Nothing of Worth in Quan Soon Analysis

12, Jun 2000
For Mr. Quan Soon's information, the Shop Closing Ordinance was eventually passed in July 1938, despite the protests of masses of people, and the new law had its planned negative effect on the small black businesses, particularly those located in and around the towns, just as the Negro Welfare Association had predicted and warned.

The people who particularly gained from this legislative measure were the Syrians and Lebanese, commonly referred to as "Jews", who at the time were seeking to escape the worsening situation in Europe and North Africa.

The local colonial government was being pressured by the League of Nations and the British Government to accommodate as many of these refugees as possible. Editorials appeared in the local press demanding that room be made for these people who were described as being proficient in the commercial trades and who therefore should not be allowed to become "labourers in this colony".

Not long thereafter the business profile of Port-of-Spain, in particular, began to change. The black businesses from Henry Street to Nelson Street and Marine Square to what is now Park Street disappeared gradually. And there are a lot of stories about the role of "lawyers" in the buy-outs and transfers of tenantships of properties in that area but that is another story.

How different is this, Mr Quan Soon, from what obtained after slavery was abolished in 1838, when everything possible was done by the establishment to keep African people chained to the sugar plantations? Listen to what the historian Sewell had to say about that period in his book the Ordeal Of Labour:

"Many took to trade, and, setting up as petty shopkeepers in the towns, pursued a calling more congenial with their tastes and inclinations. The planters vainly endeavoured to remedy the evil; in vain they adopted most stringent measures to prevent the increase of small proprietors, and keep up, by such unnatural means, a sufficient labouring force for the estates..."

That is the historic picture, Mr Quan Soon. Just look back carefully at all the measures, "unnatural means" according to Sewell, orchestrated by the Colonial Government to stymie the growth of a black proprietor class and a free black peasantry on the land. The Shop Closing Ordinance, the Habitual Idlers' Ordinance and so on are only examples of measures that were provided the "legal" framework. There were other tactics used extra-legally, some of which could be described as probably "criminal".

And when the Africans still could not be pressured to provide the estates with a willing labour force, the Indians were brought as indentured servants, and later allowed to develop as a free, independent proprietor/ peasantry social grouping, their eventual advantage, while the Africans largely remained landless around the urban areas, dependent on the State for wages and salaries, their social mobility via the Civil Service dependent on assimilation through the colonial education system, their advantage being solely their proximity to the corridors of political power.

How could you, Mr Quan Soon, view this historic picture and conclude that the Colonial Government did not universally divide and rule and that the predicament of Afro-Trinidadians today is a result of the "brain drain"? Are you insinuating that the bright and smart Afro-Trinidadians are the ones who left the island and therefore the group as a whole has suffered? One cannot base supposedly objective analysis on such puerile conjecture and in the same breath accuse others of lacking empiricism.

Your claim that Africans, "prior to Independence", were "substantially employed in the oil industry and Civil Service" falls flat because the reality is that they are still so employed and yet Africans as a group are still at the bottom of the ladder. The question is why? The answer is that salary and wage do not by necessity generate wealth accumulation.

Salary and wage are prices of labour which in quantum are socially necessary requirements for the basic upkeep of the persons who sell that labour. It keeps you barely alive and ticking to continue working. And inflation keeps eating away at the power of purchase, and at whatever savings the better salaried people may prove able to set aside over and beyond the maintenance of their standard of living.

Not so with a person who is the owner or renter of a piece of land or the owner of any means that can be utilised for trade or be exchanged or invested with labour to generate a profit. Such a person can accumulate for the future and buffet themselves from the ravages of inflation, better yet if that person also gets a regular salary or wage from some other involvement and can safely save it.

It is the inability of large enough numbers of Afro-Trinidadians to accomplish the latter that is the basic cause of their predicament. More Indians have been able to do so because they started off with something, ie a piece of land plus the correct perspective on accumulation.

In Quan Soon's view, political independence brought "major social and economic upheaval and depression" which killed off African businesses and forced "highly trained and qualified" African citizens to leave the island. Where is the evidence to support this? On the contrary all the reports on the economy of T&T indicate that after independence all the sectors, save agriculture, expanded. And that is probably because people shifted capital investments out of agriculture, ie cocoa, coffee, citrus, etc into manufacturing and the "screwdriver industries".

As in all economic boom periods, those who could no longer compete fell by the wayside. The small African businesses such a those involving the artisan trades, shoemakers, tailors, seamstresses, joiners, etc mentioned by Quan Soon could not compete with Bata, Standard Distributors, one-stop commercial shops such as Woolworth (who took over Glendinings), Huggins, etc. Many of these artisans ended up as salaried personnel with these large commercial houses. That is natural with capitalist expansion.

But there was now an explosion in the variety of goods and services readily available in the country. More people were able to enjoy more manufactured items at cheaper prices. The shop-floor production system had taken over from the hand-crafted items. That's depression according to Quan Soon.

The reality is that there is nothing of worth in Quan Soon's analysis. What can we say about his sense of history when he seems not to understand that over time there is a natural tendency for people, given the acquiring of new tastes and preferences, to move from rural to urban areas, from small islands to bigger islands, and from developing and under-developed countries to the Metropolitan cultural centres of the world. But then there is always a move back the other way...just enough to maintain the balance. Have no fear, Ian, you shall be welcomed.