In this week’s edition of In Search of West Indies Cricket, the second of two parts, Roger Seymour looks at the aftermath of the presentation of the Governance Committee Report on West Indies Cricket – better known as the Patterson Report – to the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) in 2007.
By Roger Seymour A reminder
In 2007, senior citizens in the Caribbean empathized with the younger generations as they anxiously awaited the release of the Patterson Report and the timetable for the implementation of its recommendations. The older folks were justifiably wary of such committees, reports and proposals. In 1938, the British Government had initiated the West India Royal Commission – also known as the Moyne Commission – following labour unrest throughout the Caribbean colonies during the period 1934-1939. The commission was given the broad mandate to “investigate social and economic conditions in Barbados, British Guiana, British Honduras, Jamaica, the Leeward Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Windward Islands, and matters connected therewith, and to make recommendations.” (Moyne Report 1945)
The Moyne Commission arrived in Jamaica on 1st November, 1938, for a tour of the British West Indies, which had to be aborted five months later with the onset of World War II. The findings of the commission were so disturbing that the British Government only released a summary of its recommendations in 1940, and withheld the release of the report in its entirety until July 1945.