By Sir Shridath RamphalI hope the advent of electronic ‘readers’ does not mean that there will no longer be books forSir Shridath Ramphalauthors to inscribe to their friends on publication. Some of my most treasured books are of that kind; among them, none more treasured than the copy of From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean 1492 – 1969,
Sale NFL Jerseys, inscribed as follows:My dear SonnyWe are both labourers in the vineyard.It is in this spirit that I send you this book.BillThat was 1970. “Bill”, of course, was Prime Minister Eric Williams. The vineyard was economic integration. West Indians were nurturing Caribbean unity from the CARIFTA seedling to the sapling of Caribbean Community. The blossoms of CARICOM and the Treaty of Chaguaramas had actually sprouted. In this lecture, I want to follow that inscription through the decades that have passed, asking what has come of our labours – what is the state of the vineyard?The Eric Williams Memorial Lecture has a distinguished vintage; I am honoured and humbled to have been invited to join the list of those who have given it over the years. I thank the organisers and all those responsible for the invitation, and the Governor of the Central Bank, in particular, Mr Ewart Williams. And I am twice honoured,
NFL Jerseys From China, in giving the Lecture in this special year of the 50th Anniversary of Trinidad and Tobago’s Independence.With Jamaica, you mark this year the first 50 years of West Indian freedom in its larger sense; and you have much of which to be proud.Today (May 26th) also marks 46 years of the independence of Guyana whose initial Constitution I had a hand in drafting as its Attorney-General,But there are ironies which I must share with you – and questions which I hope you will allow me to ask.Fifty years ago, in 1962,
Cheap NFL Jerseys, I lived among you, here in my West Indian Capital, in Port-of-Spain; in Maraval. I was a younger labourer then; and the vineyard was of course ‘federation’. The West Indies’, with a capital T, the Federation for which West Indian leaders had struggled, intellectually and politically, for 40 years — none more so than Trinidadians like Captain Arthur Andrew Cipriani and Uriah ‘Buzz’ Butler — and for which its people had yearned, (the Federation) was about to become Independent on the 31st May 1962 – 50 years ago.We should have been celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Independence of the West Indian nation next week. That is how close we came to reaching the ‘holy grail’. Instead, on that same day (31 May 1962), the Federation was dissolved. The immediate cause of the dissolution was, of course, Jamaica’s referendum and Dr Williams’ inventive, and now notorious, arithmetic that “1 from 10 leaves nought”. But these were only the proximate causes. Federation’s failure had many fathers.As Assistant Attorney General of the Federation, I had been drafting the Federal Constitution. My vision, my mission, was regional – an independent West Indies. I left Port-of-Spain on 30th August 1992 for Harvard, where I would be reassured by the example of other federal founding fathers who had overcome their trials – trials much greater and more traumatic than our own – through sustained vision and leadership. I have never lost faith in real Caribbean unity as our regional destiny.Nor, I believe, did Eric Williams. In the last pages of From Columbus to Castro he wrote this:“The real case for unity in Commonwealth Caribbean countries rests on the creation of a more unified front in dealing with the outside world – diplomacy, foreign trade, foreign investment and similar matters. Without such a unified front the territories will continue to be playthings of outside Governments and outside investors. To increase the ‘countervailing power’ of the small individual units vis-a-vis the strong outside Governments and outside companies requires that they should aim at nothing less than a single centre of decision-making vis-a-vis the outside world. [A SINGLE CENTRE OF DECISION-MAKING!].”He had earlier written in those same pages:“Increasingly, the Commonwealth Caribbean countries such as Trinidad and Tobago will become aware that the goals of greater economic independence and the development of a cultural identity will involve them in even closer ties one with another – at economic and other levels. For the present disgraceful state of fragmentation of the Commonwealth Caribbean countries makes it extremely difficult (although not impossible) for a single country to adopt a more independent and less ‘open’ strategy of development.”You see why, within months of writing this, he could be addressing me as a ‘fellow labourer in the vineyard’ – the vineyard of economic integration: the new variety of unity, after ‘federation’ had withered. It
