Reflections on the OECS at 25

• Author: Sir Ronald Sanders
• Pages: 389-391

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Reflections on the OECS at 25

The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) started 25 years

ago on June 18, 1981. The OECS is a grouping of some of the smallest states

in the world. Its seven full members: Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica,

Grenada, Montserrat, St Kitts-Nevis, Saint Lucia, and St Vincent and the

Grenadines, and two associate members: Anguilla and the British Virgin

Islands have a combined population of less than 500,000 people.

In the late 1970s, Britain was anxious to shed responsibility for these

remnants of the empire by offering them independence. It became clear to

some of their leaders that their small size and lack of capacity required them

to establish machinery to pool their individual sovereignty for their collective

benefit.

Thus, they set about forming the OECS. It would be a grouping of

independent countries within a framework of interdependence. After two years

of study, the Organisation was formed with the objectives of achieving “the

fullest harmonisation of foreign policy” and “to promote economic integration

through the provisions of the ECCM”.

The record on both these objectives reflects the difficulties that the OECS

faced over its 25-year history. This included “ideological pluralism” in the

early 1980s when governments in Grenada and Saint Lucia flirted with the

notion of closer links with the Soviet Union, and foreign policy harmonisation

became virtually impossible.

Famously, it also included the bloody overthrow of the Maurice Bishop

government in Grenada, the establishment of a military regime and the

intervention/invasion by the United States for the first time in the

Commonwealth Caribbean.

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26 Sir Ronald Sanders

REFLECTIONS ON THE OECS AT 25