By R M Austin
(Caribbean Challenges: Sir Shridath Ramphal’s Collected Counsel (Hansib 2012. – 218 p.))
Sir Shridath Ramphal, the former Foreign Minister and Commonwealth Secretary-General, has often distilled the experiences gained from the various offices he has held to warn and advise his compatriots, West Indians colleagues, and fellow human beings. Books have therefore flowed from his eloquent pen over the years on various topical questions and issues. But it is evident that Caribbean integration and its role in the overall development of the region is his central intellectual preoccupation. This emerges in this book of 218 pages, which consists of speeches between 2006 and 2011.
It also contains tributes to two great West Indian intellectuals and labourers in the vineyard of Caribbean unity, Eric Williams and Rex Nettleford. Three speeches are on the questions of the environment, racial harmony, and Caribbean diplomacy. These appear to be unrelated to the general theme of Caribbean integration and unity.
However, on closer examination it is clear that they are integrally linked to it. The introduction and the Foreword are written by two of the finest servants of Caribbean unity, Professors Denis Benn and Norman Girvan.
These speeches coincide with several important anniversaries of Caribbean history but certainly the most important of these, as far as this publication is concerned, are the 50th anniversary of the collapse of the West Indies Federation and the 20th anniversary of the launching of the West Indian Commission. We are almost at the beginning and the end of the story of the Caribbean integration process. Sir Shridath, unlike most Caribbean intellectuals and writers, does not shy away from the importance and psychological impact of the collapse of the Federation. The insularity which wrecked the Federation has come back to haunt contemporary efforts to build a common Caribbean home. As a result Caribbean leaders were holding on to myth of sovereignty.
In his address to the diplomatic workshop organized by the Caribbean Community in May of 2009 Sir Shridath noted “an obsession with the trappings of sovereignty – when its substance has long disappeared in a globalized world.”
And this is the point that he emphasized in his long fight for Caribbean unity. The region had most to gain from a unified approach to the external world as exemplified by the role it played in the formation of the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific body (ACP) and other seminal developments in the ’70s and the ’80s, such as the recognition of Cuba and China and the search for new paradigms of relationships between developing and developed countries.
The region was not only disunited it was turning inwards. In the same speech to the diplomatic workshop Sir Shridath made the observation, “At this moment, that smaller, narrower, insular impulse is dominant. We are turning inward just at the when the external environment of crisis demands responses driven by the spirit of community.”
As the region turned inward it lost its negotiating edge in critical forums. In the G Arthur Brown lecture which he gave in Jamaica in July 2011, Sir Shridath referred to the “cloistered immaturity” which led to a menu of Caribbean failures: “The World Bank graduating us from concessional financing; the OECD imposing criteria for financial services that are enforced by the IMF; the refusal of the WTO to allow us special and differential treatment; the EPA with the EU which demands reciprocity from us; new relations with China which lack any real negotiations.”
But it is the inability of the Caribbean Community to forge ahead after the optimism of expectation associated with its launching in 1973 that alarmed Sir Shridath. In 1975 just before he took up his position of Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Sir Shridath caught sight of some rather ominous developments. The lamp of Caribbean unity was burning low. Warning that if Caribbean integration was stalled at this point it would be difficult to restart it, Sir Shridath appealed for “a continuous process of upgrading the mechanisms of integration.”
But after the Caribbean leaders appointed him to chair the West Indian Commission to make recommendations to help bring the Caribbean into the 21st century, he noted not only a lack of an “upgrading mechanism” but a glaring “implementation deficit.”
All was at risk. The failure to create the Caribbean Commission to implement decisions of the community had placed in jeopardy the single market, the broadening of the community, its deepening, and the upgrading of a community that upholds the political and participatory rights of the citizens of the region. He issued this cri de coeur when delivering the Archibald Nedd lecture in Grenada in January 2010 in the face of the community’s inability to get things done since its declaration at Grand Anse in 1989 to actively prepare the region for the 21stcentury: “In twenty two years, nothing decisive has happened to fulfil the dream of Grand Anse. Over those two decades the West Indies has drawn steadily away from being West Indian.” More than this Sir Shridath observed that the West Indian masses themselves were losing faith in the integration process, a rather dangerous development because in preparing for the 21st century everything “turns on the faith of the West Indian people in our regional processes.”
The brilliant Swedish economist, Gunwar Myrdal, was given to saying that optimism and pessimism are both points of view. And both of these infuse the speeches of Sir Shridath Ramphal. The pessimism is easily explained.
For Sir Shridath’s generation regional unity and progress were not idle abstractions. They were the motivating factors of the existence of all regionalists at that time. Sir Shridath himself has explained that from the time he was a student he envisaged his public life being bound up with regional integration. For him regional unity and development were prerequisites to its material success. Sir Shridath himself told the EEC in 1973 that “regional economic integration is an indispensable element of our development strategy.” Regional unity and development, in the minds of Sir Shridath Ramphal and his fellow regionalists, was also essential to the defining and development of the West Indian personality.
When the movement slowed, self-belief dissipated, and regional unity seemed a chimera; not only Sir Shridath but many other regional leaders expressed their concern and pessimism. But such pessimism was always tempered by a healthy dose of optimism.
Repeatedly Sir Shridath pointed out that will and determination could restore faith in the regional cause. In the end Sir Shridath’s faith in Caribbean integration remained unshakeable, even if pessimism peeps out often from the pages of this book.
There was need in this publication for some kind of introductory explanation of the perils of the integration process. Some of Sir Shridath’s strictures might have been better understood if there was more background to the severity of the impact of the global recession on Caribbean economies in the ’70s; the crippling effect of debt accumulation on regional economies; and the psychological devastation of the invasion of Grenada in 1983.
The aforesaid seminal economic events drove regional governments into the laager of nationalism and placed the integration on ‘pause’ between 1974 and 1981. This is not a justification for the parochialism and insularity; it is a statement of the factors which weighed heavily with Caribbean governments at the time and possibly limited their ability to make a fulsome contribution to integration.
There are some further points to be made. In 1986 Errol Barrow made one of the great speeches in Guyana. He spoke of the pessimism surrounding the integration process, which took no account of the fact that the Caribbean people were integrating the region on a daily basis. For this reason he felt optimistic that whatever the difficulty governments might face and difficulties the integration process might continue to encounter, the people will always lead the way. A network of personal, political, family and business ties have grown up in the region which are virtually indestructible. This was the reason for Barrow’s optimism and I am sure Sir Shridath would find agreement with this point of view.
Dr Trevor Farrel published in the ’90s a very good paper entitled New trends in Economic Integration: The emergence of Regional Multinationals and Intra-Regional Investment flows. It is a revealing study which shows that Caribbean companies such as Grace Kennedy, Ansa McAl, Neal and Massy, CL Financial (before its well advertised problems), Republic Bank of Trinidad Ltd, and SAGICOR, to name the important few, have been making successful investments in the region to the point where “economic integration has begun to take root in areas and with motives that were little contemplated in 1973.” There is every reason to believe that these companies, along with others, have continued to boost the economic integration of the region. I am equally sure that Sir Shridath would agree that is reason for both optimism and hope.
Professor Benn in his foreword to Caribbean Challenges stated that it not only reflects “a sustained eloquence and analytical brilliance but offers important philosophical insights into a number of critical issues…” Anyone reading this book will concur with this judgement. I add this only. Sir Shridath Ramphal has now established himself as one of the finest writers of prose in this region and beyond. This latest publication can fit snugly into the canon of Caribbean literature.
