problems of national development in the west indies

Problems Of National Development In The West IndiesAuthor(s): HUGH W. SPRINGERSource: Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 1/2 (March & June, 1965), pp. 3-12Published by: University of the West Indies and Caribbean QuarterlyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40652989 .

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Problems Of National Development In The West Indies.

SIX YEARS ago in April 1959 in Ottawa, at Carleton University, I spoke optimistically about the problems and prospects of the West Indies Federation, then one year old. Three years later, (that is to say, three years ago) in March 1962, I spoke in sorrow and pain in Montreal to an audience of West Indian students from McGill Uni- versity and Sir George Williams College about the break up of the Federation.

Once more I look to the future. But not without a backward glance. We act in the present in the light of both our assessment of the past and our hopes for the future.

Nationhood and development became prospects and live issues in the West Indies from the time when in the 1930s a succession of disturbances, strikes and riots, beginning in British Guiana, travelled up the islands, through Trinidad and Barbados in 1937, to Jamaica in 1938. These events marked the end of an epoch, and the beginning of revolutionary changes in the political, economic and social life of these countries.

The disturbances were the travail that accompanied the birth of a new nation, bringing to an end a gestation of a hundred years- the century that had elapsed since slavery was abolished and all the inhabitants were admitted to legal membership of the community. Now they were consciously claiming the rights of full membership; and politics henceforth was to be dominated by continuing efforts to give effect to their claims.

The course of events was influenced or determined by a number of factors. Chief of these were the great outburst of political energy on the part of the masses of the people, the adoption by the United Kingdom of a policy of Colonial Development supported by development and welfare grants, and the outbreak of the second world war.

The war interrupted or curtailed the carrying out of measures of development, but by its effects it probably accelerated the rate of change and development in the post-war period.

The new United Kingdom development policy was first expressed in the Report and Recommendations of the Moyne Commission which investigated the causes that had led to the disturbances of the 1930s. The Report itself was not published until after the war, but a summary of its main recommendations came out in 1940; and its publication was quickly followed by the setting up of the Development and Welfare Organisation, with expert advisers, and the provision of Development and Welfare grants. * Lecture given at the Plenary Session of the Canadian National Commission for UNESCO

Fourth National Conference, March 1965.

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From this time forward the word 'development' became increasingly familiar; and its use spread from the colonial to a wider context, until the world was thought of, as it is now, as being divided into 'developed' and 'developing' countries. And the closing of the gap between the two has become the dominant preoccupation of discerning people who are concerned with the maintenance of world peace.

The outburst of political energy among the masses was harnessed into political parties and trade unions by popular leaders, often drawn from the professional middle classes. They readily embraced the development policy introduced by the metropolitan government, because they recognised that their own objectives of social justice for all and the raising of living standards for the masses could be achieved only by increasing the resources at their command.

This awakening, which coincided with the birth of national feel- ing, was followed immediately by activity on three fronts, the political, the economic and the social. First, the political front. Political power was the key to economic and social change. So the new parties secured new constitutions with adult suffrage; then they 'mobilised the expanded electorate and won control of the governments. Secondly, in the economic sphere, trade unions were organised to increase the physical freedom and enhance the dignity of the worker, through raising his wages, and humanising and improving his conditions of work. Social welfare was the third sphere of immediate activity. A campaign was launched for the general betterment of living conditions through government and voluntary agencies. In the area of community development Jamaica Welfare Ltd. set an example which was widely followed; and governments began to make serious efforts in such neglected areas as housing and public health, youth work and probation services.

Tnis first phase of activity lasted roughly through the decade of the 1940s and up to the beginning of the 1950s. It was followed by a second phase which lasted through the 1950s and up to the beginning of the 1960s. In the second phase, political advance continued steadily towards «full internal self government and eventually, in the case of the two largest islands, to independence. At the same time the governments became increasingly development conscious. The larger ones embarked on economic planning of a highly sophisticated kind and made great efforts to attract investment capital from abroad. During this phase too the importance of education in the process of development began to be more fully recognised, and considerable expansion of educational facilities was provided for.

The decade of the 50s saw encouraging signs of economic growth. The world wide economic expansion of the immediate post war years brought a high degree of prosperity to the West Indies, especially to Trinidad and Jamaica, the islands best able to profit by it by reason of their size and resources. Between 1951 and 1961 the Gross Domestic Product of both these countries trebled. More modest gains were registered by the smaller islands.

This rapid expansion of production is accounted for mainly by

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the activities of the oil and bauxite companies. The annual production of crude oil in Trinidad began to increase in 1950 and by 1961 it had more than doubled. The refineries, which processed imported as well as local oil, did even better; so that the oil industry's share of »the total product rose from 29% in 1951 to 32% in 1961. In Jamaica, bauxite mining began in 1952, and before the end of the decade it was contributing to the Gross Domes-tic Product at the rate of 8% of the total.

Structural changes in the economies of these two countries had already begun to take place during the previous period. Now they were accelerated. In the case of agriculture, though total production continued to rise, its relative contribution declined. In Jamaica, for example, agriculture's share in the total dropped from 26£% in 1951 to 12¿% in 1961. In Trinidad, agriculture's contribution, which in 1951 was already as low as 17%, had shrunk by 1961 to 12%. At the same time the manufacturing and construction industries were moving in the opposite direction, their combined share of the total rising from 22% to 24£% in Jamaica and from 13% to 16% in Trinidad.

Oil and bauxite were the principal generators of economic growth in these two countries. Trinidad and Jamaica were lucky to have them and have made good use of their good fortune.

This period included our unsuccessful attempt at federation. I have no wish to linger over this painful episode except so far as it is relevant to our purpose. One of the notable permanent results of the experiment has been the advancement of the political constitutions of the islands in the Windward and Leeward Group. Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad would certainly have advanced to full internal self-government in any event, and Jamaica and Trinidad did in fact achieve it well before the federation. But in the case of the smaller islands the coming into force of the federal arrangements was the occasion for the granting of their present measure of autonomy, which is limited only by the requirements of defence and external relations and to the extent to which those governments that are grant-aided are subject to financial control. It is a matter of opinion whether in the existing circumstances this has proved to be an unqualified ad- vantage to those islands. It might be argued that more rational solutions of their problems of survival and development would have been possible today if these solutions could have been introduced in conjunction with desired constitutional advances.

Since the beginning of 1962 the islands of the Leeward group- Antigua, St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, and Montserrat - together with Dominica, St. Lucia and St. Vincent in the Windward group, and Barbados, have been discussing among themselves and with the United Kingdom the formation of a federal entity in the Eastern Caribbean. At the same time Grenada, the remaining island of the Windward group, has been dicsussing with Trinidad and the United Kingdom the possibility of becoming part of the unitary state of Trinidad and Tobago.

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It would be unsafe to predict the outcome of these protracted discussions. I suggest, however, that there can be general agreement about the following propositions concerning the islands of the Leeward and Windward groups. First, that they are too small for independence as separate units. Secondly, that they would find it more efficient and more economical if the higher levels of their administrative, professional and technical services were to be brought under a unified system of recruitment, training, deployment and promotion. Thirdly, that, if their economies are to expand, they will need for some time to come continuous injections of purposeful expenditure. Fourthly, that this expenditure must come from outside sources, since these islands are all grant aided except Antigua, which has managed to avoid accepting grant aid during the past year or two by postponing necessary expenditure on normal services and St. Lucia; even the successful adventure into banana production by the Windward islands and St. Lucia during the past few years has not enabled the others to pay their way.

Of these islands, Antigua has enjoyed the most rapid expansion of income since the war. She has invested heavily in tourism, so far with considerable success; and her acquisition of an oil refinery indicates her ambition to develop an industrial sector.

Barbados has more than once mentioned the possibility of seeking independence on her own. She still leans heavily on agriculture, but has a successful and growing tourist industry and an increasing number of small secondary industries. Her economy has grown with her growing population, but not fast enough to enable her to make any considerable contribution to the development of any other island without courting disaster for herself.

Jamaica and Trinidad are now launched on the first decade of independence and there has been no lessening of the will to develop on the part of the governments nor any noticeable change in the policy they have been pursuing to achieve their national goals. These goals have been described as being, in the long run, to use to the full their human and material resources so as to yield on the broadest scale levels of living in keeping with the modern requirements of human dignity; in the short run, to lessen the present dependence on external resources and consequent external direction. All the islands share these goals, but the smaller ones are less likely to reach them.

To put in a nutshell what I have said so far, the region has just passed through a period of revolutionary social and political change, beginning some thirty years ago. The salient features of this change are the shift of political power to the masses on the one hand, and on the other a new concern on the part of the governments with programmes of political, economic and social development.

These programmes have included education, as we have seen, but not, I think, in the measure demanded by the needs of the situation. Educational development has long been recognised to be a condition of advance in the other fields, but the implications of this have nowhere been fully appreciated or adequately implemented. Govern -

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merits tend to concentrate on political and narrowly economic development while paying lip service to education. (There are, of course, political reasons for this. It is not often that educational issues are decisive in capturing votes. The framing of a forward looking educational policy calls for a high level of statesmanship).

Nevertheless, as I say, all the Governments are aware to some degree that educational development is an essential condition of economic and social development. Politicians sometimes refer with approval to the need for investment in human resources. They know that educated people are needed to do jobs at various levels in government, in agriculture, in industry and commerce, in education and research, in the arts and crafts.

Each island maintains a system of primary and secondary education, and some have made beginnings in the technical and vocational fields. There is one university, with campuses in Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados and with Extra Mural centres in the others. It offers both full-time and part-time degree courses in the .faculties of Arts, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Education, Medicine, Agri- culture and Engineering. Many West Indians make use of the facilities •for higher education in other countries, especially the United King- dom, Canada and the United States of America. Up to now^ however, university graduates are only one per cent of the population, and we have a good deal of leeway to make up in the technical and vocational fields.

So far we have been sketching the outlines of West Indian development since 1939, and pointing to some of the factors that have influenced or determined its course. It is time now to say something about the problems that have arisen and are for the most part still with us.

Some of them have their origins in our history, others are inherent in our present circumstances. Some come from outside ourselves, others have their origin within us. Some are beyond our control, ethers are a challenge to our quality.

We inherited an economy based on the production of agricultural goods for export to Europe, and we have achieved our charter of freedom at a time when the rate of technological change is so rapid that it threatens to outstrip the efforts of even the most indus- trially experienced countries to keep their national housekeeping ad- justed to it. The Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, speaking of his own country, has summarised the situation in these words:

As the country has sought belatedly to free itself from the shackles oí mercantilism and to catch up with the first Indus- trial Revolution in the world, it has found itself entangled inevitably in the toils of the second Industrial Revolution . . .

This is the situation of most, if not all, of the developing countries. And our herculean task is made more difficult by the great popu-

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lation explosion that threatens to engulf us. like the makers of the first Industrial Revolution, we too are faced with an expansion of population. With them as with us the health revolution preceded the industrial one. Improvements in Medicine at the end of the 17th and the beginning of the l&th centuries caused population in Europe to increase during the 18th century so that industrialisation became necessary in order to clothe and feed the multitudes. In our case pharmaceutical discoveries arid improvements in public health on a worldwide scale have caused the outburst of population that provides us with a spur to development.

But we are less fortunate than our European predecessors in two important respects. In the first place migration as the short term solution to the population explosion is no longer available now to the extent that it has been in the past. Hungry multitudes from Europe, for whom the first Industrial Revolution was unable to provide, found homes in America; and hungry Americans kept moving their frontiers deeper into the seemingly limitless West. For the starving multitudes today there is no terra incognita. All frontiers are jealously guarded, and passports and visas are carefully rationed.

Secondly, our efforts to provide more jobs through industrialisation are being nullified by the onward march of the technological revolution. The employment potential of new secondary industries shrinks while we are in the act of planning them. And even our basic industries of oil and sugar are compelled by the necessities of the world market to replace more and more of their work force by automatic machinery.

Moreover, the relative youth of our growing population, combined with the fact that the world has increasingly fewer places for the uneducated and unskilled, imposes upon our resources the strain of providing more and more schools and training institutions.

Thus the high rate of population growth and the speed of technological change have together required us, like the rest of the world, to pin our hopes for survival and development on national planning.

All the islands recognise the importance of planning for development and have set up planning machinery of varying degrees of elaboration, ranging from the most rudimentary to the well staffed planning units of Jamaica and Trinidad. These two islands, as well as Barbados, have published a succession of five year plans which, especially in the case of the two larger islands, illustrate the high degree of sophistication to which I have already referred.

It must be clear from all that I have said so tfar that in respect of economic development, the problems of the West Indies are by no means peculiar to these islands. The formula our governments have chosen is a familiar one among the Western democracies. It is that of the mixed economy, with a small but growing government sector. In this type of economy, planning is made difficult by the ¿fact that a large number of important decisions are taken by private concerns

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and individuals on such crucial matters as saving and investment, production and consumption. The techniques of solving the problems that arise in such a situation will be the same for us as for other countries with mixed economies where similar problems have arisen and continue to arise. There is no need for me to attempt to discuss them as part of the West Indian case, even if I were qualified to do so. Our political economists devote much time and trouble to the study of these matters. Those concerned make a point of keeping in close touch with the most recent developments of thought and prac- tice in their fields, making use of the resources and information. advice and technical aid, availability of which is one of the more encouraging features of international life in the post war world.

There is, however, a problem which may be called our own, even though it is not uniquely ours. It arises »from a combination of facts and circumstances that constitute for us a state of dependence of a disturbing sort. The major share of our economy is owned and con- trolled by interests resident in other countries, and we continue to be very heavily dependent on outside sources for capital investment and on outside markets for the disposal of our products. (I do not need to elaborate before this audience on the precarious nature of our marketing arrangements -for our principal agricultural products, sugar and fruit. And, on the industrial side, I think that Canadians are sensitive to the dangers inherent in control of investment and industry by interests outside the country) .

Many of the more thoughtful among us, especially the younger ones, are deeply concerned about this state of affairs. On the other hand, practical politicians, charged with the responsibilities of government, are only too well aware of local inadequacies of capital and technical knowledge. They have been told by the experts that the best hope of making a start in the diversification oí narrowly based economies is to attract outside interests which already have capital, 'know how' and an assured market for the products of their enterprise.

There is a partial remedy for our excessive dependence on outside investment capital. The same experts advise us that we are not on the whole so poor that we cannot in principle raise all the money we need for investment out of our own income if we set about vig- orously to do so. They acknowledge that the political difficulties attendant upon the securing of acceptance, under a democratic regime, of a taxation policy that might produce the desired level of local savings are formidable - indeed we have witnessed several demonstra- tions of the untoward consequences of such attempts in widely separated quarters of the globe. These difficulties are a challenge to our wits and a test of our character. But even if a way could be found of removing or overcoming these obstacles, we would still come up against the limitations constituted by our smallness as markets and our present deficiencies of industrial expertise.

The debate goes on among us, and of course, like all debates about politics, it is ultimately about freedom and equality. The immediate

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question is whether there is for a small society in the modern world an alternative to a semi-colonial relationship with another more viable society. The more idealistic among us assert that there must be an affirmative answer to this question; and on this assumption we wrestle with the further question, what must the alternative be. As we do so, two crucial questions will keep recurring: "How much freedom?" "How much prosperity?" "How much prosperity?" "How much freedom?" A well known contemporary West Indian writer*, in discussing these questions has pointed to what he describes as the 'concrete independence' which is required for full development. We have not as yet a clear conception of what this is.

But apart from the problems of economics and politics, West Indian leadership faces a challenge in the form of a legacy of a spiritual kind that is easy to be aware of but hard to describe. It has to do with our continuing search for identity. Who are we? Whither are we going?

It is perhaps the origin of a variety of disquieting symptoms that show themselves in varying degrees in our societies. Such, for example, as a certain national or ethnic over sensitiveness, bordering on touchi- ness and sometimes leading to mild but potentially damaging forms of xenophobia: a somewhat inadequate sense of responsibility, which often reveals itself, surprisingly, in people with ability, education and prospects: the inability of some political ministers to repose confidence in the civil service, and their consequent desire to exert undue influence upon its members or to usurp some of their functions.

People often forget that none of the inhabitants of the West Indies are indigenous, except for a handful of people in a tiny village hidden away in the mountains and forests of Dominica. The West Indian communities contain a number of cultural elements, all of them imported. The only culture that is shared by all is the culture of the metropolitan countries. The metropolitan culture was there before the others, and was the only culture recognised - indeed the only one permitted - during the two centuries before 1838.

Under the surface of the political and economic changes that we have been describing, a social and cultural change has been going on. It began with the induction of the majority into the way of life of the dominant minority. Now, after a century of apprenticeship, the majority, with increasing self confidence, have begun to find merit in a West Indian way of life. A cultural flowering did in fact accom- pany the political awakening. The calypso took on new significance and the steel band became a national symbol. Painters and sculptors, novelists and playwrights, dancers and actors, all began to express themselves through West Indian themts and in patterns recognisably West Indian.

But we have not yet rid ourselves entirely of the mental shackles of our past. Traditional ideas often linger long after they have ceased to correspond to reality; and old habits of thought and behaviour

♦ C. L R James

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often continue after they cease to be appropriate to the true relations between various sections of the people of a country. Two centuries of slavery and three centuries of class differentiation based on the plantation system, and also in the case of Trinidad the introduc- tion a century ago of a large minority of distinctive ethnic* and cultural characteristics, have left us a legacy that cannot be wished away, nor exorcised by the pass of a wand, nor abolished by the stroke of a pen. The slower processes of education, formal and in- formal, are called for, and with them the emancipating effects of greater economic opportunity, if we are to realise in increasing measure our goal of effective freedom for all within our communities. There is no task of development more important than this. There is a tremen- dous job to be done by our university, our colleges and our schools, our government agencies and voluntary organisations, our newspapers, our radio, our television.

Those who think about the problems of development now accept the view that there are non-economic factors actively and crucially involved in the processes of economic growth - factors deriving from the mental and spiritual qualities of individuals; and that in a democratic society, planning for national development, if it is to be successful, must include measures which will release and mobilise the creative forces of the whole people.

May I conclude by referring once more to the widening gap between the rich nations and the poor nations which is the Number One problem of the development decade. I suggest that the problem, in principle, is soluble; and that we may take courage and tackle with optimism the formidable mountain of difficulties that stands in our path. A distinguished American scientist and educationist* has re- cently spoken of the new relation in which science now stands to the wealth of nations.

In this, our half-century, we have penetrated into this last stage of science which Bacon envisaged, and with this pene- tration has come a corresponding third way to wealth and power. Bacon called it the way of natural magic. . . Do we want a smooth impervious fibre? We no longer wrestle with ways of changing silk or cotton, we make the fiber itself. Do none of the 92 elements of earth fulfil a need? We make a 93rd ... We are no longer dependent on large numbers of specific natural resources each found only here or there on the earth's surface, we are no longer dependent on the places where they are found . . . Thus science has replaced empire as the source of our common wealth.

Science has indeed provided the knowledge which, if it could be rationally applied, could transform poor societies into rich ones. The obstacles in the way of this are political and economic. Because world society is organised politically and economically into separate and

» Professor Joseph Schwab of Chicago University

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mutually exclusive nations, the surplus resources of the "haves" cannot easily be made available to the "have nots". The fact that many of these separate nations are small or tiny merely aggravates the problem. We need the kind of organisation of world society which will promote and facilitate united action to supply the needs of all while safeguarding the interests of each.

No one knows how near or how far off this kind of world organisation is. In the meantime, in a world ever more closely drawn together by ever improving means of communication, the great disparity between the conditions of life of the "haves" and the 'llave nots" is a cause of world tension. There are grounds for hope that, under threat of nuclear destruction, the world's thinkers and states- men are becoming ever more willing to give serious consideration to removing the causes of world tension, including this disparity. Never- theless the problem of world organisation remains, and lack of world unity is an obstacle- perhaps in the end the greatest - to success in the carrying out of plans for development.

HUGH W. SPRINGER Institute of Education, University of the West Indies.

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problems of national development in the west indies

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