Failed Independence, failed CARICOM

By Peter Espeut

There is a very important anniversary which we in the Caribbean celebrate today: the fourth of July. I don't know what you're thinking, but I am talking about the signing of the Treaty of Chaguaramas that established CARICOM 41 years ago. That's why Caribbean heads of government are gathered in Antigua today.

Caribbean political union was an idea first thrust upon us by war-ravaged Great Britain, anxious to be divested of her burdensome colonies. On September 11, 1947, the Conference on the Closer Association of Caribbean States opened at the Fairfield Country Club in Montego Bay chaired by Arthur Creech Jones, Britain's secretary of state for the colonies. It produced a preliminary agreement on federation and dominion status for Britain's former colonies in the Caribbean.

The idea of a West Indies Federation made sense to the British. Their former colonies on the North American mainland had gained great advantage by federating themselves into the United States of America, becoming the largest national economy in the world.

The six British colonies of Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania, Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory federated to become the Dominion of Australia, the 12th largest economy in the world; the Cape Colony, Natal, Orange Free State, the Transvaal, and others federated to become the Dominion of South Africa, the 28th largest economy in the world.

Great Britain herself is a federation of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and is the sixth largest economy in the world. Subsequently, Great Britain herself entered the European Community with 27 other countries. Together, they have the largest economy in the world (measured by nominal gross domestic product - GPD).

Why would it not make sense for the 10 British colonies in the Caribbean area - mostly small islands - to federate, to form a larger, stronger and more diversified economy better able to hold its own in the world?

FIRST TASTE OF POWER

Just three years before that Montego Bay conference to discuss federation, the first election under universal adult suffrage was held in Jamaica, and local grass-roots politicians got their first taste of power - not yet full power, for Jamaica was still a colony and under the thumb of the colonisers but power nevertheless. Power is like a narcotic: it gives a psychological high, filled with delusions of grandeur, and is habit-forming.

The basis of any federation is that the members surrender a good deal of their power and autonomy to the federal authority, for the greater good of all the members. We can call it a sort of 'national deferred gratification'. History has shown that national deferred gratification was too much to ask of power-hungry Caribbean grass-roots politicians.

Of them all, Jamaican politicians were the most besotted with power, with the greatest delusions of grandeur. We were too big to federate with those small islands over there; we had bauxite and tourism. We wanted independence - to paddle our own canoe. And Federation mathematics famously became: 10 - 1 = 0.

Jamaica decided to go it alone, and 52 years later, only the partisan diehards would disagree that we wasted our decades of Independence. Most of the other nine territories with whom we joined in the West Indies Federation have since become politically independent, and all of them (except Guyana) have a higher per-capita GDP than Jamaica.

WE HAVE FAILED OURSELVES

Forty-one years ago today, Jamaica and the others formed CARICOM. And today, Jamaica has a trade deficit with almost all of those 'small islands'. I hear shouts from some quarters that CARICOM has failed us; but isn't it the truth that we have failed ourselves?

We sit at the CARICOM table as the largest and most populous country (still with our delusions of grandeur), but also as one of the poorest. In 2012, Jamaica had a per-capita GDP of US$9,100; Grenada, US$14,100; while little Antigua and Barbuda had US$17,500. I am not even going to talk about Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados.

Any comparison we make of ourselves with our CARICOM neighbours requires a stiff dose of honesty. We share the same history of slavery and colonialism, and of late 20th-century independence; we share the same legal framework and constitutional arrangements.

Why have we done so poorly by comparison? In my view, they invested more in quality education for all their citizens than we did; and they did not proceed to grow inequality through the plantation system as we did. We had a more venal political class that had more rapacious private-sector backers.

Had we done a better job with independence, we would have done better with CARICOM.

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and rural-development scientist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.