Letter from Jamaican premier Norman Washington Manley to C.L.R. James
OFFICE OF THE PREMIER,
24 EAST RACE COURSE,
P.O. BOX 512,
KINGSTON,
JAMAICA
20th January, 1960
SECRET AND CONFIDENTIAL
Dear CLR,
I have your note (written in your best formal style) about the projected meeting of the Executive Committee in Dominica.
A meeting of the Regional Council of Ministers is planned for the middle of February, but no date has yet been fixed. I am under great pressure here at this moment but it is possible that I could get to a meeting of the Executive somewhere between the 14th and the 21st of February. I think it is important that there should be a meeting and it may well be that the immediate future of Federation will depend upon it.
It is pretty certain that the moment the official conference is resumed public attitudes are going to be adopted from which nobody will withdraw. That will be a great pity.
I am sending you this letter with a highly confidential document. It is a copy of a report on the conference I had with the Colonial Office. This is being sent to the Federal Government and all of it except the section which deals with the consequence of secession by Jamaica, will be sent to the Working Parties.
This copy is intended for your own information only and is not to be used by you unless I direct otherwise and I ask you to accept it on that footing.
Mark you, there is nothing about it which in the long run will not become public.
I make two or three comments arising from the clarifications which our visit to London has brought:-
(1) Jamaica has been concerned to know if Jamaica could secede from the Federation. It is clear that Jamaica can, if she so desires. This creates a release of tension and in this situation it is possible to make a determined effort to try and find a satisfactory basis to start off on independence. Let me add that I do not accept the suggestion that Jamaica is doing a horrible thing to talk about secession at this stage.
The Federation of the West Indies is no sacred matter. It is only an attempt to find a practical solution for a difficult problem. I am quite convinced in my own mind that there is a very good alternative solution which it would be easy to effect if Jamaica left the Federation.
What would be totally wrong would be to go into independence as a Federation and then break up the Federation. It is that that would disgrace the West Indies before the world, and not taking an honest and straightforward position before that fateful moment comes.
(2) There is no problem about the achievement of Dominion Status by the West Indies, whether it is by the Federation as it now exists or whether it is by a Federation comprised of Trinidad and the small islands which, together with Trinidad, make up a very natural unit.
It is openly conceded by the Colonial Office and conceded at all levels of thought that I am right when I say that no other country in the world not yet independent is more fit for independence than the West Indies.
You will forgive me getting a little ironic at the fact that so many people seem anxious to invent a battle when there is nothing to fight. I well understand the
phenomenon.
The modern fight for West Indian freedom and for a new political outlook in the West Indies was begun in 1938 in Jamaica. The fight was virtually won on both fronts when Trinidad under Eric's leadership emerged from the dark ages of her political nonentity.
(3) A very ugly propaganda is being spread in London by P.N.M. supporters. The line is that Jamaica is keeping back the West Indies from achieving independence and, of course, I am said to have 'sold out'.
This, by itself, is of little consequence. But it emphasises the need for speed. One way or the other we must resolve the basic difference of opinion. I am quite certain that I can now carry Jamaica with me on a policy to fight to save Federation so that we can start independence as soon as possible on the basis of starting at a minimum level of sovereignty and allowing the Federation to grow. On no other basis can I carry Jamaica along.
Aside from that let me add that every economic adviser who has looked at the matter from our point of view says that I am entirely right in my fears about what might happen to the Jamaican economy, and this includes a number of economists who have no connection with the West Indies at all.
So you see we must try to get together and resolve our conflict. It will not be my fault if Federation breaks down. Indeed it will be nobody's fault.
I have come to the conclusion by the way, that we are making a great mistake to keep suggesting that British Guiana and British Honduras should join the Federation. What is needed is to seek to strengthen our economic and other links with them on the basis of agreement and to accept the present situation and stop worrying about it. The whole thing has been handled very badly.
Congratulations by the way, on your articles on W.G. Grace. This is quite a tour de force.
John Hearne of Jamaica has written another book, "Autumnal Equinox". You should read it. He is, I think, becoming a very considerable novelist. You could count on the fingers of one hand the young men who are producing, each time they write, a book that shows real growth and development.
Yours sincerely,
N.W. Manley
23.1.60
P.S. I find I am unable to get a spare copy of the notes but hope to send you one as soon as I return from Washington and you should get it by about February 3.
A meeting of the Regional Council of Ministers has been fixed for February 15. I do not know if I will be attending, but I also see in today's paper some talk about a Dominica Party meeting for February 7. This will be quite impossible for me, but I still think that I will be able to make the weekend before February 15 if we could work out a schedule for getting into Dominica on the 12th and leaving there on Sunday so as to be able to start in Trinidad on the 15th. After that my situation is absolutely hopeless until the beginning of April.
We will be working day and night on the Budget from the 22nd to the 29th. We have Municipal Council elections on March 1, we open the new Legislature on the 3rd, we have the Budget session throughout the whole of March and as well the visit of the Princess Royal. It is becoming impossibly difficult to fit in everything, and all this idea of trying to rush the Inter-Govermmental Conference for March is totally impossible.
All the best.
N.W.M.