Ritual and Review - Or Revival?

• Author: Anthony J. Payne
• Profession: Professor of Politics, University of Sheffield, UK. He is the author of several books on Caribbean politics and international relations
• Pages: 253-280

Ritual and Review – Or Revival? | 253

CARICOM has been a great survivor. It is still in existence more

than thirty years after its foundation and more than twenty years after

the events described and analysed in detail in the first two parts of this

book. Indeed, the current, and longstanding Secretary General, Dr Edwin

Carrington, recently hailed the year 2006 as an annus mirabilis in the

history of the Caribbean integration movement. He cited the signing of

the Declaration bringing into being the CARICOM Single Market on 1

January 2006, the announcement by the member countries of the

Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) during its 25th

anniversary celebrations of their intention to form an economic union

and the readmission of Haiti to the Councils of CARICOM after a

two-year hiatus.1 It remains to be seen to what extent these various

developments in and around CARICOM represent real and significant

advances. Indeed, many would doubt that they do, given the regular

disappointments, false dawns and unmet expectations to be found in

different aspects of CARICOM’s history from 1980 to 2006. We need

to review some of the key events of that period in order to establish the

background and context against which to assess these proclaimed recent

advances in CARICOM’s overall portfolio. For ease of analysis, we

have divided the period into five phases, characterised in turn by conflict,

ritual, re-examination, widening and deepening.

Conflict

The general international economic crisis of the 1970s, which damaged

the economic prospects and political stability of so many of the countries

CHAPTER TEN

Ritual and Review

– or Revival?

254 | The Political History of CARICOM

of the Commonwealth Caribbean, did more also than just temporarily

disrupt the growth and development of CARICOM. In retrospect, it

can be seen to have changed the nature of the circumstances in which

intra-regional negotiations had to be pursued in several quite crucial ways.

First, the approximate balance of power that had previously existed

between the CARICOM MDCs was fundamentally changed. An

enormous gap opened up between Trinidad, which became unequivocally

the dominant economy and pivotal state within the region, and Jamaica

and Guyana, which had both experienced, and indeed were still

experiencing, severe economic and political difficulties. Second, the high

degree of ideological consensus in the region had been shattered by

Guyana’s adoption of ‘cooperative socialism’ in 1970, Jamaica’s

proclamation of ‘democratic socialism’ in 1974 and the emergence of a

revolutionary government in Grenada in 1979. The extent of the left-

right split in the area, although often exaggerated by outside

commentators, was nonetheless another source of real problems within

CARICOM, putting paid in particular to the proposal to co-ordinate a

regional position on inward foreign investment. Third, the rapport

between the heads of government of Commonwealth Caribbean

countries which had contributed so much to the transformation of

CARIFTA into CARICOM disintegrated as personal relations between

Williams, Manley and others cooled. Finally, there was the fact that the

Caribbean was increasingly being opened up to international competition

in the late 1970s as several major powers began to vie for influence in the

region’s affairs. This had dangerous implications for regional unity, since

it contained the possibility that the region might again become, as it had

been historically, a battleground for the rivalries of outside powers.

Yet, at the time, the full impact of these changes in the political

environment was not appreciated, even though it was recognised that

an impasse had been reached in CARICOM affairs. With this in mind

the CARICOM Council decided in March 1980 to appoint a prestigious

team of regional experts, chaired by none other than William Demas

himself, to ‘review the functioning of Caribbean integration’ and to

prepare a strategy for ‘its improvement in the decade of the 1980s’.2

The determination to inaugurate a new phase in the history of regional