British West Indies

on the World Today

CERTAIN sinister trends in parts of Central and South America are convincing proof, if any were needed, that the United States’ interests throughout this area cannot nowadays be limited merely to private commercial exploitation and tourist relaxation. Theres must be a wider, national concern in the political and economic stability of the whole region.

It is in this context that the slate of affairs in Guatemala and British Guiana has to be judged. In Guatemala a regime exists which is only narrowly distinguishable from an orthodox Communist state. In British Guiana, owing to the use of reserved powers by the local governor, it has been possible to take decisive remedial action to prevent a similar development. This action, even though it may have offended the spirit, if not the letter, of the Monroe Doctrine, certainly earned the commendation of Washington.

Welcome, then, should he the joint plan of Great Britain and her Most Indian territories to create, in a zone so important to American security, another independent federal Dominion loyal to the British Crown and the free democratic way of life of the English-speaking world.

Many considerations urge such a step. Experience has shown that political independence granted to a small state which does not also possess the basic means of economic livelihood is but a hollow mockery and leads, sooner or later, to its subjection to a militant minority that owes allegiance to a foreign tyranny. Separate and divided, the scores of British-owned Caribbean islands, ranging from Jamaica, 4400 square miles in size, down to tiny islands too small for human habitation, have no valid foundation on which to establish a minimum degree of economic viability to enable them to achieve individually their aim of self-government within the Commonwealth.

Together, especially if British Guiana and British Honduras on the mainland could be induced to join the federation, they would make a significant entity. This would not only benefit the standard of living of the inhabitants concerned, but also contribute to the maintenance of a peaceful equilibrium throughout an important area of the globe at a time when both the United States and Britain have more than enough strategic preoccupations elsewhere to engage their full attention.

Too far apart

Desirable though federation may be, however, it is going to be no easy task to bring it to fruition. The first, and not the least, difficulty in the way is that of geography. For nearly eighty years the idea of establishing a closer union of the West indies has been under intermittent consideration by the Colonial Office in London: but hitherto the obstacles of excesstive distance and poor communications between the proposed components have proved insuperable. There is well over a thousand miles of rolling ocean between Jamaica and Trinidad, or Jamaica and Barbados; while even the members of existing groupings, the Windward and Leeward Islands, are widely dispersed. To some extent, of course, this aspect has been made easier by the advance of both passenger and freight air transport.

Then too there are a variety of interterritorial prides and jealousies to be overcome. These are not simply manifestations of the white versus black or brown color-bar so prevalent in other parts of the world, but reflect in a much less definable fashion the vivid historical background to the islands’ development. Populated originally, but sparsely, by several true Carib races of Amerindian derivation, the islands have endured successive waves of European settlement, conquest, and counterconquest which have left an inevitable backwash of inextricably mixed racial composition.

In the main the indigenous Caribs and their descendants have almost disappeared, and have been replaced by Europeans (British, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Dutch) and by the descendants of emancipated slaves or of indentured East Indian and Chinese laborers. In the case of British Guiana, for instance, while doubtless an understandable desire not to share Guiana’s natural resources with the overpopulated islands is a factor, it is probable that the chief antifederation impulses of the leaders of the East Indian majority there spring from determination not to lose their own racial predominance.

Yet, on the whole, what is surprising is not the limited amount, of “West Indian” national feeling, but rather that it exists to the extent that it does. After all, most have in common only the fact that their homelands were discovered by Columbus in one or another of his various westward odysseys.

Turbulent Jamaica

Jamaica, or Xaymaoa, deriving from the native word for “wellwooded and watered,” was first visited by the great, explorer in 1494, but fifteen years were to elapse before attempted Spanish colonization followed. It was not a happy advent for the luckless aborigines, who were all but exterminated by the invaders.

After a further century and a half of little or no material progress, the island eventually fell easy prey to Cromwell’s expansionist policies, although it was not until 1670 that British occupation was finally endorsed by international treaty. Jamaica then began its most lurid but romantic era as the refuge and haunt of a veritable concourse of freebooters, buccaneers, and pirates, who rapidly earned the island an evil repute throughout the whole western world.

From the boiling pot of those wild beginnings rose a whole series of revolts that continued to make Jamaica a very troublesome member of Britain’s imperial family until well into the nineteenth century. Of those exciting days fascinating reminders still live on. Particularly interesting is the continued existence of a paramilitary force, the “Maroons" (Men of the Mountains), who take justifiable pride in their direct descent from Spanish slaves who escaped at the time of the British conquest. Outlaws they remained, violent and untamed, until an honorable peace between them and the forces of law and order was finally signed.

Nowadays, under a dazzling sun and blue skies, the Jamaicans, as vivid as the brilliant tropical vegetation around them, wrest a living by cultivating sugar, bananas, and tobacco; by distilling rum; and by developing the rich deposits of bauxite ores, recently discovered.

Oil in Trinidad

Over 1100 miles away to the southeast lies Trinidad, also discovered by Columbus, and piously named by him after the Holy Trinity. Thereafter, except for a little desultory Spanish settlement and an occasional raid by one or other of the competing European powers, Trinidad remained something of a backwater from the point of view of imperial development until, under the proddings of an enterprising Frenchman nearly two hundred years later, organized “Catholic” immigration was encouraged.

Since in fact most of the immigrants were of French stock, Gallic influence, particularly culturally, is still a notable feature in Trinidad’s way of life. Indeed the ultimate transfer of the islands to British sovereignty came about, not because of any locally instigated coup, but as a prize of the Peace of Amiens in 1802.

Trinidad, formerly principally dependent, as are most of the other islands, on uncertain agriculture, has struck oil, literally. This commodity, exported in millions of gallons a year, is now much more important financially than the longer-established sugar industry, or oven the asphalt products of famous Pitch Lake.

The link with Barbados

A third island which deserves special mention is Barbados, essentially more similar in tradition, outlook, and culture to Britain than any of the other West Indies. For, unlike them, excepting a brief visit in the sixteenth century by Portuguese explorers, it has since been continually under British influence or rule without suffering the vicissitudes of repeated battledore and shuttlecock possession and strife by European rivals.

What makes this particular island so especially dear to hearts in the mother country is that Barbados represents the proudest, outpost of the game of cricket in the Western Hemisphere. Doting England’s Civil War between Royalists and Roundheads, Barbados also had a similar internecine conflict. There still exists here, too, an aloof little “poor white” community, entitled Red Legs, directly descended from those transported during England’s Bloody Assizes, after the Duke of Monmouth’s unsuccessful rebellion against Stuart King James II.

In more modern times there have been Barbadians who have openly believed that their proper political evolution should lead to their inclusion within the United Kingdom, with the right to send their own Members of Parliament to Westminster.

In a wide crescent to the west stem out the Windward and the Leeward Islands, each group already integrated to some extent for administrative purposes. Yet each “unit" and, indeed, each island has its own rich history and individual characteristics.

A common denominator is that their staple crop is sugar, with cocoa and several other foods as secondary products. It would be hard to find any part of the world where European rivalry, in this case between Britain and France, has produced so bewildering a history of change of possession every few years, and sometimes every few months, dating from their discovery by Columbus up to the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

Union without merger

The federal plan, already agreed on at the executive level and now under consideration by all the island legislatures, has been modeled on the Australian constitution.

By a loose association, leaving a wide field o control in the hands of the internal governments, and concentrating at the center only issues of essentially collective interest, it is hoped that a satisfactory compromise can be reached bet ween the conflicting demands of administrative and economic efficiency on the one hand and the need to preserve parochial vitality on the other.

In order that this balance shall not be later upset, matters coming under the jurisdiction of the federal parliament and government are to be strictly defined. They cannot afterwards be increased for general application without the prior approval of all the territorial legislatures affected. Currently, the proposed federal “Exclusive List" includes, among other items, defense, exchange control, external affairs, and the establishment of a federal judiciary.

In addition, a “Concurrent Legislative List” has been prepared, providing that on such questions as aviation, control of aliens, currency, marriage and divorce, both the federal and the unitary parliaments will be able to legislate, but that in the event of contradiction, federal laws shall prevail.

Another problem requiring a compromise solution has been that in a federal parliament, constituted solely on an elective numerical principle, the individual voice of, for instance, tiny Montserrat with its population of barely 14,000, and sending one M.P. to the capital, could be swamped by the sixteen representatives of Jamaica, 140 times as large and possessing over a million and a quarter inhabitants. Consequently a senate is also to be established, made up of a couple of nominated members from each of the territories, irrespective of size, to offset this discrimination. This second chamber will naturally be subordinate in its powers and functions to the main, elected body.

Since the present scheme was first officially put forward three years ago, proportionate adjustments have had to be made in the proposed membership of both houses because of the current disinclination of both British Guiana and British Honduras, the U. K.’s only dependencies on the South American mainland, to join the new Dominion. For their own benefit and that of the West Indies as a whole, Britain hopes that they will reconsider and decide to join.

Leaders of the new Dominion

Alex Bustamante, Jamaica’s unique leader, although no longer young, is still possessed of great drive and energy. Of mixed Irish and African descent and able to hold his own with Winston Churchill, “Busta" knows his fellow Jamaicans’ love of a measure of flamboyance in their leaders. But behind the showmanship of his “gun-packing" and of his emotional rhetoric is the brain of one of the shrewdest politicians to be found anywhere - conservative in outlook, too, despite his leadership of Jamaica’s “Labor" Party.

His principal rival on the island, although a first cousin, could hardly be more different in temperament or outlook. Norman Manley, radical and ascetic, models himself on Britain’s former Socialist Chancellor, the late Sir Stafford Cripps.

Across the Caribbean in Trinidad, Albert Gomes, virtual prime minister there, gains constantly in influence and stature. A former tough union boss, Gomes’s policies are now anything but left-wing. Barbados can also claim an outstanding politician in Grant ley Adams. A forceful individualist and progressive, this brilliant colored lawyer and university graduate is a loyal and open protagonist of the creation of a new nation-member of the free world.