Prof Bridget Brereton answers how the country has done since setting out on the post-slavery, indenture, and colonial government dirt tracks onto the highway of self-government and political independence.
The professor, who has researched, written, and taught the social history of T&T at the St Augustine Campus of the University of the West Indies all her professional life, answers the question by identifying achievements and those outstanding.
The makings of the historian
But first a perusal of the makings of the historian. As unlikely as it may seem, Brereton came into the world in India, the daughter of an English father and a German-Jewish mother.
After growing up in England, she landed in Jamaica in her late teens, her father taking up a position as head of the English Department at the UWI, Mona Campus.
As has happened on several occasions before and subsequently, young love bloomed on campus, and she and Ashton Brereton, a Trini from Sangre Grande, fell in love and got married; the history was foretold and written: a White Woman and a Black Man.
“I never encountered a single non-white girl at my grammar school,” she says, indicative of her lack of familiarity with black people. What was the reaction of the parents on both sides of the love union?
“My father was a classic (my mother had passed by then) English, academic Liberal. He did become more conservative as he got older. But his instincts were liberal. I think he felt that as long as the person I was going to marry was roughly of my educational background and was a decent person as far as he knew. He might not have been thrilled that he was black but had no significant objections to it.
“Ashton’s family, which is a very, very large extended Afro-Trini family from Sangre Grande, and I want to emphasise that because Grande is a special place, a multi-ethnic, multi-religious space. When Ashton was a small boy, the primary school he went to was the local Hindu primary school. Why? It was next door. They embraced me, and in fact, we always say that his family is a bit of a united nations.
“His eldest sister married an Indo-Trinidadian, and, by the way, more hackles were raised by that marriage, and another sister, Dawn, married the well-known Anglican priest, the first to play mas, Rev Clifford Hendy; white. So it’s not a family that wasn’t used to that kind of thing. At no point did I feel I was unwelcomed,” says the history professor.
Researching T&T’s history
As could be expected of a student schooled in England of the period, West Indian (T&T) history did not exist in Brereton’s knowledge and contemplation.
But in the Jamaica and Caribbean environment of the 1950s-60s into the 1970s, the reassessment of history written from the perspective of the colonial was being researched and written by Caribbean scholars of the period.
Those were exciting times at Mona, said Prof Brereton. Settling in T&T after studying at Mona and postgraduate work in Canada, she entered into the period when young men and women were disillusioned that the transformation of the colonial society and values had not reached down to the “brothers and sisters” on the bloc.
It was therefore a bit of a contradiction that a white English woman was researching the history of T&T at the Red House archives. Significantly, Woodford Square was renamed (unofficially) the “People’s Parliament,” and from there, the protests of the National Joint Action Committee (NJAC), militant trade union leaders, and even university lecturers and large followers from amongst the working and unemployed classes spilt onto the streets.
The claim was that the Government of the day was not doing sufficient, if anything, to redress the colonial imbalance.
“One of my most vivid memories of the first months of 1970 is of me taking a taxi down to Port-of-Spain, to the Red House to do my research and all kinds of dramas happening around,” recollects Brereton.
“Did I feel frightened? I never felt physically threatened, never,” says Brereton. “But I was worried overall because I was a white woman married to a black man with two mixed-race children,” she says of herself going through the cauldron created by those who were shouting for “power to the people.”
Informed and influenced by Black Power protests
Brereton’s reflection on her situation gives something of an insight into the nature of the “Revo”: it was not against an individual such as Brereton, but rather a quest for transformation of the colonial society.
There was concern though as “we didn’t know how it was going to end. We didn’t know if the Government would fall, and in retrospect, it was never going to fall, but we didn’t know that,” asserts the historian.
“So I was worried about the overall situation, but I continued to do my research except during the state of emergency,” says Brereton.
The historian was informed and influenced by the protests and shouts of “power to the people” as she researched and began writing the social history, a history different from that written mainly by British historians.
“Yes, I think it did. I am researching the colonial period. But I’m not exactly doing colonial history. There’s a little bit of a difference,” Prof Brereton says. She was seeking information and perspective not on “how the Empire ran and what were the constitutional and political structures, the legal constructs that were established by the colonial power.”
Brereton adds, “But I am writing social history, and I’m trying to understand the lives of the people who lived in Trinidad at that period, the white people, the black people, the brown people, the Indian people, those arriving from China and the Middle East, and so on.
“So the quest for Black Power certainly gave me a greater interest in thinking about the early antecedents of black power in the Caribbean as I tried to understand it and what it was all about.
“I am researching the 1870s-1890s, and you had well-educated people who were African Trinidadians, or often mixed-race Trinidadians, who were articulating
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something close to a black power or a Pan-African ideology. The most famous Trini who did it in that period was John Jacob Thomas,” notes Brereton.
JJ Thomas, as he came to be identified, was a school teacher who answered James Froude’s (British historian) scathing attack on West Indians with ‘Froudacity’.
“And I came across him over and over again in my research. As a matter of fact, I believe my very first published article was about John Jacob Thomas,” says Prof Brereton.
As a university professor who lectured in WI history, Brereton said she has generally been happy with her students who have absorbed what history is about and its value, and many are now teaching the CXC syllabus.
The past shapes everything that’s happening now
As to those who may argue that an appreciation of the past does not produce a pound of flour, she is certain of what it does. “Well, as a professional historian, you are going to expect me to say I think it is very important,” she says and places her responses in contextual terms.
“You are not going to change the world overnight; it’s not so much that we can learn lessons from history; because I don’t think we probably often can; but what we can get is a deeper understanding of the present from studying history,” says the professor.
“The past is the prologue; the past shapes everything that’s happening now, and will shape everything that will happen later, and I can’t resist the great quotation from Faulkner: ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’
“Was slavery the same as indenture? No. The more we know about those two systems of unfree labour, the better for understanding all kinds of things,” says Prof Brereton, including the “small history” of the minority groups in the society. “The good news, Tony, is that a lot of that work is being done by members of the groups. The Merikins (of the Company Villages of the deep South) have worked hard on researching their history; there’s a wonderful film about it. Books and articles about the First Peoples are being written, and please give credit to the Santa Rosa First Peoples community; all the groups, even the one per cent groups, the Syrian-Lebanese, the Chinese, the Portuguese.”
Huge progress in
many, many areas
To the critical issue, addressed best by the historian, how have the people of our society, drawn from seemingly everywhere and in many instances through varying circumstances, done rolling back slavery and indentureship, colonial rule and subservience, and critically embarked upon nationhood was the question I put to Prof Brereton.
“Tony, have you ever thought of what an extraordinary period it was? The 50s and the 60s as empires fell and flags went down, and other flags went up and expectations were so high and enthusiasm was so great? It was a profoundly moving time. Have those expectations been fully realised, nor could they have been? The realities of post-independence life were harsh: Cold War politics; multinational corporations; a tiny, little place like Trinidad and Tobago? So no, the tremendous enthusiasm generated by Independence and those expectations could not have been fulfilled.”
But obviously, Prof Brereton says, “There has been huge progress in many, many areas. Since then, living standards have been raised. Unquestionably. We have entered into being a mass consumer society. Is that always a good thing? Life expectancy has risen.
“The infectious diseases and the other illnesses that carried people off at a young age have been attended to. We have maintained a democratic system. Is that such a small thing?
“When you look at what has happened in so many other places, including the nation that loves to preach to the world about democracy and elections, and so on. We have managed crises. 1970 was a crisis which had all kinds of positive outcomes. 1990 was a crisis with no positive outcome but nevertheless, we have managed,” says Prof Brereton.
She is certain that “Black Power unquestionably shifted attitudes and practices; the society did become much more egalitarian from an ethnic point of view. I would also want to emphasise that the effects of the feminist movement have also transformed social attitudes and practices.
“Nothing surprises us in learning that our major banks are headed by women; our major newspapers are edited by women. We have had a female Attorney General, a Leader of the Opposition, a Prime Minister, a President; these are very important shifts.
“Have we done well on race relations? You know we could have done a whole lot worse. No question about the wisdom of Rudder’s famous quote: “How we vote is not how we party.”
Politics often toxic, but
race relations not as toxic
“On the ground, I really don’t have the impression that people hate each other on the basis of ethnicity. You know, Tony, adversity has its uses. Watching TV, all the countless protests and the burning of tyres, the roads are horrible, the potholes are horrible, the bridges destroyed, and the flooding is intolerable. Have you noticed how multi-ethnic those protesters often are?”
Prof Brereton notes that “people have been marrying each other and producing children of unknown or undeterminable ethnic origins for decades. I have a grandchild who is of Indian, African, and European ancestry, and I think she is free to choose whatever identity she wants or to reject all the ethnic identities and say, no, ‘I’m just a Generation Z-Gen Z.’”
Prof Brereton agrees with the view that “our politics is often toxic, but I am not sure that our race relations are as toxic as some people would like to make out. I have lived a sheltered life. I am a middle-class person. I would never pretend to know what’s happening on the ground among working-class people,” she says. “But I really do have the impression that, setting aside the ethnic entrepreneurs and the toxic political leaders, people get along pretty well. So it’s a mixed thing.” The professor of social history bemoans the fact “that it’s a pity we can’t have a meeting of the minds on constitutional reform; It’s a tragedy that trust in important public institutions has been eroded and seems to be declining.”
Inequalities of society
more class-based
Above all, Prof Brereton says, “In my opinion, even more important than race relations are the inequalities of society, which are, I think, more class-based than ethnic-based.”
The problems of intergenerational poverty, the history professor says, are “multi-ethnic and learned helplessness. To me, all of that is perhaps the single most important failure of independent Trinidad and Tobago.”
On individuals who have made significant contributions, Prof Brereton identified Bhadase Sagan Maharaj as an important figure because of his contribution to education, particularly in building primary schools for the education of Hindu Trinidadians.
“The trade union movement, the leaders of the OWTU, and the other union leaders who ensured that even as Trinidad moved into capitalist development and multinationals being important, made sure that the workers would not be forgotten and that the conditions of the working class would improve,” says Prof Brereton.
Captain Cipriani, Uriah Butler, and Cola Rienzi are the names that stand out for Brereton amongst labour leaders. Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams as leader was critical at that juncture.
“I do think that Patrick Manning was a Prime Minister who helped to shape modern contemporary Trinidad and Tobago with the famous big buildings in Port-of-Spain and elsewhere. Basdeo Panday did some important things to shift the focus to rural Trinidad, southern and central Trinidad.
