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Caribbean Islands Political Unrest and Economic Troubles, 1970-73
Although the PNM dominated the national bureaucracy and the
civil service, by 1970 its popularity among the electorate was
considerably lower than it had been at the time of independence.
Election turnouts were lower, and election procedures increasingly
were questioned. The poorest segments of the population, which were
also East Indian, were largely left out of the government and the
growth process. The PNM became quite centralized as Williams made
most decisions by himself. By April 1970, he had not held a press
conference in five years and was poorly prepared to respond to the
challenge of the Black Power movement that spread across the
Caribbean.
The Black Power movement was introduced into Trinidad and
Tobago in 1970 by the National Joint Action Committee (NJAC), a
party that sought fundamental changes in Trinidadian and Tobagonian
society. The NJAC charged that the root cause of the nation's 14-
percent general unemployment was white dominance. According to the
NJAC, foreign and local white capitalists owned the country and
oppressed blacks, defined by the NJAC as Trinidadians and
Tobagonians of African and East Indian descent. In fact, a 1970
survey had found that 86 percent of business leaders were white.
The NJAC maintained that Williams had white Anglo-Saxon values and
decried his leadership. A major political crisis began on February
26, 1970, when the NJAC joined the Students Guild at the UWI in a
march of 250 students in Port-of-Spain. The march was organized to
protest the trial in Canada of Trinidadian students accused of
occupying a computer center there. The government's arrest of nine
marchers generated solidarity marches that over the next few months
attracted increasing numbers of people and nearly toppled the
government. After 20,000 marched in San Juan, the NJAC attempted to
gain the support of the East Indians by asking the largely black
marchers to cut cane for a day to show solidarity for East Indian
sugar workers. East Indian leaders opposed this, and a forty-five-
kilometer march from Port-of-Spain to Couva was substituted.
Significantly, fewer than 100 of the 5,000 to 10,000 people who
took part in that march were East Indians.
Williams tried to defuse the Black Power movement by supporting
it and by paying the fines of the Trinidadian students in Canada,
but the marches continued and attracted additional supporters,
reaching their peak during April 1970. Thirty percent of the
population of Tobago took part in solidarity marches on April 4 and
5, and more than 30,000 marched in a funeral procession on April 9
for an NJAC supporter shot by police. After several strikes the
following week, the deputy prime minister, A.N.R. Robinson, a
Tobagonian who was also minister of external affairs, resigned from
the cabinet. In an attempt to preempt a general strike and march on
the capital, Williams declared a state of emergency on April 21.
Some of the officers and men in the Trinidad and Tobago Defence
Force seized control of the barracks at Teteron,
however, thus depriving the government of arms; Williams was then
forced to make hasty purchases of arms from the United States and
Venezuela. Once rearmed, the 2,500-member Defence Force remained
loyal to the government and was supported by the citizens. The
crisis passed after the trade unions called off several scheduled
strikes.
As a consequence of the 1970 uprising, Williams became
increasingly disillusioned. His government moved farther to the
right, introducing several measures to curtail individual freedom.
Although a bill proposing very stringent state control over public
meetings and freedom of speech was defeated, several other bills
passed regulating public freedom, broadening police search powers,
and requiring licenses for firearms. Concern about these measures
led to the drafting and adoption of a new constitution in 1976.
There was general discontent with the government by the time of
the 1971 elections, but the PNM again benefited from disunity in
the opposition camp. An opposition alliance collapsed following the
withdrawal of Robinson and his new party, the Action Committee of
Democratic Citizens. The opposition's subsequent decision to
boycott the election enabled the PNM to capture all thirty-six
seats in the House of Representatives.
Despite its electoral victory, Williams's government reached a
low point in 1973. The PNM was in power because of a majority
boycott rather than a majority election. Strikes were frequent, the
government treasury was nearly bankrupt, and there was concern that
the government would not be able to pay its employees. Williams
became so disillusioned by strikes that at the PNM convention in
1973 he resigned as prime minister and left the convention. Karl
Hudson-Phillips was elected to succeed him, overwhelmingly
defeating East Indian Kamaluddin Mohammed; Williams returned later
in 1973, however, reassumed leadership, and forced Hudson-Phillips
to leave the party.
Data as of November 1987
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