By Raffique Shah
May 23, 2022
I have grown accustomed to watching a scene in front of me—teenage boys kicking what life there was in a long-expired football, others of similar age and background carrying on an animated discussion on a subject I could not determine from where I stood, and yet others glued to their communication devices, maybe “chatting” with friends, maybe conducting extensive research into issue—I don’t know.
Continue reading Whiter shade of pale
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 16, 2022
PART II
“Trade Union Movement in Trinidad owes Mr Rienzi a great debt of gratitude and particularly the Oil and Sugar Unions which he pioneered until he left for the Civil Service.”
—John Rojas, former
Leader of the OWTU
Although Adrian Cola Rienzi struggled to achieve self-government at home and to make working people aware of their rights, he still found time to participate in the revival of Caribbean trade unionism after it lapsed in 1926. Brinsley Samaroo, the author of Adrian Cola Rienzi: The Life and Times of an Indo-Caribbean Progressive, noted that Hubert Critchlow convened the first Caribbean trade union conference “to coordinate the activities of the various trade unions towards the overall improvement of the Caribbean workers”.
Continue reading A leader of destiny
By Raffique Shah
May 16, 2022
It was the lure of the rifle that probably made up my mind for me. I enlisted in the Trinidad and Tobago Cadet Corps established at Presentation College, Chaguanas, in 1959. I was all of 13 years old, and I was eager to get on with “the gun”. It would take several months’ training—drills, map reading, more drills—before we eager beavers were allowed to touch the weapon.
Continue reading Full force for merchants of death
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 09, 2022
PART I
“The greatest supporter of the movement is / A young barrister who has made the workers’ struggle his / I’m referring to Adrian Cola Rienzi / Undoubtedly a leader of destiny / Who is working the workers to agitate / To eradicate and co-operate.”
—Attila the Hun, “Trade Unionism”
Last week I concluded my article by highlighting that Independence brought us many challenges. They included fusing the many ethnic groups together, bridging the increasing gap between the rich and poor, and the spectre of corruption in our midst. I hadn’t yet heard Karen Tesheira’s comments on the possibility of the Government’s corruption so I couldn’t comment on it.
Continue reading A leader of destiny
By Raffique Shah
May 09, 2022
Try as you might have done to ignore the launch of three political parties in tiny Trinidad and Tobago over the past few weeks, you really had to be a recluse or monk to escape the noise emanating from the war zones that politicians occupy.
While on my own business, as Trinis would say, seeking information online on some issues pertaining to trade, seemingly out of nowhere popped the Duke of Tobago (and Trinidad), Watson his given name, oozing bombast as he spoke about his party, the Progressive Democratic Patriots (PDP), coming to Trinidad on a rescue mission. The Duke was addressing his soon-to-be subjects, assuring them his party was the only hope to save the country from collapse.
Continue reading Enter the jesters
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 02, 2022
PART I — PART II
The general election of 1946 ushered in a new phase in Trinidad and Tobago’s political development, in that it was the year in which universal suffrage was introduced into the island. In that year, Patrick Solomon formed the West Indian National Party with Dr David Pitt, which later became the Caribbean Socialist Party.
Between 1950 and 1956, Albert Gomes, who considered himself “the logical successor to Captain Cipriani”, formed the Party of Political Progress Groups to contest the 1956 election. Owen Mathurin argues, “Gomes’s outstanding ambition was to outdo Cipriani and replace him as the hero in the hearts of the black working class.” Although the Colonial Office saw Gomes as their “blue-eyed boy”, he was not regarded as the champion of the working class, as he had seen himself.
Continue reading The price of progress – Pt II
By Raffique Shah
May 02, 2022
Good news is hard to come by nowadays. So young journalists, spawned on a diet of blood, gore, corruption, crime, suffering and worse, have become nihilists without knowing what the word means. And readers of conventional newspapers and electronic media audiences, especially the misnamed “social media”, will not recognise a decent story if it hits them between the eyes, so immersed are they in the lies, half-truths and raw sewage that pass for information on the 5G superhighway that rules our lives, imprisons our minds with such stealth, we degenerate into clones, drones and assorted mindless, brainless creatures to the extent that when we look into the mirror, we see nothing, because there is nothing to see.
Continue reading Bad teachers, bad parents
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 25, 2022
A lecture given at The UWI History Fest 2022—April 20.
PART I
I have been asked to speak about the “price of progress”, which the organisers of History Fest 2022 suggested should explore some aspects of the political formations of the pre-independence Trinidad and Tobago. While I am not too sure what the price of progress was, I can try to point out a few signposts along that journey and offer a few personal reflections on them.
Continue reading The price of progress
By Raffique Shah
April 25, 2022
By late last Tuesday evening, the universe seemed to me to have remained intact as we have known it from creation, or more accurately, since we arrived on it—vast, mysterious, constantly moving—and the Earth did not stand still, as some politicians had hoped would happen, in a celestial display of anger by the gods against satanic price increases in auto fuels imposed by the heartless Government of Trinidad and Tobago on its people.
Continue reading The screw and screwdriver