Trinidad Black Power Revolution
Trinidad and Tobago came close to a revolution in 1970, eight years after independence, in a crisis that began with a student protest in Canada. The immediate trigger was the trial of West Indian students at Sir George Williams University in Montreal, who had occupied a computer centre over a professor's grading of Black students; the building burned, and dozens were arrested. Demonstrations in Port of Spain in February 1970 protested against their treatment. The grievance underneath was domestic. Independence had transferred political power to a Black and Indian electorate while banking, insurance, the sugar estates and the commanding positions in the private sector remained with a small white and near-white minority and foreign firms, and unemployment ran above twenty per cent among young men. The National Joint Action Committee under Geddes Granger led marches of tens of thousands, including a march into the sugar belt intended to unite Afro- and Indo-Trinidadians, which the government found more alarming than anything else. Eric Williams declared a state of emergency on 21 April and arrested the leaders. A section of the regiment then mutinied at Teteron Barracks under two lieutenants, and the crisis turned on whether the coast guard would stop them reaching the capital. It did. The government survived and responded with substance as well as force: local ownership requirements, a bank nationalised, state shareholdings in the oil and sugar industries, and a broader recruitment into the commercial sector. The events are still argued about in Trinidad as a revolution that failed or a reform that worked.
- Year: 1970 CE
- Category: Social
