New Beginning: A WARNING TO THE PEOPLE of Trinidad and Tobago (March 1971)
Today, Trinidad and Tobago commemorates 61 years of independence. On August 31, 1962, a nominal transfer of power occurred between the British Crown and the ascendant Trinbagonian middle classes who consolidated power under the guardianship of the People’s National Movement (PNM) and the “doctor politics” of Eric Eustace Williams.
Less than a decade after independence, the first major clash between the postcolonial masses, uniting Indians and Africans, against the Afro-Saxon political class erupted in 1970, when students, workers, the unemployed and a faction of the army initiated a protracted conflict guided by demands for “true independence” and workers’ control of the postcolonial economy.
Earlier, Clash! has written on the Black Power Revolution of 1970 and the ensuing war between the masses and the Black-led PNM Government. Radical formations such as the National Union of Freedom Fighters (NUFF), National Movement for True Independence (NAMOTI), National Joint Action Committee (NJAC), and New Beginning Movement proliferated the political landscape in the Trinbagonian 1970s as formative challenges to the vestigial orthodoxy of Westminster parliamentary government.
New Beginning rooted its critique of independence in (CLR) Jamesian political principles of direct democracy and workers’ self-management in which the masses who sparked the Black Power Revolution of 1970 would govern the country directly through workplace and village assemblies. As co-editor Matthew Quest observes in an earlier sketch, the New Beginning Movement “evolved into an autonomous Marxist radical political organization that criticized electoral politics as something designed to capture the masses’ popular sovereignty.”
New Beginning understood the Trinbagonian police state to be a primary obstacle to true independence. The murder of Basil Davis by Trinidad police in April 1970 set off a prolonged period of warfare between the Williams Government and the radical left. Petty officers and a secret police force, the infamous Flying Squad commanded by Randolph Burroughs, terrorized radical organisations and martyred freedom fighters including Davis, Beverly Jones, and Guy Harewood.
In March 1971, New Beginning issued a prescient “Warning” to the people of Trinidad and Tobago. This statement is prophetic in its caution against premature confrontation with the Williams-led police state. After an army regiment mutinied against Williams during the uprising of 1970, Williams consolidated power through his secret police attachés and the stockpiling of arms. Rather than any principled defense against foreign aggressors, these stockpiles anticipated a war against the citizens of independent Trinidad and Tobago. New Beginning references the “SLRs and SMGs” held in police barracks and reports in excess of “3,000 automatic weapons” entered the country since the initial confrontation of 1970.
New Beginning understood the organisation of workplace councils and village assemblies as a precondition for a protracted people’s war against Williams and the “whole system” that he represents. “The Williams regime,” it reads, “is not Williams alone.” Fanning the flames of the new society not just in Trinidad but throughout the Caribbean, New Beginning underscored the necessity of organising at the “village level, and the block level, at the productive level.” In this statement, the act of “organising” is privileged over the “organisation” of a vanguard party. New Beginning insists that only the working people can carry out this necessary transformation of society. If we are to be serious about revolution, power must be seized from below, not deposited from above. This, and only this, can ensure that the masses will win against the State’s arsenal of bullets and weapons.
Other organisations such as NUFF took a different tack. NUFF engaged in armed skirmishes with police and expropriations of foreign banks along Trinidad’s East-West Corridor. The murders of Beverly Jones and Guy Harewood tragically confirmed New Beginning’s warning that the State had prepared for an assault on the people and their revolutionary cadres.
The persistence of the police state in the contemporary Caribbean confirms, too, that Williamsism has survived long after the reign of Eric Williams himself. Caribbean States continue to stockpile weapons and military technologies with the express purpose of subduing internal dissidents and unruly citizens. This bloody legacy of independence — in which independent governments turned the instruments of defense on the people themselves — is what we are left to meditate on sixty-one years later.
Williamsism is batting sixty-one, not out. No electoral party before or since, even when taking office for a time from the PNM, has replaced its oppressive spirit. No politician or party above society in T&T can replace its vile character while wielding the pretense to “progress” and “development.” Mixing together the latter claims with over-the-top sleaze and flea-bitten maneuvering, whatever party or politicians embodies this for a time, clarifies there is only one way forward. Popular and self-directed power of everyday people. The hour of their dismissal is long overdue.
Bowl them out! Toward a new beginning!
A WARNING TO THE PEOPLE
Transcribed by Ryan Cecil Jobson from New Beginning Vol. 1, No. 2 (12 March 1971)
A crisis is fast approaching. All where we turn we can see it coming. The working class is stirring. There are rumblings once again in the sugar factories and on the sugar estates. The secondary school students are on the march. They have begun to move in the schools and on the streets. Tobago is boiling. The army is beginning to bulge. The police force is cracking. The wind of Revolution is beginning to take up speed. But we have to be serious about revolution. Revolution is not crowd confrontation. If we do not take stock, we are going to end up worse than 1970.
The political actors on the national stage are shouting: POWER, POWER TO THE PEOPLE’S ARMY! They are trying to create an emotional response among the people. Once again they have begun to lead you in marches up and down the country. They are the actors and you are supposed to be the audience, cheering with your clenched fists and shouting: POWER! BUT Beware of political office seekers; beware of fast talkers and smart men. They are going to use Black Power language, revolutionary words and Indian-African unity to fool you. They are telling you to vote for them or to follow them because they have the plan and the solutions. People, beware! Be on guard. No one can solve your problems but yourselves.
WHERE WE ARE HEADING
The fever that is taking hold of the people today is one of confrontation. Everywhere the talk is confrontation, crowd confrontation. We march in Tobago, we march in Port-of-Spain, we march in the East, we march in the South. Where are we heading?
Marching is not bad in itself. The people can only show their disgust, frustrations and fed-upness by actions. This is true. But we cannot get what we want by marching. Neither can we make a serious people’s revolution by holding seminars of leaders.
Leaders will always sell us down the drain. If we continue to be only emotional, we are going to fall into Williams trap. Crowd confrontation will be suicide for all of us. Williams will call out his police with their SLRs and SMGs, and call on the Venezuelan who cannot speak or understand one word of English. This is the direction in which the present power-shouting leaders are taking us. We must say NO.
WILLIAMS IS PREPARING
The Williams regime is now even more prepared than April, and it is still making more preparations for a confrontation with the people.
Since April, cases and cases of automatic weapons have been coming into the country. An estimate made by the New Beginning Research staff shows that over 3,000 automatic weapons have come into the country since August 1970. The police are in constant training, learning how to use their automatic weapons. Recently, Williams has established a body called the National Youth Brigade made up of youths who are paid handsome salaries. They are being trained by police officers in the use of arms and weapons. The in-thing for these youths in the NYB to say when asked what they are doing is this: “I am in the army. They are taking in a lot of us now.” THAT IS A LIE. They are told to say that because Williams does not want the people to know that he is training young murderers.
More than that, the security are using all kinds of methods these days. They are tapping phones left, right and centre. Anyone who they think is against the regime, they tap his or her phone. Also, plainclothes security men are following people everywhere they go. They operate in private cars, hired cars and on foot. In fact, many taximen, youths with Afro-styles, pretensive radicals etc. are being used as spies. It is known that all overseas calls going out or coming into Trinidad are tape recorded. Further, than that, the security is using people who live close to a “suspect” to tell them who come, who go out, what movements are noticed around your house, etc. Most of these house-spies are PNM fanatics who have benefitted from the Williams regime.
There is a certain man who borrows a lot from the CIA. He has a whole team of gangsters working for him. They carry information to him on brothers that he is out to get. They collect fat pockets and he swoops down on the brothers. The establishment says he has a keen eye. He has no keen eye. He has a gang eye. This man has gone so far as to set up a “mod-squad” to spy on brothers on the block. The activities of this man is well known. It will not be surprising if one morning, some explosives, bombs, arms and drugs are planted on New Beginning staff members and people hear on the radio that we are held in jail.
WHAT TO DO?
Brothers and sisters, The Williams regime is preparing for a confrontation. Do not be mistaken, The Williams regime is not Williams alone. Williams is only the Head of the regime’s organisation.
You know well who the others are. We must not become too emotional and rush into confrontation. Our target is not Williams. It is the whole system, moreso the governmental system for when we as the people, the whole people, take power, we can easily deal with the economy. Our task NOW is to organise. The whole people must be organised at the village level, and the block level, at the productive level. Indian and African must organise. Only by organising ourselves can we be prepared to throw Williams, his regime and his system on the rubbish heap.
Let us say: “the soldiers must be free because they did what they had to do in the face of Military, political, Governmental and administrative corruption, and inefficiency. We will free them by building a new system, a new form of Government, NOW Not tomorrow, not 1980, but NOW.”
Organise around national issues, organise around village issues, organise around issues at your work. We must organise NOW at the roots, to gain POWER TO THE PEOPLE.
