Mrs. Erica Williams-Connell, on the launch of the Eric Williams Memorial Library in Port of Spain on 30th August 2022, said that “Williams … began his lecture in the Old Public Library but to their immense popularity had to be moved to the nearby Woodford Square…”
She added: “the masses, sometimes 20,000 strong of the supposedly uneducated, thronged to listen to the ‘doc.’”
In fact, it was Albert Gomes “when at Williams’ request, I arranged for him to deliver a series of lectures under the auspices of the Trinidad Public Library, whose committee chairman I had been for many years …” (Through a Maze of Colour (1973)). It was a colonial building, built in 1901-2 and re-furbished today at a cost of $12.5 million.
Gomes added that “… the West Indian national movement … in its national effluxion became an assertion of black nationalism… For when Dr. Eric Williams appeared in the scene, he fulfilled all the requirements for which the movement had waited.” This is the beginning of the PNM in 1955.
The PNM black nationalism was not the whole country. From 1970, Black Power fractured the black movement and Tobago continued from A.P.T James to ANR Robinson.
The “large masses” under the “doc” in 1956, for example, Gomes said “widespread fear of the time among all sections of the population. Moreover, during the campaign we had found it virtually impossible to hold meetings in public because of organized hordes of hooligans, who descended upon us with shattering noise and threats of physical violence and the threat of free speech…”
He added that “at first I seemed to be encircled by a wall of hostility, for wherever I turn I met abuse and ridicule. To make matters worse, my family shared the experience … A daughter was assaulted on the streets … and a band of young hooligans waylaid his wife car and spat her ….”
F.E. Brassington wrote that “the great deal of acrimony and vilification, no doubt carried over from 1956, characterized it. I myself witnessed PNM organized heckling and future PNM Mayors, Parliamentarians and Councillors taking a leading role in the exhibition of political hooliganism.” This was the Federal Elections in 1958 (The Politics of Opposition (1975)).
Mrs. Erica Williams- Connell said that “as a daughter I ignore neither my fathers’ faults or his frailties…Did he make mistakes? Yes. He was certainly not without flows…”
The library of Eric Williams and the PNM will record this history of the country under the period 1955-81.
Kamal Persad
Carapichaima