Preface: Questioning Westminster

• Author: Brian Meeks
• Profession: Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Brown University
• Pages: 7-11

The contemporary history of constitutional reform in the

Commonwealth Caribbean, at least since the emergence of the first

independence constitutions in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago in

1962, has been intense and fraught.1 There is a well-known but little

referenced speech,2 which then Jamaican Premier Norman Manley

gave in January 1962 to the House of Representatives detailing the draft

features that would become the Jamaica Independence Constitution,

Order in Council, 1962. In it is compactly captured, either in the form

of positive assertion or defensive opposition, all of the critical debates

that surrounded the preparation of that critical document that helped

determine not only the framework for Jamaica’s political future but by

being the first, significantly set the template for the future direction of

Caribbean constitutional and, by implication, political history.

Thus, at the very start, Manley’s comments are defensive on the speed

with which the Constitution was drafted, in which most decisions were

taken at the first meeting of the Committee in October 1961 and a

final document tabled before the UK Parliament on July 24, 1962 – a

mere ten months later. His argument was that the country had been

travelling on the road of constitutional reform for some time and

legislators at least, were familiar with all its critical requirements and,

therefore, there was consensual agreement on almost all points.3 He

continued to commend the involvement of the public (though hardly

massive, with 30-odd people making submissions on the first day and

only 78 memoranda in all4), without reference to the deeply restrictive

character of the deliberative process, the exclusion of the press from

access to the Committee’s discussions and minutes and the absence of

any genuinely public deliberation and debate. The critical features of

Jamaica’s political and legal framework, beginning with the exclusive

nature of this drafting, were therefore decided largely in camera with

profound implications for the future direction of the country’s politics.5

Preface

Questioning Westminster

Brian Meeks