No guarantees!

November 10, 2004

In an earlier time when I was involved full time in radical politics, I always had cause to forewarn colleagues that having the correct line did not guarantee anyone victory or success in any way.

You could possess the most potent socio-economic analysis of a particular place, in a particular time, and yet this did not necessarily mean that people, in a maddening rush, would be making a bee-line towards your organisation or that the people would vote you into office.

There are always other factors, other variables, intangibles sometimes, which really make the difference. The 1976 experience is a case in point.

The Conference of Shop Stewards and Branch Officers (Cossabos) of all the major trade unions in the country came together and decided to form a political party to fight the elections and win power for the people.

Once the party was formally constituted, the general tendency was to shut down the Cossabos. My colleagues and I tried hard to convince the broad leadership that the Cossabos was the social milieu that gave birth to the party and instead of being shut down should remain separate and distinct from the party and moreover should be extended to involve workers and trade unions on the east-west corridor and in Tobago, thereby broadening the experience into a truly national experience.

Furthermore, we argued that community assemblies should likewise be initiated and be linked to the Cossabos, the work-site experience, so that through these two vehicles the people as a whole, where they live and where they work, can be empowered.

The party, in our view, was merely the instrument to bring about and defend this empowerment. We argued to no avail.

To the majority of the social leadership, the Cossabos and assemblies could only be mere tools of mobilisation to be called up and be dismissed in accordance with the tactical dictates of the party, the United Labour Front (ULF).

That confusion of the concepts of "party" and "mass movement" persists up to today amongst all political activists in T&T, be they of the left, right and of the centre.

When we say there is no real politics in T&T, that deduction arises out of our recognition of the confusion and misrepresentation of these two conceptual constructs that is predominant with all and sundry.

We chose then in 1976 to defer the argument. I, for one, turned over half of my business premises gratis to the ULF candidate for Tunapuna. Many of my colleagues spoke on their platform.

The ULF grew by leaps and bounds among the unemployed, the workers, and students along the east-west corridor, and soon there were clear signs that the party had begun to make serious inroads into the large percentage of people on the east-west corridor who traditionally stayed away from the polls.

In fact those were the people in the PNM-held constituencies that the ULF were specifically targeting, mindful that the solid PNMites would not budge.

Emboldened by this upsurge, the ULF chose to organise a motorcade along the corridor from Arima to Port-of-Spain on the Sunday before the elections. Since then no one organises anything but respectful silence and prayer on the Sunday before elections.

That motorcade came down the corridor and the people of Tunapuna, old as well as young, came out and lined the streets to see them pass by.

The fact that they came at all was a positive. I cannot talk about what happened as the motorcade passed through the communities that precede Tunapuna, but I know what happened at the corner of St Vincent Street and the Eastern Main Road where I stood among hundreds of people looking on. Suddenly there were these ULF activists, overwhelmed by the moment, shouting over and over at the people standing on the pavement: "...when we takeover, all allyuh n------ go suck salt..."

It was astonishing that no one threw a rock or a bottle at the abusers. Only silence prevailed. Not one person among the hundreds standing there uttered even a single solitary word. But I remember distinctly how they turned and looked at me.

I surmised then and there that if such a scenario had occurred before and was to be repeated again and again along the corridor, then the incumbent party would most certainly regain office.

Remembering that experience I could not be taken by surprise when Bush overwhelmed Kerry in the US elections. The vote or die campaign that was launched by young Afro and white Americans stung the heartland of America to the quick.

Imagine after all the lies, all the deception, all the millions of jobs lost as a result of policy, the launch of an illegal war against the people of Iraq, the abandoning of traditional allies on the international front, the repositioning and further crystallising of America as international bully, etc, and, to top this, the inability of this supposed most powerful nation in the world, under Bush’s watch, to supply flu vaccination to its population, and his failure to support stem-cell research as a means to fight cancer, after all that, Bush wins the majority vote in a nation that prides itself in being informed.

When heartland Americans went to the polls, what motivated their action was fear, a deep-seated fear of the other. The xenophobia of racists made them feel morbidly threatened by the vote or die campaign.

It was not only fear of alleged Islamic terrorism though this did have effect, but rather it was the old traditional fear of another citizen who looks, talks and walks differently, and who at all cost must be kept "in their place."

Imagine these people in the heartland of America are still today in the 21st century feverishly debating the pros and cons of creation vs evolution... they are as backward as that!

The one consolation is that Bush will have to continue managing his own mess until it blows up in his face and the way is cleared in 2008 for the first female President of the USA-Madame Hilary Clinton-and all that her femininity suggests and portents for the well-being of the whole world, granted that she emerges her own "man."