state. The document is actually a Royal Order in Council. It begins with the words ‘At the Court in Buckingham Palace’ and this is followed by eight pages of medieval sounding language. You will not find anything in it remotely like a reference to the sovereignty of the people, or even of Parliament. In fact, in the original version, the Jamaican people are not referred to as such, anywhere. Nor is there any reference to social and economic rights of the kind adumbrated the United Nations. (49 years later, the Constitution was amended by the incorporation of a Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms) (Act to Amend the Constitution of Jamaica to provide for a Charter for Fundamental Rights and Freedoms, 2011). The final judicial authority – including on matters concerning the interpretation of the Constitution itself – is the British Privy Council.

Behind the independence pact

The Independence Pact was made between the British – with the Americans hovering watchfully in the background – and the Jamaican political class that had emerged out of the mass movements of the 1930s. The Jamaicans would exercise formal political authority; the economy would remain in the hands of foreign firms and the local oligarchy.

My doctoral thesis showed that at the time of independence, American, British, and Canadian firms were entrenched in bauxite mining, sugar, banking, and finance; while local landowners and merchants controlled the best land, tourism, and import trading. A key element would be a security apparatus with close links to the imperialist system. The core of the newly established Jamaica Defence Force was the colonial West India Regiment. The officers attended courses at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. Ties with the US were doubtless established soon after Independence.

Recently declassified ‘Colonial administration records (migrated archives)’ show that in the lead-up to Jamaica's independence, the British authorities, through the local Special Branch of the Jamaican police, were engaged in surveillance of a variety of individuals and organisations thought to represent potential threats to the system. Their targets included the Universal Negro Improvement Association; the World Federation of Democratic Youth; Mr Dudley Thompson, who had defended Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya and later became Jamaica's Foreign Minister; and Harold and Kathleen Drayton, school teachers from Guyana and Trinidad, respectively, whose son Dr Richard Drayton is now Rhodes Professor of Imperial History at London University.

In addition, the Special Branch was vetting staff appointments at the University College of the West Indies in a practice that was apparently stopped only at the insistence of the Principal, Professor Arthur Lewis. They were especially concerned about the possible local repercussions of the Cuban Revolution. They were monitoring a proposed visit to Cuba by a group of students from the University College of the West Indies. I was myself a member of that group of students. Our visit to Cuba was blocked by the government. There are several files on ‘Cuban activities in Jamaica, arrival of ships, planes from Cuba’. It is a safe bet that all this stuff was shared with the Americans; and that the collaboration between the Jamaican Special Branch and the imperialists continued seamlessly after Independence. I well recall that when I went to take delivery of my new Jamaican passport in September 1962, an official pointedly drew my attention to the page where it stated that the passport could be withdrawn at any time!

Grand imperial strategy

I believe that what I have said about the Jamaican Independence Pact is largely true for the entire British Caribbean. The proof of this is the lengths to which the British and the Americans went to ensure that Dr Cheddi Jagan, an avowed Marxist, would not govern an independent British Guiana. Recently declassified records tell the sordid story. We now know that this was a grand imperial strategy of the colonial powers in Africa and Asia. In the essay to which I earlier referred, Louis Lindsay concluded that the ‘formal granting of the right of self-determination to traditionally devalued peoples of the Afro-Asian and Caribbean world’ was accompanied by devaluation of the meaning of independence itself. ‘The core of the myth of independence’, he theorises, ‘centres on the substitution of procedural and legalistic criteria for functional and substantive ones’ (Lindsay, 1975, p. 94). Drawing on the powerful insights of Frantz Fanon, Lindsay insists that the intent and effect of this strategy were to co-opt nationalist leaders and pre-empt the possibility that the anti-colonial struggle would take the form of a revolutionary mobilisation – one which would result in the psychological self-emancipation of the colonised people and transform the institutions and structures of colonial rule.

Half a century of Westminster

Looking back over the past half century, we see both continuity and change.

At one level, the colonialists' strategy succeeded very well. The population has been diverted from any agenda of revolutionary transformation. Politics is a perpetual game of alternating ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ and Winner Takes All. It is characterised mainly by mudslinging, sensationalism, and pursuit of trivia. Every five years, a cornucopia of election campaign promises is routinely made. Few are kept. People participation is limited to cheering at election rallies and a ten-second act of voting every five years. Government is reduced to Prime Ministerial dictatorship. Long-term issues of development are hardly ever on the agenda of popular political discourse.

At the same time, there is change. The attempt to introduce Westminster into countries with deep social and ethnic cleavages, dependent economies and a culture of authoritarianism and social exclusion has given rise to all sorts of contortions. Furthermore, the international political economy associated with the Independence Pact has changed radically; blowing away many of the supports on which the Pact was based. As a result, what passes for Westminster today is often a grotesque distortion of the original.

Let us return to the Jamaican case. In the 1970s, the government of Mr Michael Manley introduced wide-ranging social reforms; redistributed income; and expanded state control over the economy. It took steps to address the social debt that was the legacy of 300 years of colonialism, slavery, and the plantation system. The Empire and the local oligarchy struck back. Mr Manley's experiment was crippled by capital flight, shrinking export revenues, and International Monetary Fund (IMF)-mandated austerity. By the end of 1980, he had been voted out of office. It was back to business as usual.

The late Carl Stone theorised Jamaican politics as a system of patronage and clientelism. Electors, especially those in constituencies consisting of the poor and socially excluded, exchange their votes for jobs and other benefits. Where there is not enough for everyone, inter-Party violence often results (Stone, 1980). A former prime minister, Mr P.J. Patterson, said in a moment of candour that Jamaican politics consisted of ‘warring tribes vying for scarce benefits’ (cited in Wilson, 2006). But Stone went further. He saw a trend in the 1980s where the fiscal crisis of the state was drying up the flow of benefits to supporters of the Party in power. Drug dons were stepping in to fill the breach. He predicted that this would be a game-changer in Jamaican politics. The tail would end up wagging the dog.

Fast forward to 2010. Christopher Dudus Coke, wanted in the USA for drug and gun running, had long since established a stronghold in the constituency then represented by the Prime Minister himself, Mr Bruce Golding. In Tivoli Gardens, Dudus ‘ran t'ings’. For over nine months, Golding's government refused to act on an extradition request from the US Government. When he eventually caved in under pressure, there was a virtual urban insurrection in his own constituency, in support of the wanted drug lord. In the ensuing operation by the forces of the state, over 70 civilians were killed, under circumstances yet to be fully determined. Jamaica was exposed to the kind of international media attention that is the Tourist Board's nightmare. Dudus became one of the most instantly recognisable Jamaican faces in the world's media, eclipsed only – and fortunately – by the likes of Bob Marley and Usain Bolt. Dudus himself escaped, and gave himself up several weeks later. In the USA, he pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy and conspiracy to commit assault with a dangerous weapon in aid of racketeering. He is now serving a 23-year jail sentence. Golding was forced to call an early election the following year, which he promptly lost.

Not surprisingly, the prestige of politics and of the national project in the eyes of the population plunged to a new low. In the 2011 elections, only about half of the Jamaican electorate turned out. The present administration holds office on the basis of the votes of less than one-third of qualified electors. In a poll taken in mid-2011, 60 per cent of respondents agreed that Jamaica would have been better off had it remained a British colony (‘Give Us the Queen!’ Jamaica Gleaner, 2011, June 28). This, as Jamaica approached its fiftieth independence anniversary.

The Jamaican case is extreme, but it is not necessarily atypical. Allegations have been made at one time or another on connections between criminal organisations, political parties and the state in Trinidad and Tobago and in Guyana. Corruption, transparency, and accountability are concerns everywhere. The controversy surrounding the role of Mr Jack Warner, of FIFA fame, in the government and politics of Trinidad and Tobago, is a case in point. It is a sign of the political times that we live in, that someone of Mr Warner's reputation is being seriously mentioned as a possible future Prime Minister of that country.

We have had instances of constitutional reform of course, notably in Guyana and in Trinidad and Tobago. It is not clear, however, that these reforms have changed the basic concerns about Westminster. To summarise these concerns:

• First, corruption – the plunder of state resources by politicians and their cronies.

• Second, the insidious and largely invisible influence of money in politics and in the determination of state policy. (Lack of transparency and accountability; need for campaign finance reform.)

• Third, the problem of unchecked executive power.

• Fourth, emasculation of the legislative branch.

• Fifth, weakness or non-existence of avenues for citizen participation in governance. (Participation is reduced to voting at five-yearly intervals.)

• And sixth, weakness of local government.

Of course, many of these issues are on the agenda here [in the UK] and in other parts of the world. To some degree, the English-speaking Caribbean is part of a global trend. However, that trend assumes a particular shape and form in the region. The Independence Pact in the Caribbean was underpinned by a very particular set of economic arrangements and circumstances. Trade preferences were in place; export markets were buoyant; aid flows were generous. These conditions corresponded to a particular historical moment in the global political economy. There was the economic expansion from 1945 to the 1970s; the Cold War, decolonisation, and international developmentalism. In this context, the new states had a material base sufficient to pursue projects of national development. But to a significant degree, these circumstances no longer apply. After 1980, we have neoliberal globalisation; global trade rules; end of the Cold War; instability and slowdown in the US–EU pole; climate change. As a result, the trade preferences are gone. Concessional aid flows have shrunk. In many regional countries, export revenues have not kept pace with imports, newly liberalised. Tax revenues have not kept pace with government spending. Debt ratios have grown steeply. New threats and new demands on government resources have emerged with bewildering speed. We now have to cope with the effects of transnational organised crime; and of global climate change.

I will not try your patience by reciting a whole lot of facts and figures. A convenient way to sum up the situation is to report that the Caricom Caribbean is one of the highest regions, globally, on a number of indicators.

• Debt burden – more than twice that of Latin America;

• Migration rates – between two-thirds and 90 per cent of the annual output of skilled manpower;

• Economic dependence on remittances – fastest growing source of foreign currency earnings, greater than ODA [Overseas Development Assistance] and FDI [Foreign Direct Investment]; three times the value of agricultural exports;

• Murder rates – over 30 per 100,000 and highest of all the regions in the world;

• Along with other SIDS, among the countries with the highest degree of vulnerability to climate change in relation to population and land area.

On a brighter side, we do have the highest per capita production in the world of medal-winning athletes. And we have probably the highest per capita production of carnivals.

In analysing the effects of these phenomena, it is customary to compartmentalise. Professional disciplines and ministries of government usually function in silos.

Of course, that is not how it works when you go outside. You are faced with inter-relationships, feedbacks, and combined effects. You have to look out for the Perfect Storm.

A lot of money will be needed to adapt to global climate change. Ditto for dealing with the threats posed by transnational organised crime. You are not going to find the money domestically when the state is already heavily indebted. Neither can you borrow abroad commercially, for you are no longer creditworthy. The growth of the debt is due, at least partially, to stagnant or shrinking export revenues. And this comes about because trade preferences have been removed under World Trade Organisation rules. At the same time, concessional funding is hard to secure because most Caribbean countries are not among the world's poorest. When you can no longer service the debt, you have no recourse but to the IMF. That means budget cuts; further depletion of resources to fight crime, to adapt to climate change, build up your human and physical capital, and pay your teachers and policemen adequately. More professionals leave. You are into IMF trusteeship. There is real threat of many regional countries being caught in a vicious downward spiral. When I speak of ‘existential threats’, I mean to the survival of territories as viable economies, functional polities, and cohesive societies.

Dr Kenny Anthony, Prime Minister of St Lucia, said in a recent speech:

Make no mistake about it. Our region is in the throes of the greatest crisis since independence. The spectre of evolving into failed societies is no longer a subject of imagination. How our societies crawl out of this vicious vortex of persistent low growth, crippling debt, huge fiscal deficits and high unemployment is the single most important question facing us at this time. (2012, p. 4)

For most if not all these countries, the national project has become a forgotten dream. Mr Ancel Roget, President-General of the Oilfields Workers Trade Union of Trinidad and Tobago:

Our beloved Trinidad and Tobago is in a state of crisis … Our post-colonial state has collapsed … . (There is) is a feeling of lost hope … This is not what our forefathers fought and died for … ³

Economic realities have turned national sovereignty into an illusion; a legal formality that is increasingly devoid of substance. Dr Peter Phillips, Minister of Finance in Jamaica said:

 … we have not managed our sovereignty well and the first requirement of sovereignty is the ability to manage your own affairs and pay your way in the world and we haven't done that well. (Gov't United – Phillips, 2013)

Short-term political expediency driven by the pressures of competitive electoral systems has led to a vicious cycle of indebtedness. Dr Omar Davies, former Finance Minister of Jamaica, said:

(Our) $1.7-trillion debt indicates that we have been taking decisions which were not sustainable, and we were borrowing to meet those obligations … .To me, it is a personal embarrassment that there are issues which we should have seen or felt but, for whatever reason or little bad patch or tribalist thing, we can't make a move, or even in circumstances within our own party we can't make a move because we feel we goin’ lose some votes, when we are taking positions which are not sustainable. (Blame Us and Let's Move on Says Davies, 2013)

Going forward

Can the national project be rescued? What is the meaning of sovereignty to countries like ours in the new global order? What is the role of regionalism going forward? And where does the Westminster system fit into all of this?

These questions are posed very sharply. It would appear that we are at some kind of historical turning point, like the 1830s and the 1930s, when the old system was crumbling, but the shape of the one to replace is still to be clearly defined. If I am correct in inferring that the national project has run its course, then we need to consider whether its goals and aspirations are to be abandoned. Central to these were sovereignty, democracy, justice, and development. These goals remain as valid as ever. What perhaps needs to be rethought is the manner in which they are pursued. Or if you prefer, to think through the relationship between form and substance.

Take sovereignty, for instance. We have been accustomed to conflate this notion with the possession of certain constitutional and juridical attributes by the nation-state. I see the need to begin a conversation about reconceptualising sovereignty in broader terms – terms such as ‘policy space’ as employed in the recent discourse in the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the South Centre and other parts of the Global South. Terms such as the development of structures of people empowerment at the local and community levels. Food sovereignty. Energy independence. The endogenous capacity to manage and adapt to climate change. The capacity to secure your borders and your people. The ability to speak knowledgeably and convincingly in global fora; and to be taken seriously.

Above all, sovereignty means the capacity of a society and its citizens to think for themselves. It begins in the mind. George Lamming speaks of the sovereignty of the imagination; Lloyd Best spoke of independent thought; Marcus Garvey of emancipation from mental slavery.

Once we begin to think of it in this way, we see the possibility of designing forms of regionalism in such a way as to enhance sovereignty and to serve the goals of the national project. The old thinking opposes regionalism to insular Independence and national sovereignty. Time to lay the ghost of the West Indies Federation!

The concept of ‘shared sovereignty’, for example, is on the table. In other words, sharing selected attributes of constitutional sovereignty with regional partners so as to enhance the substantive sovereignty of each. We might think of doing this, for instance, in subjects such as security, climate change, food, and negotiation with external donors.

Some really creative thinking is called for. The present structures of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), and the assumptions on which they are based, are mired in a form of regionalism which quite frankly impedes creative engineering. To be honest, I am not confident that the regional political and technocratic elites are equal to the task. But we live in hope.

And what about the Westminster system? Here again, there is the issue of form vs. substance. We are searching for a theory and practice of Caribbean democracy that break free from the shackles of Westminsterism. We need forms of political participation that privilege informed citizen engagement with the urgent issues of survival and with the kind of society that we wish to create. Forms that promote the building of social consensus across the cleavages of class, colour, ethnicity, gender, and political tribe.

Over 50 years ago, C.L.R. James excited many like myself with his vision of the possibilities of creating Athenian-type democracies in small societies like ours. Small can be beautiful. We have an experience; we have precedents. The Caribbean labour movements of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s were a place where important debates on the future of Caribbean society took place. The preparation of the People's Plan in Jamaica in 1977 was a remarkable exercise in popular participation. The first national conference of Community Councils in Jamaica, held in the late 1970s, showed the real possibilities for developing community-based organs of people power. The Grenadian Revolution gave rise to an exciting experience in community participation in the preparation of the national budget of the Government. The Caribbean women's movements of the 1980s and 1990s have had a visible impact on national policy; and still do. All over the region, civil society activism is on the rise, campaigning for accountability and transparency in government, for constitutional reform, for responsible environmental stewardship.

Over in Latin America, exciting experiments in participatory democracy are taking place. Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador have convened citizens’ assemblies which have drawn up and approved new constitutions establishing organs of popular power, the rights of women, indigenous minorities, Afro-descendants, and social and economic rights including the right of women to be remunerated for unpaid household labour. There is no shortage of experiences from which we can draw.

So that is a suggested agenda for future conversation, so to speak. Reinvention of the national project; reconceptualisation of sovereignty; redesign of regionalism; and invention of a Caribbean democracy.

One last personal anecdote. Some 51 years ago, in a place not too far from here called Red Lion Square, I heard C.L.R. James speaking in a public forum on the recent independence of Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. As I recall, the gist of his presentation was that the colonial economy, the colonial system had existed in the West Indies for 300 years, and was still intact. He said that into its midst had been introduced a creature – I think he called it a ‘monster’ – called Democracy. He declared that either the colonial system must go, or democracy must go. The two could not co-exist. I rather believe that history has proven C.L.R. James right. The colonial system, in its essence, is intact; and democracy has been degraded. I would not be so bold as to make predictions for the next 50 years. I would only say that we have a lot of work to do, that the challenge is exciting, and that the possibilities are endless.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Editor's note: In tribute to Professor Girvan (1941–2014) we reproduce here in its entirety the text of the opening keynote delivered by Professor Girvan at the conference on ‘Assessing Westminster in the Caribbean: Then and Now’, held at the Institute of the Americas, University College London, 19 September 2013. It is impossible to consider the themes of Caribbean democracy and governance without reference to Professor Girvan's outstanding work. We dedicate this special issue to his memory and acknowledge his lifelong contribution to imagining new Caribbean futures.

2. Quoted from memory from the June 1962 editorial in the student magazine The Pelican. The editorial was written by Orlando Patterson while he was a student at the University of the West Indies, Mona.

3. ‘Our beloved Trinidad and Tobago is in a state of crisis; manifesting itself in various forms. The system of governance itself has failed. Our post-colonial state has collapsed … . (There is) is a feeling of lost hope, where the country seems to be spiralling out of control, degenerating into barbarism. This is not what our forefathers fought and died for … . They did not fight to create a society based on individualism. They did not fight for self-governance so that some politicians can pillage and plunder the treasury, enriching themselves. They certainly did not fight to build a country where party financiers reign supreme. This is the kind of country we see being constructed’. Editor's note: the citation is from an unpublished speech by Ancel Roget marking Labour Day in Trinidad and Tobago, 19 June 2013.