I had a post about it in this forum back in 2014:
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I have decided to combine into one post two posts I did in soc.history.what-if some years ago about the failure of the West Indies Federation.
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Part One
We have recently discussed the failure of the Federation a few times here. I would like to ask some questions suggested by a reading of Philip Sherlock's book *Norman Manley* (1980) and Jan Ragozinski's *A Brief History of the Caribbean* (1999), among other books. To begin with, some background:
In 1956, the British government passed the British Caribbean Federation Act, establishing the West Indies Federation. The Federation came into existence in January 1958. It began without any agreement on three major concerns--inter-island immigration, federal taxation, and common import taxes. To bring the Federation into existence, the territories had agreed that for the first five years it could not make any law concerning these three issues. (To give one example of the problems: Trinidad was vehemently opposed to unlimited immigration from the smaller islands.) It had generally been expected that Norman Manley of Jamaica would become the first Prime Minister of the federation. Manley convened a private meeting in London at which he, Grantley Adams of Barbados, and several other island leaders agreed to form a West Indian Federal Labor Party with a social democratic program. Manley, however, decided not to run for the new federal House--he wanted to stay home so he could keep watch on opposition leader Alexander Bustamante, who though not yet totally opposed to the idea of federation, was never as enthusiastic about it as Manley. The fact that none of the leading politicians in either Jamaica (Manley and Bustamante) or Trinidad (Eric Williams) took part in the federal elections, thinking it more important to consolidate their positions at home, discouraged popular interest in the Federation. Adams, who became federal prime minister, hoped to keep the Federation alive for the first five years while building up a sense of common nationhood among the people of the ten territories. Unfortunately, as will be seen, he was in the habit of making imprudent statements that made this task more difficult.
In any event, the results of the 1958 election in Jamaica showed that Manley was right to be worried about Bustamante; the latter's Democratic Labor Party (the federal equivalent of his Jamaica Labor Party or JLP) got 54 percent of the vote to the federal labor party's 46 percent. Bustamante's warning that Manley was going to sell Jamaica out to the small islands (as well as to Trinidad) obviously struck a nerve.
In the 1959 Jamaican general election campaign, Bustamante and the JLP attempted to repeat their success. (Bustamante's position was strengthened in November 1958, when federal prime minister Adams, visiting Jamaica, shocked the public by making "statements to the press which implied that the federal government had powers of retroactive legislation, and that unit governments would be wise to consult with the federal government before granting tax holidays or monopolies." Sherlock, p. 179 As we will see in part 2, that was not the last damaging statement Adams was to make...) Bustamente laid down three conditions for Jamaica remaining in the Federation:
(a) Revision of the constitution so that the federal government would have no right to impose any kind of taxation on Jamaica without the latter's consent;
(b) Representation in the federal House based on population; and
(c) No customs union that might hurt the workers or the economy. (In the 1950s both Jamaica and especially Trinidad had begun to develop significant manufacturing industries, helped in part by government efforts to lure private investment. Bustamante argued that with free trade, Trinidadian factories would sell their products below cost to prevent the
growth of manufacturing in Jamaica.)
Manley, to defuse what Sherlock calls the "Adams bomb," agreed to Bustamante's conditions, declaring "When the time comes for the constitution to be reviewed, Jamaica will withdraw from the federation unless the type of federation devised and the constitution is so changed as to suit the special circumstances of the West Indies and the Unit territories themselves." And "We are in for the first five years of federation, and at the end of that time we'll make up our minds when we'll go and where we'll go." The strategy worked: Manley's PNP (People's National Party) won 29 of the 45 seats.
Manley's hard line during the campaign has been criticized as helping to discredit the Federation in the eyes of Jamaicans, and (along with his refusal to run for the federal House in 1958) to cut Manley off from his eastern Caribbean colleagues who had previously seen him as a progressive federal leader. However, Manley may have been realistic in thinking that any "softer" line would have doomed the PNP; after all, Bustamante's party had been victorious in Jamaica in the previous year's federal elections; and even in 1959 the PNP despite its large parliamentary majority, only got 54.8 percent of the vote, which means that a shift of five percent of the electorate would be enough to defeat it.
In September 1959, at an inter-governmental conference convened by the federal government, Manley actually got agreement on one of the three conditions (representation by population). But he got little credit for this, because the conference had been so contentious. Even some members of the PNP began to have doubts whether it was worth remaining in a federation that was so ineffectual. Manley, in a debate in the Jamaican House, defended the Federation: "I do not say that Jamaica could not be a Dominion on her own...I believe she could. But I know she could not have the significance in the world that the entire West Indies would have." In the debate that followed, a JLP member suggested a referendum on the Federation. Manley rejected that:
"There are men who say today 'go to the people'--take a referendum. Maybe one day it will come to that. But not now. It would be a betrayal of leadership. It would be a betrayal of responsibility. The people did not put us here to go back and ask them what to do. The people put us here on a stated policy to achieve certain ends. When you fail to achieve them, that is the time to go back to the people..."
Yet in 1960 Manley did decide on a referendum. Why did he do so? What were his alternatives? Could he have won the referendum? I will discuss these questions in part two...
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Part Two
1959 and 1960 were troubled years for the West Indian Federation. A number of developments hurt its popularity in Jamaica and elsewhere. The federal Prime Minister, Grantley Adams, certainly didn't help by his remarks to a group of West Indians in New York: "He contrasted the intelligent, industrious Barbadians with the average Trinidadian who would rather sing calypso than do any hard work, and spoke of the illiteracy rate in Jamaica as being 50% as compared with 1% in Barbados." Philip Sherlock, *Norman Manley*, p. 183) Also hurting the Federation was Trinidad Prime Minister Eric Williams' public protest against the US occupation of Chaguaramas. (See
http://countrystudies.us/caribbean-islands/40.htm for the details.) This gave force to Williams' claim that his country was the champion of West Indies independence, and not, like the federal government, a "stooge for the Colonial Office."
There was also a basic disagreement between the Jamaican and Trinidadian views of the Federation: Jamaica wanted a weak federation, Trinidad a strong one. (Also, Trinidad with its higher revenues, preferred representation according to financial contribution, but Jamaica, with its larger population, wanted representation on the basis of population. As noted in part one, this issue was tentatively settled in Jamaica's favor by the September 1959 Port of Spain conference. That conference, however, was unable to resolve the other issues, and appointed two committees to report on them in six months.) In January 1960 Manley led a delegation to London to explain Jamaica's case. On his return to Jamaica, Manley stated publicly that Jamaica's position had been made clear: that Jamaica would not agree to a federation that had the right to take over all the economic controls of the areas as soon as it became independent; that his government would make an honest attempt to reach agreement with the other units; but that if that effort failed, Jamaica would leave the federation and seek independence on its own. He then presented a ministry statement to the House which said that a loosely knit federation was sufficient for dominion purposes, and that this was the only pattern in which Jamaica would share. But Manley's "triumph" just weakened his case with the Jamaican public and added force to Bustamante's question: If we can get out, why stay in?
In February 1960 Manley and Eric Williams began consultations to resolve their differences. They put their top advisers to work on the problem and by May specific proposals were ready for consideration. By May also the two committees created by the Port of Spain conference had completed their first reports. Committee One found Jamaica and Trinidad inflexible and hostile on the issues of freedom of movement and accelerated independence; Committee Two showed progress in narrowing the differences over a customs union. At the end of May, Bustamante suddenly forced the issue: he declared (to the surprise even of his closest advisers) that the JLP would not contest a forthcoming federal election and that it was irrevocably opposed to Jamaica's remaining in the federation.
How should Manley have responded to this development? There were essentially three options:
(1) To attack Bustamante for playing fast and loose with the solemn undertakings into which Jamaica had entered, and to buy time. Manley, after all, had a large majority in the House. He had already forced the smaller countries to meet one of Bustamante's (and his own) three conditions. He was in the midst of negotiations with Williams. Ian Macleod, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, was due in the Caribbean within a few weeks. In short, whatever the pressures at home, there were advantages to be gained from waiting, especially since Bustamante obviously wanted to hurry him.
(2) To call a general election, asking for a vote of confidence. According to Sherlock (p. 185) "It is generally thought that he would have won any such election if held within six months of Bustamante's announcement." The point is that the Federation was not universally popular even within the PNP, so some people who were to abstain or even vote No in the referendum might still have voted for the PNP in 1960, when the issue would be not just the Federation but Manley's overall program and personal popularity. Thus a PNP victory in the election would not really be an unambiguous mandate for the Federation, but Manley could certainly portray it that way.
(3) The method Manley chose--referendum-was the riskiest of all. As Sherlock notes, "It meant accepting a suggestion that came originally from the opposition party; separating the federation issue from the whole programme of Jamaica's development; going to the country on the single issue on which his own party was divided; flying in the face of the experience of the 1958 federal elections; and resorting to a method with which the people of Jamaica were wholly unfamiliar."
And yet, it might have been successful, *if it had been held early enough.* Manley himself said to Adams in August 1960 that the sooner the referendum were held, the better its chance of success. As it was, the referendum was not held until September 1961--fifteen months after it was called. (Admittedly, there was one respect in which the delay might have helped the pro-federation cause. The last conference on Federation, held at Lancaster House in London in June 1961, was so anxious to get a "Yes" result that it gave in to all of Jamaica's demands. But by that time many Jamaicans had grown weary of the whole debate.) Out of a total of just under 800,000 registered voters, fewer than 500,000 went to the polls, and of those 256,000 (54%) voted against the Federation, 217,000 (46%) for it. According to an analysis by Sir John Mordecai, who had been Deputy Governor General of the Federation, it was not hostility but indifference that killed the Federation (assuming abstention to mean indifference):
"the rural Jamaican vote was the Achilles heel of the federation...Of the 61,000 net rural abstainers in the referendum, 41,000 voted for the PNP at the 1962 elections six months later...If the PNP's 41,000 had come forward in September 1961 the federation would have been saved, since it lost only by 39,000 votes."
The defeat cut away a great deal of Manley's support. In the 1962 general election, held shortly before independence, the JLP won 50% of the vote, the PNP 48.9%. That the PNP's loss was so narrow even after the shattering defeat of the referendum seems to support the argument that if Manley had decided on an earlier election instead of a referendum, he could have won (and of course he could then have portrayed it *as if* it had been a referendum on federation).
Obviously, buying time for the Federation (as a Manley election victory in 1960 or 1961 would have done) is not necessarily the same thing as permanently saving it. Eric Williams later argued that the Jamaican referendum was only the ostensible reason for the collapse of the Federation:
"I say it openly, to the Party, that if Jamaica had won the referendum, I was going to come to the PNM [People's National Movement, Williams' party] and propose that they reject the Lancaster House Conference. I was going to propose to the Party that they should not join the Federation...The Party would have had to decide. The Party would have been free to go into the Federation. They would have gone into Federation with another political leader. I would not have been false to my conscience..."
(Quoted in Selwyn D. Ryan, *Race and Nationalism in Trinidad and Tobago* [University of Toronto Press 1972), p. 299. The Lancaster House formula, in the opinion of the Trinidadian delegation, was simply a concession to the smaller units (who wanted freedom of movement) and to Jamaica at the expense of Trinidad. However, before saying that if Jamaica hadn't killed the Federation, Trinidad would have done so, one should remember that it was only because of the forthcoming Jamaican referendum that Lancaster House took such an extreme pro-Jamaican and anti-Trinidadian position. If there had been no referendum and Manley had been strengthened by winning a general election in 1960 or early 1961, it is just possible that he could have agreed to some sort of compromise.
Nevertheless, I think that by 1960-1 the odds were against the Federation surviving. Ryan's summary is as follows (p. 300):
"Williams denies, with much justice, that Trinidad was responsible for breaking up the Federation...Despite the seeming inflexibility in his demands for a strong union, he had gone a long way to conciliate Jamaica. In point of fact, it is fair to say that Trinidad was least responsible for the Federation's demise. The Federal and British governments must accept most of the blame, the former for provoking Jamaica and not inspiring her confidence in Federation, and the latter for making it easy for her to break the federal pact. Had Manley come to the centre, of course [in 1958], the crisis might never have developed, though it is arguable that if he had done so and the PNP had lost power to the JLP in 1959, the JLP might still have wrecked Federation. It is genuinely difficult to apportion blame in this unfortunate affair."
A final reflection on this matter:
It is arguable that the real roots of the failure go back to the 1947 Montego Bay conference. At this time Britain argued that "it was clearly impossible in the modern world for the present separate communities, small and isolated as most of them are, to achieve and maintain full self-government on their own. From this point of view, as Anthony J. Payne notes (*Politics in Jamaica* [1994], p. 166), "federation was a means of increasing the effective size of the West Indian territories to a point where they became eligible for self-government as a single unit." Most regional leaders--especially in the eastern Caribbean, but also, though less emotionally, in Jamaica--supported the idea.
Between 1947 and 1958, two developments occurred that radically changed the circumstances. First, all of the territories had advanced individually toward self-government during the very period in which they were supposed to be hammering out a common political fate within a federation. The seeds for dissension in this period were sown when the Montego Bay delegates declared that the political development of the "several units of the British Caribbean territories...must be pursued as an aim in itself, without prejudice *and in no way subordinate* to progress towards the federation."
Second, there was vast economic improvement in both Jamaica and Trinidad. Both countries adopted policies designed to attract foreign capital, and both developed considerable manufacturing. In addition, bauxite production began in Jamaica in 1952, and expanded swiftly, while the volume of oil production more than doubled in Trinidad between 1947 and 1958. Indeed, both Jamaica and Trinidad were among the fastest-growing economies in the world in the decade after 1947.
The combination of these changing circumstances undermined the political basis for federation. As Sir John Mordecai put it, "The desire for self-government now began to work against Federation, instead of in its favour." As Payne summarizes it:
"..the idea that federation was an indispensable prelude to the attainment of West Indian self-government gradually lost relevance as the region's leaders came to perceive that the world-wide process of decolonisation had drifted so far past its original conception of what constituted a feasible new state that it was beginning to incorporate territories as small as their own. They also increasingly realised that the planned federation, so far from being in the vanguard of the region's march towards self-government was actually not a very convincing vehicle in which to make the journey." (pp. 167-8)
In the economic sphere, also, the changes mentioned raised doubts about the notion that federation was necessary for economic progress. In 1947, it was natural for Jamaicans to believe that union with the Eastern Caribbean territories, especially oil-rich Trinidad, was the best road to economic development; by 1958 Jamaicans were more confident in their ability to achieve self-sustaining economic growth on their own.
Payne's conclusion (p. 169) is that federation "had always been seen in the West Indies as a means to an end, latterly as the gateway to independence, and never as an end and an ideal in its own right. When this argument was finally invalidated by Britain's intimation to Norman Manley in January 1960 that Jamaica was eligible for independence on its own, the little remaining substance to the federation was removed and only the formal structure remained. The negative vote of the Jamaican people in the referendum of September 1961 merely applied the *coup de grace.*"
If this analysis is correct, to save the Federation we need a much earlier POD than 1961 or 1960 or even 1958. We need Britain to take an entirely different approach from Montego Bay onward, and to make it clear at an early date that progress toward self-government *was* contingent on development of the federation, and to remain firm on that point.
Any thoughts?