Constitution Reform - My Take Pt II

By Bukka Rennie
September 17, 2003

The last column was concluded with the following view: "...Where do we want to look for answers to the question of constitutional reform? Everywhere it seems, except right at home. We first of all must know all that has been done right here, by whom and for what purpose. Everything done here is all part of our legacy and belongs to all of us.

"What the planter-class, the slaves and the indentured servants all did and created here, stand for us. Moreover, how they organised themselves to engage the issues that arose out of their existence must feed and inform our struggle for constitutional reform..."

The gist was that the Caribbean planter-class betrayed their class interests because of race considerations; they did not pursue their natural course, which would have put them in open confrontation with the governor and the Crown.

They were a minority social grouping that was scared stiff of the masses pushing upwards from below and that "fear" drove them to conservatism, to preserve and defend the status-quo and to disregard the natural call to follow the trend of political tendencies projected by the three social revolutions of the time: the American War of Independence (1776), the French Revolution (1789 - Liberty, Fraternity and Equality), and the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804).

That fear became an even greater factor when, due to African resistance and rebellion and the unwieldiness of slave-run plantation industrialisation, the slave trade was abolished in 1807. The direction of economic considerations was clear: emancipation was on the agenda.

In fact, shortly before emancipation, there had come to develop a "free-coloured" group, many of whom had gained their freedom either through "manumission" or other means, and by this time had begun to develop a distinct political perspective and intensified their political activities.

In Jamaica, for instance, by the 1850s, the House of Assembly, which previously seated only "white planters", was by then divided into two sections: the planters and their colleagues, ie professionals and commercial merchants, and the coloureds and privileged blacks.

The stage was set for possible strategic alliances across race and class lines, between the respective groups with particular interest in the development of then Caribbean political economy. But nothing that appears to be logical in Caribbean history ever happens.

The more political the ex-slaves became in terms of their demands for the further entrenching of human and civil rights, the more the planter-class moved to reconcile with the Crown and the governor.

The strength of the House of Assembly, as noted before, lay in its being the body that legally designed taxes, collected them, decided the areas in which monies were to be spent, disbursed the funds and provided audited accounts, and with such leverage proved able to influence the governor and his team.

But with the passing of the 1846 Sugar Duties Act by the British Parliament, preferential treatment for Caribbean sugar was removed, opening up the British market to competition from other sugar producers and thereby breaking the backbone of the Caribbean sugar planters and indirectly the political power of the House of Assembly.

Thence began the tradition of begging cap in hand for guaranteed markets and specific quotas, and the planter-class, many of whom returned to England, virtually disappeared as a political force in the Caribbean scenario. There was no attempt by them to diversify from the monoculture, to break up the plantations nor to chart a path in the interest of a home economy.

It was this wholesale capitulation of the planter-class that cleared the way for the Imperial Acts in the period 1865-1866 that established the Crown colony system of government throughout the Caribbean. It was tantamount to curtailing any official sanction of the movement towards any semblance of people’s empowerment at the root of Caribbean society.

The big historic joke was that Crown colony government was deemed as being in the interest of the masses of people. In fact, the islands that were settled much later, such as St Lucia, Trinidad and so on, never developed the House of Assembly type of local government based on the unit structure of parishes.

Trinidad, under the British, merely continued the culture of autocratic governance that they inherited from the Spanish. The governor was lord and master of all he surveyed. His Executive Council of advisers were all appointed by him and the Legislative Council comprised key public officers as well as nominees from the lord and master.

There was no semblance of local government in Trinidad as once obtained in Barbados, Antigua, Jamaica, etc, except the Cabildo, a municipal council of the Port-of-Spain burgesses that was much treasured by the people and which from time to time would find itself in confrontation with the governor.

If the removal of preferential treatment for sugar seemed to open the way for diversification, for the possible development of an independent free peasantry working the land on an entirely different relationship to what obtained on the sugar plantation, which could have provided the economic basis for the emergence of genuine local government, then that was only a fleeting, momentary potential that was quickly snuffed by the rigid enforcement of the culture of Crown colony governorship.

It is hoped that by now readers are clear as to where we are headed with this discourse. The issue is constitution reform. But constitution reform is not worked out sitting behind a desk or brainstorming in some auditorium. Such an exercise can only produce a paper.

When King John in 1215 put his seal to the Magna Carta, it was to sign off on what had been worked out in the streets and in the battlefields. It began the trend of putting brakes on the absoluteness of then royal power.

No taxation without representation necessitated a full-scale revolution in American history. The people, the patriots, you see, had had their say to the point of exhaustion.

At no time in the course of Caribbean history have the masses of people ever been allowed into the structural realms of power. This discourse tells of the rationale behind that failing.

Thirty years ago, to talk about "power to the people" or "empowering the masses" was certain to attract the Marxist or Communist tag. Today, every second person, every other NGO or CBO receives funding from the State or from giant corporations, while promoting the very concept of empowering the masses and the idea of sustainable development.

What was deemed "Marxist" yesterday is quite fashionable today. That is where this globalised world has taken us. No one and no part can be left out. The Caribbean planter-class betrayed their historic mission. The colonial intellects that followed reinforced the culture of governorship.

Now it is left to the people.

Pt I | Pt 2 | Pt 4 | Pt 5 | Pt 6