The first appearance of trams in Trinidad was in 1883, when on Thursday, December 27 of that year, Port-of-Spain saw the start of such a service. A large holiday crowd came to railway headquarters on South Quay to witness the event and to see what a tram was like.
The tram consisted of a small bus-like carriage drawn by two mules. These tram-cars ran on rails that were buried flush with the streets. Everything seemed to be ready except the mules. The mules, stubborn and restive, needed some time to practice, but the Tramway Company had concluded its arrangement late and there was a clause in its contract stating that it was imperative that the service start before the end of 1883. Therefore, the company began the service on the latest date possible - December 27. However, the mules must have felt themselves ready and above reproof, for one of the reporters looking at their work said they performed “in excellent style.”
However, it was the next day that the service was put to the test because December 28 happened to be the first day of the Christmas race meeting at the Queen’s Park Savannah. The great crowds of people who had come in to Port-of-Spain by train and who had for weeks been reading of the coming of the mule tram wanted nothing else but to be taken up to the Queen’s Park Savannah - and in excellent style too! But the company’s four tram-cars could hardly cope. So some persons would certainly have been disappointed.
Those who did not reach the race track in time missed a great treat seeing the horse Wyanoke win the Governor’s Cup. Especially since it was the first time that a cup was offered by any governor. Unfortunately, in early 1883, the Governor, Sir Sanford Freeling, was recalled to England as a result of the Canboulay Riots. He was never to return to see any horse win his cup.
But back to the mule-trams. The next day must have been even more difficult for race-goers for it was a rainy Saturday, and a Saturday with more people in town because of the New Year week-end. On this the third day of the Queen’s Park Savannah races only the fortunate would have been able to see the horse Ruth Howard dominate the day, and may have wondered where was Wyanoke. The rumour was that Wyanoke was being hidden from Ruth Howard.
But the trams were not hidden - far from that. The Belmont Tramway Company ensured that they were in the full light of day. Since they were the first form of public transport in Port-of-Spain people would naturally have wanted to know the routes and the schedules.
There were two routes, the red and the blue. Trams painted red plied one section of the town and those painted blue plied the other.
The time-table was as follows:
From the railway station to Saint Ann’s Road (via Frederick Street) every 20 minutes.
From the railway station to Saint Ann’s Road (via Saint Vincent Street) every 20 minutes.
To Newtown (via Frederick Street) every 20 minutes.
To Newtown (via Saint Vincent Street and Tranquility) every 20 minutes.
These trams lasted for 12 years from December, 1883 to what seems to be May, 1895.
One might ask, why? What happened in 1895? Well, 1895 was the year Edgar Tripp introduced electricity, and the tramway mules may no longer have been showing their excellent style but may have returned to their stubborn ways, for it appears that as soon as Edgar Tripp introduced electricity in March, 1895, the tramway company decided to use the traction power that worked with electricity to draw their tram-cars.
The formal opening of the electric tram service was held on June 26, 1895, and the ceremony was performed by Lady Broome, wife of Governor Frederick Napier Broome. Crowds lined Saint Ann’s Road to watch the event and all the prominent members of society were among the guests of honour. At four o’clock the Company’s three cars were drawn up at the tramway terminus, at the junction of the Saint Ann’s and Belmont roads. The trams were draped with flags and buntings and adorned with a bouquet of flowers. Referring to the performance of the trams the report said: “The rate of speed was fairly high, fully fifteen miles an hour, but there was no motion of any unpleasant character and all were delighted with the ease with which the cars sped along.”
It is correct to say that that all were delighted with the electric tram in Trinidad throughout its “career.” The Belmont Tramway Company seems to have become part of the Electric Company and early in the new century additional lines were established.
For example, there was a line from the railway station right along Tragarete Road and the Western Main Road to Four Roads, Diego Martin. There was one from the railway station into Saint Ann’s, and there was the early-established Belmont line. But the glamour line, the line for relaxation and pleasure and perhaps “showing-off” was the Belt Line, which was a line that went around the Queen’s Park Savannah - around and around! It was the favourite line for those who wanted to get nowhere urgently!
The tram came to the end of the line on March 31, 1950, and this was mainly due to a long battle between the Port-of-Spain City Corporation and the Government for the Electric Company. During the battle, the Electric Company, which saw it was going to lose (and lost eventually), neglected the tramlines. They were almost useless when the City Corporation took over the service.
The smooth opening led the government to heed the clamour of the ordinary people as well as the planters, for a line to San Fernando, the second town. This certainly was a line that was going to boost the economy in a big way. For it would help not only the sugar planters nor cocoa planters, but all along the line of the Gulf of Paria were a number of people who would like to get to know their neighbours by travelling easily to places like Couva, Chaguanas, and San Fernando.
And as for taking cane to the factories, and about the up and coming influence of cocoa? If the Arima line was vibrant this line would be busy and complex.
For there were scores of sugar estates and sugar factories all over this area, at Felicite and Woodford Lodge in Chaguanas, then there was Caroni, Brechin Castle, and Freeport with its Friendship Estate, Couva with its Victoria, its Exchange, and Forres Park, and around San Fernando itself there was Usine Ste Madeleine, Mon Repos, Retrench, Cocoyea, Ne Plus Ultra, Plein Palais, La Carriere, Vista Bella, Bon Accord, etc.
A line to San Fernando was started around 1878, and the Prince of Wales and his brother who came here in 1880 rode on part of that line on their way to the Pitch Lake and afterwards on their way to Misson, which was renamed “Princes Town” in their honour. (When they were here that January the line was ready up to Couva). The railway workers worked relentlessly on that line, and in some cases, as at Savonetta, fixing the rails almost along a wall they had built on the edge of the sea, and by slow degrees they kept on approaching San Fernando. There was the matter of building a station for it and an approaching low range of hills which barred the way to the San Fernando wharf and which would have had to be removed anyway was leveled amply enough to allow for railway lines to the wharf as well as to accommodate a railway station. The rails were laid down and a railway station was built and at length, in mid-April, the train rolled into San Fernando. The San Fernando extension of the railway was inaugurated on Monday March 17, 1882.
And that could have been the end of the laying down of the lines of the Trinidad Government Railway had there been industrial content. But the planters were not satisfied. The cocoa planters, although they had seen the Port-of-Spain/Arima line as helping the sugar industry more than the cocoa had nevertheless refrained from complaining. But to them the line to San Fernando was unashamedly a “sugar line.” So a hue and cry went up deploring government’s bias against cocoa growers and pointing to the great cocoa-producing estates of the Sangre Grande region as the///// which had no means of getting their produce to market. The cry must have been more special as one of the land-owners there happened to marry a daughter of Governor Sir William Robinson. Anyway, the Trinidad Government Railway yielded and in 1897 an extension was made to Sangre Grande. The cocoa planters saw more success the following year, when cocoa, as a crop making a growing impact on Trinidad’s economy, showed it was worth making noise. In 1898 and extension was made from a railway junction in Cunupia named after the governor of the day, Sir Hubert Jerningham, to a place that was new in cocoa growing, which was Tabaquite. That line was called the Caparo Valley line. But by the first decade in the 19th century the oil areas, new on the scene, decided to make their voices felt. There were many oil wells around the southern town of Siparia, and at the same time Siparia was the head of bustling commerce in the vegetable market — the produce of Penal and Debe, for instance, with its rice, cucumbers, bodi, sim, water-melon, in fact the veritable food basket of the entire region, stretching to San Fernando. In 1913 the Government extended the San Fernando line to Siparia, and as a result, the mood of the cocoa planters of Tabaquite, industrious, hard-working, and now moving down towards in order to plant more cocoa, the vicinity of a river called the Rio Claro could have pelted the cocoa pods at the Red House so furiously angry they were. And of course they were too far from Port-of-Spain.
To appease them Governor George Le Hunte allowed for an extension of the Caparo Valley line to a village that came to be called Rio Claro. Then the First World War broke out and with it, Peacetime on the railways.
By: Kimberly Albert
As the article continues to
engage the theoretical framework of post-colonial theory; it ascertains means
in which the historicity of immigration and re-settlement has supplied unique
trials and prospects for forming a sense of belonging and an environmental
ethos in the Caribbean. The landscape now takes the role of telling a story
which those who were there before have died and is now apart of the landscape
itself. As Guillén suggests, “literature must not do the impossible: it must
remember a human history that has been buried by the tremendous tropical
indifference of the Caribbean environment” (DeLoughrey, Gosson, Handley 3).
The Caribbean’s environment has
been drastically changed and grafted by colonialism which brought to the
attention of how natural histories are profoundly submerged in the world’s
historical process. Edward Baugh on the reverse says the sustained
circumstances of the day-to-day reality do not shape part of a continuum
meaning that its commonality with its surrounding (what would be referred to as
nature) is sporadic in relation to the
culmination of experiences (what would be referred to as culture). History
although a discipline endeavours to illuminate the reality lived, by this people
“will suffer from a serious epistemological deficiency: it will not know how to
make the link” (Caribbean Discourse 61). He says “this dislocation of the
continuum and the inability of the collective consciousness to absorb it all,
characterize what I call a non-history” (Caribbean Discourse 62). The dilemma
in appropriating the natural aesthetics of a landscape that has been so
tragically changed with the vehemence of colonial history has showed a
persistent paradox for Caribbean writers. In the attempt to strip away
colonialism from the Caribbean, replenishment of folk culture, comprising of
religious practices has supplied a revitalizing context for both natural and
human antiquities in the Caribbean. For example Aimé Cesaire has widely drawn
from botanical history to inscribe African and Arawakan “roots” on his
“calabash of an island” while Eric Roach’s poetry explores the “glorious
landscapes of the soul” (DeLoughrey, Gosson, Handley 71).
Braithwaite the historian says,
“What the West Indian writer must help to recover is the true self which the
colonized African exercised in the task of survival. That the function of the
writer is to express and articulate the people’s culture in its historical
depth and give it back to them” (Breiner 2). So in other words the writer
ultimately is a conduit that not only functions for himself but also for his
society in all aspects. Naipaul emerging out of a post-colonial setting
however, creates the image of himself as the East Indian, West Indian turned
Englishman in the text West Indian poetry and its audience. He opposes
Braithwaite’s argument earlier by stating that the writer’s primary function is
“self-cultivation” rather than writing just to give back to society. Naipaul
states that he sees society as a sterile void and the only way he can cultivate
himself above his ‘destitute’ society is by migrating to a place where he can
find an adequate response to his work (Breiner 2). He also argues that “history
is built around achievement and creation; and nothing was created in the West
Indies” (Middle Passage 29). It is evident to see that Caribbean writers had no
other choice but to migrate to better oneself. Marlene Nourbese points out that
“growing up in the Caribbean, you grow up knowing that you are going to leave
home. For one thing the societies are too small to absorb all their trained
people, so you have to leave” (Condé, Lonsdale 2). This is why it is said
nostalgia is a powerful element in most Caribbean writer’s fiction; that
sentiment and longing for the past, which they inevitably had to evade because
of circumstances beyond their control. Carol Boyce adds by remarking,
“Migration creates the desire for home which in turn produces the rewriting of
home” (Condé, Lonsdale 2). Subsequently this situation creates a bitter-sweet
notion. The advantage is it created a collective Caribbean identity and a ‘new
place’ in literature but unfortunately it has weakened the sense of personal
identity who have ranged themselves along colour lines.
It does not matter how hard any
Caribbean writer tries to be the ‘English writer’ he/she will always be West
Indian because of the impracticality to dissect one from the natural mundane or
every-day experiences (good or bad) of life; the conscious or unconscious
interaction with a class, ideologies, their findings in the social hemisphere
or from the fact that each and every one belongs to a society. The landscape is
the mirror.
When endeavouring to tell a
voiceless story the side-effects are usually fatal. It frequently diverts to
the inquisition of who or what is culpable. The victim, in a number of
instances is the land itself, when the past is elusive or, on the contrary, the
land is the culprit because “isolation and a diminutive geography have
condemned one to live in perpetual submission having in one’s defence not
aggression but patience” (DeLoughrey, Gosson and Handley 2). Glissant explains
“that the landscape in literature stops merely being a decorative or supportive
and emerges as a full character. Describing the landscape is not enough. The
individual, the community, the land are inextricable in the process of creating
history. Landscape is a character in this process. Its deepest meanings need to
be understood” (Caribbean Discourse 105-106). According to Richard L.W. Clarke,
“There has been a growing consciousness within historiographical circles in
recent times that the relationship between the historical text and the reality
it purports to re-present is one fraught with difficulties” (2). The trouble
with unification of the natural aesthetics of a landscape that has been so
extremely changed with the vehemence of European history, has demonstrated a
remaining enigma for West Indian writers. Derek Walcott offers the alternative,
that mimicry is creation. He states that “we owe Europe either revenge or
nothing and it is better to have nothing than revenge because revenge is
uncreative” (The Caribbean: Culture or Mimicry 12). This is what would be
called Caribbean “imagination as necessity and as invention” (The Caribbean: Culture
or Mimicry 12). Caribbean mimicry was
central as Walcott observes that mimicry is an act of imagination and just like
a tiger’s ‘grass-blade stripes’ acts as camouflage; it is designed as both
defence and lure” (The Caribbean: Culture or Mimicry 12). Indeed if the
landscape and to an extent its literature mirrors or is symbolic for identity
consciousness of a people, moreover the interrogation of literature purports
the concerns of how one has depicted the landscape in the new world through the
use of literature.
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By: Kimberly Albert
In order to build a nation of today through the eyes of
tomorrow we must first engage what was yesterday. Yesterday in terms of where
we came from, who we are and how to use these findings as a mechanism to
empower and change where as a nation we are heading. Most Caribbean authors
have been preoccupied by particular themes and have adhered to mutual pathways,
while often contrasted in method/style and writing. The probability or unlikelihood
of the account of one’s story, when the actual thought of the individual has
been crushed by slavery and colonialism; the circumstances of advent of a new
Caribbean identity; the analysis of the past, writing in exile and lastly,
landscape and nature: where the environment or surrounding tells the story is
an essential foundation of the examination of oneself and their community.
Caribbean literature takes on a scrupulous urgency and prominence because of
the major role it plays in its attempt to recreate a divergent cultural
identity that evades the incarceration of colonial past. Where the landscape is
the mirror the assimilation of colonisation and a fractured history is
analytically examined demonstrating its importance and correlations.
According to An introduction to post-colonial theory it expresses
what the Caribbean poet Lorna Goodinson says:
‘When is post-coloniality going to end? How does the
post-colonial continue?’ A pertinent question and one in which compounds the
problems of periodizing. In the sense, to also asks the question “Who is
post-colonial?’ seems to assume identities already in place, which can then be
judged to be post-colonial or not, whereas for many groups or individuals.
Post-colonialism is much more to do with the painful experience of confronting
the desire to recover ‘lost’ pre-colonial identities, the impossibility of
actually doing so and the task of constructing some new identity on the basis
of that impossibility. ‘Who is post-colonial?’ then becomes at least
temporarily or partially unanswerable: to the extent that major reformulations
are taking place with the identities of the formerly colonised and diasporic
groups, attempts to define or circumscribe in advance the content of that
‘Who?’ are premature. It even goes on to
explain a rather different and more disturbing, form of amnesia identified by
Dirlik: ‘Post-colonial, in other words, is applicable not to all of the postcolonial
period, but only to that period after colonialism when, among other things, a
forgetting of its effects has begun to set in. In this perspective,
post-colonialism appears almost a pathology, a diseased sign of the times
(Childs 7,14,17).
The overall experience of slavery (mentally, physically and
emotionally), colonialism, exile, emancipation and independence has sculpted
many West Indian environments, somewhat constituting to a mutual unity of familiarity
that can be set apart particularly as West Indian. West Indian literature is
therefore an outcome or product of this experience. Its outset in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and its development in the twentieth
century echoes the advancement of West Indian battle with history, with social
and political adjustments and with an enigma in identity definition. Laurence
A. Breiner in West Indian poetry and its audience mentions Braithwaite keynote
address where he questions the topic of “how does the writer develop a new
sense of community for a multi-directional culture with a history of slavery,
colonialism and uncertain independence?” (1). He argued that “the integrating
principle must be sought in the submerged continuity of the ‘Little Tradition’
the culture of ordinary people” (1). He repeated that “each race and group in
the West Indies needs to descend into its own past before a truly multi-racial
society, a Creole society can be anything more than a glib ideal” (1).
The Sankofa bird is a mythical bird (African proverb) that
flies forward with its head turned backwards. It is an African symbol which
means one looks back but moves forward while engaging the past. Sankofa is an
Akan term which literally means, “to go back and get it.” Broken up into
syllables ‘San’ means ‘to return’, ‘Ko’ means to ‘to go’, ‘Fa’ means ‘to look,
to seek and take’. There is also an egg in the mouth of the bird which
signifies ‘gems’ or knowledge of the past upon which wisdom is based; it also
represents the generation to come that would benefit from that wisdom. The Akan
believe that the past illuminates the present and the search for knowledge is a
lifelong process (Sweet Chariot: the story of spirituals).
Which brings up the argument of how much or how long should
one keep looking backward and how much should one engage their past? If one
engages their past where they are constantly hurt by it, then that can become
problematic and this is where Walcott says that “you should not engage the past
to be hurt but it’s really to engage the past to be free”. Which again one
should question and ask themselves to what extent as Creoles’ does one engage
history and how are the materials handled after being engaged? Understanding
that yes, Creoles’ have been hurt, there is still the urgency and mandate to
move forward; identity as a nation still has to be built.
Nicolás
Guillén’s 1947 poem begins with an insight explaining, “One must remember” or
“we must remember” or “it must be remembered” to memorialize a history that has
no surviving witnesses except nature itself (DeLoughrey, Gosson, Handley 1). It
simply states being ignorant of the past is unacceptable even though it cannot
be known. Even when language escapes one in explaining the absolute identity of
the Caribbean and the writer it should not stop one from still attempting to do
so. Edouard Glissant comes to the conclusion that the Caribbean nature and
culture has not been brought into a formative relation. He however says the
Caribbean “landscape itself is its own monument: its meaning can only be traced
on the underside. It is all history” (DeLoughrey, Gosson, Handley 2). Both
Wilson Harris and Guillén Glissant imply the landscape is inundated by “traumas
of conquest” that the land itself has become a mute history or record of a
“fight without witness” so that a gesture as an act to destroy the land is an
act of violence to the collective memory (DeLoughrey, Gosson, Handley 2).
PART II
PART II
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Although the year 1846 marks the start of the Trinidad railway story, passenger rail travel did not come into effect until many years after. It was at that time that the first effort was made to establish a railway in Trinidad.
The island, being generally
flat was particularly suited to rail transport. Also, there were many estates
which desperately needed transport for their produce but at that time there
were no usable roads. In addition, the railway company that eagerly undertook
surveys in order to start laying down its lines could not meet the enormous
cost of the project.
In 1859, in an area near to San Fernando in the southwest, William
Eccles, owner of a large sugar estate laid down the first rails in Trinidad in
order to bring produce from his estates to the San Fernando wharf and on to the
waiting ships and sloops. This railway, which ran alongside the Cipero River,
was called the Cipero Tramway following
a route between the San Fernando wharf and Princes Town. The mouth of the river
was sometimes used as a wharf or embarcadere to load sugar cane onto lighters.
The Cipero Tramway was enormously successful — but only for William
Eccles. It did not solve the problem of national transportation. What William
Eccles succeeded in doing was showing the way. What was really needed in a
Trinidad rich in estates but poor in transportation was something quite
different.
In seaside villages such as Mayaro, the Naparimas, and Toco, the round-the-island
steamers were able to collect the produce from the estates. For estates like El
Dorado and Laurel Hill in Tunapuna, El Reposo in Cunapo, La Pastora and El
Cantaro in Santa Cruz, and Milton and Spring Vale in Savonetta what was seriously
needed and what was in fact possible in 1876 were not beasts of burden, which were
slow, but the iron horse - in other
words, the railway, with its freight vans and its carriages - to facilitate those
who wished to visit the market and perhaps to see the other towns and villages In
short, what was critical was a vehicle, on road or rail, to render a service to
the people.
This was precisely the reason why the Trinidad railway authorities
were anxious to handle freight as well as passengers. They knew that such a
railway would make money because the planters needed transportation for their
produce and hundreds of persons would for the first time in their lives be
going places. The Trinidad Government Railway could not but introduce exciting
days!
In 1873, the message that had come to the government some time before
was finally acted upon. The necessary surveys were carried out and three years
later, in 1876, the lines of the Trinidad Government Railway were laid down. Taking
everything into consideration the government decided that it was not going to
cater simply for freight, or passengers,
but for everything.
After much debate it was decided to run the line to Arima. It was
felt that such a decision would please both the sugar and cocoa planters, who were
watching closely to see what was going on. It was expected that this initiative
would have pleased them because Arima was a heavy cocoa-producing area and the
route from Port-of-Spain to Arima was strewn with very fine and productive sugar
estates. However, the cocoa planters saw the line as a “sugar line,” and the
sugar planters called it a “cocoa line.” The man-in-the-street, though, could
not wait to see him as the “man-in-the-train.” All along the route of that
Port-of-Spain-to-Arima line crowds welcomed the workers laying down the rails.
The first length of railway line of the Trinidad Government Railway
was laid from the western side of South Quay, in Port-of-Spain, just east of
the lighthouse, and took a course of 16 miles due east to Arima. That was an
ideal route, for even then it was a “corridor,” well populated, and replete
with many sugar and cocoa estates. Therefore, all sectors stood to gain.
Thousands of persons who could not have afforded to ride on horse-back will now
are able to travel to “attend to their affairs,” and planters who oftentimes
had watched their crops rot on the ground will be able to get their produce
from field to factory or market.
The first trial of the line, with carriages and all that went with
it, was to San Juan, and then to Saint Joseph. The reporter who covered the
journey for the Port-of-Spain Gazette certainly did not rise to the occasion on
that historic day, for he has not told us much.
The inauguration of the Trinidad Government Railway took place on Santa
Rosa Day, the 31st August, 1876, a day on which Arima was
celebrating the Santa Rosa Festival. Hundreds crowded into the carriages in
Port-of-Spain and there was much gaiety and emotion. For it was almost certain
that in the whole history of Trinidad there was none among the crowd who had
ever travelled so fast and so far. A reporter wrote: “The trains were run up
and then down, and the greatest regularity was observed. The three last trains
were late but that was only to be expected. Altogether the Government and the
railway officials are to be congratulated on the success of the opening.”
Find out more in part 2
Part One
Part Two
Dr. Padma Venkatraman,
Chennai born, US based
Author of " Climbing the Stairs' & New Book, "A Time to Dance"
Dr. Venkatraman was featured in a
Book Signing, Reception & Launch of San Fernando Book Fair,
Organized by Jegna Institute in conjunction with the San Fernando Arts Council
and held on 23rd April 2014.
Ako Mutota, Director of Jegna Institute, hosted the author at Mayaro , and had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Venkatraman for The Caribbean Insight on Saturday 19th prior to her book launch.
Last month, the story of the visit to Fifth Company Village of the First Commission on the Franchise was featured in part. The main reason for the Commission going to Fifth Company Village, and this was on the request of Queen Victoria, was because of a letter from the head of the Fifth Company community, Pastor Robert Andrews. This was to Queen Victoria, after he had witnessed her Golden Jubilee celebrations in San Fernando. Being very impressed and coming to the conclusion that the people of this colony loved her dearly he complained that the people carrying out her duties here were not doing their jobs well and he asked, “could Your Majesty find it in yourself to give the people of Trinidad their own representatives?”
The Royal Commission went to Fifth Company specifically to interview Pastor Robert Andrews to find out why he wrote that letter. The visit took place on Saturday, April 14, 1888.
The members of the Franchise Commission present at Fifth Company were: Stephen Herbert Gatty, David Wilson, Arthur Wybrow Baker, Vincent Brown, George Lewis Garcia, Robert Guppy, Louis de Verteuil, Michel Maxwell Phillips, and Henry Brown Phillips.
The meeting is in progress and Mr Andrews is answering a question as to why he signed a petition asking for the franchise. He says, “When I was approached I signed the petition readily because I felt a change in the system of government might lead to good roads because the government is neglecting us badly.”
There were groans from the Commissioners and some of them shook their heads. The chairman said, “Forgetting what you say about the government neglecting you what made you feel a change in system would lead to roads?”
“I did not say “would,” Mr Chairman, I said “might.”
“Okay,” go on please.”
“I felt there was a good chance it would lead to roads because the people we would elect to represent us would know how we are suffering for roads. I am not only speaking of us here in this district, but all over the Companies. We are all descendants of the old Americans and we know how hard-working they were but the government put them here and forgot them and there was only so much they could do. Now we find that we have to fight against the same thing. Look at these houses all in the bush. If the government settled us here they have a right to look back and see how we are getting on. They brought us here in the first place, they have no right to neglect us. Every year they spend a lot of money on roads but not for Fifth Company.”
A member of the Commission asked, “Do you know about the government’s expenditure on roads?”
“The government’s what?”
The chairman said, “Okay. Let him go on.”
Pastor Andrews said, “Our principal need is roads. In any case we pay rates and we are entitled to benefits.”
The chairman said, “How much rate do you pay?”
“One pound sixteen I have to pay this year.”
“And you say the roads are terrible, which we know. Is that the only reason why you and the other villagers signed the petition?”
“It is not the only reason but it is the principal reason. All of us are settlers of the ground here. We live by planting provision and if we cannot lug our provisions to market we’ll starve. The situation is so bad that when the rainy season comes we cannot do anything.”
“Where do you sell your provision?”
“In Mission.”
“You mean ‘Princes Town,’ Mr Andrews.”
“For us it will always be ‘Mission.’ We are loyal to the queen, and we know that it was named after her two sons (sic) who came here a few years ago. But there is nothing in calling it ‘Mission.’ We were born calling it ‘Mission,’ and I suppose we shall die calling it so.”
The chairman squinted his face and looked at Pastor Andrews closely. The pastor looked strong for his age and he was standing up as erect as a young man. The chairman thought he could see defiance in the pastor’s eyes. He said, “Mr Andrews, I feel you do not like Queen Victoria. Did you attend jubilee last year?”
“Yes.”
Captain Baker asked, “Where?”
“In San Fernando.”
The chairman said, “Why did you really sign this petition?”
“For good roads.”
“And that is all? If you get good roads, that is all you want?”
“By getting good roads I don’t know want may take place hereafter.”
The commissioners looked at each other and were really shocked by this reply.
Chairman Stephen Gatty said: “We are not talking about hereafter — we are talking about now.”
“For the present, good roads,” the pastor said. “Apart from getting our produce out, there is the question of schools. When it rains the children cannot go to school. The school is in Third Company, just about two miles from here. When it rains they just have to stay inside.”
The evidence of Pastor Robert Andrews occupied the best part of the morning, but what remained with the commissioners appeared to be a prediction about what would happen “hereafter.” Yet one can say this was because the commissioners knew that an oppressive colonial regime was bound to lead to people who would fight back. So they came to Fifth Company suspecting resistance, and was sure that they had found it.
So on mounting their horses to take the unpleasant, irregular, earthen road to Mission they were certainly thinking of putting out the bush-fires in the path of Queen Victoria.
After completing the First Royal Commission on the Franchise, notwithstanding the signs they must have seen at many meetings and in many places they reported to Queen Victoria that the people of Trinidad had no desire whatsoever to have their own representatives.
And thus began the fight for the franchise, which led to the road Pastor Andrews might have been dreaming of: the Road to Independence. But next week we won’t look at roads as such but at the railways. The Trinidad Government Railways were established in 1876, just before the first Royal Commission on Franchise. So it can be said we were going places. Let’s look at that first section of line laid down.
‘This is a record of the most significant meeting of a Franchise Commission and be considered a milestone on the road to Independence. Apart from being the first such meeting for Trinidad it is interesting for many reasons. The Chairman of the Royal Commission, Stephen Gatty, apparently does not know the facts of how the meeting came about but the question of the franchise began with Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee (as queen) in 1887. On jubilee day Pastor Robert Andrews went to San Fernando to see the celebrations, and he was so impressed that when he returned home to Fifth Company that night he wrote a letter to Queen Victoria telling her how grand the celebrations were, and how deeply and genuinely the people of Trinidad loved her. He then told her that the persons she had here doing her business lacked any sort of kindness and compassion, that they did nothing for anyone, that they were aloof and useless. He said there were not even roads in Fifth Company and when it rained his children could not go to school. And then he asked her: “Your Majesty, could you possibly see your way to give the people of Trinidad their own representatives. This request alarmed Queen Victoria and she got in touch with the governor of Trinidad, Sir William Robinson, asking him to appoint a Royal Commission to find out if the people of Trinidad wanted to have their own representatives. And she instructed the governor that during the enquiry the Commission must go to Fifth Company to take evidence and particularly to talk to Robert Andrews and find out what it was that he really wanted.
The Secretary of State for the Colonies must have simply formalized the procedure leaving out personal details.
The following is a verbatim report of the meeting in Fifth Company on March 4, 1888.
A Royal Commission goes to Fifth Company Village
Pastor Robert Andrews was among the 226 people sitting waiting when the Royal Commissioners walked into the little Baptist church. The place was Fifth Company village and the year was 1888. The Royal Commissioners had come down from Port-
Mr Robert Andrews sat quietly, but a little uneasily, for he was impatient. He had given up a whole day from his estate to come here. He had been told his name was first on the list of those to be called to give evidence before the commissioners and he hoped he would be called up quickly so that he would speak his mind and then leave.
By now the commissioners had all sat down and in front of them on the table were little cards saying who they were. The Chairman was S. H. Gatty, the Attorney-
Mr Gatty’s voice brought him back to the moment and he leaned forward to hear. Mr Gatty said: “This is a meeting of the Royal Commission to enquire into the franchise and the electoral districts of the country. It is held here in the country and we wish to meet the people in the country who have signed the petition. We had better proceed to work at once…What we are here to do is to enquire into the political intelligence of the community, and we want to ask those of this neighbourhood who have signed the petition what they really expect from it, why they think a change in the constitution and government of the country would be better than the present state. Also I want to ask them generally their views on the political future of the island.”
Pastor Andrews was one of the villagers who had signed the petition and not only had he signed the petition but he had also signed for a number of other people. His main concerns was roads. The roads in Fifth Company was atrocious. The village was like a wilderness, cut off from civilization because the dirt track that led to it was bad even in the dry season, and utterly useless in the wet. Inside the village there was nothing that could be properly called a road.
He hoped that this Royal Commission had not come to waste his time and that he would see an improvement soon. For the villagers depended on selling their produce for a livelihood and they could not get their produce out of the village when the rains fell. At such times the produce stayed on the estate and rotted. He felt strongly that these people from England and their offsprings who ran this country did not have the interest of the poor people at heart. They had at heart the interest of the planters and the large cocoa proprietors but not the laboring masses. In his opinion the only solution was for the people to have their own representatives. It was only in that way that the people would get what they wanted.
The Chairman, after making his opening remarks, was looking through his list of names. After a while he said, “We should like to start taking the evidence of witnesses. Let us begin at the beginning. Perhaps that will be better. Is Robert Andrews here?”
Mr Andrews rose.
“Mr Andrews, you may sit down if you like. How long have you lived in the neighbourhood? Were you born here?”
“Yes, I was born here and lived here all my life.”
The Chairman was surprised at the clear strong voice. He asked, “How old are you?”
“Sixty-
“You look good for sixty-
“Oh, yes Sir.”
“How far back was that? Was it in squatting times, after Emancipation in 1838? You know at that time lots of slaves walked off the estates and came and squatted on lands all over the country?”
“I don’t know much about that. Fifth Company and the rest of the Company villages all sprang up in 1816. That was when Governor Woodford brought the black American soldiers down here. They had fought in some sort of war up there. Admiral Cochrane was the man who brought them down and the governor brought them here and they cleared away some trees and formed the Company Villages. We here belonged to the fifth company that came down.”
The Commissioners talked together and the chairman said, “Where did you get this history from, Mr Andrews?”
“From my parents.”
“Your parents were among them?”
“Yes, my father was an ex-
One of the commissioners asked, “What about this road that brought us here. The Government made it then?”
“This road used to be an Amerindian track leading to the sea at Moruga. It was an Indian walk and they call part of the place Indian Walk. Not the Indians from India but the Amerindians.”
“So the Government did not make roads?”
“Not a single road. We ourselves cut all these tracks in the bushes.”
The Chairman said, “Now Mr Andrews, I understand everybody is complaining about roads. I know this main road is awful because the commissioners reached here only through the grace of God. Although we used animals. So I am not pretending that the road is better than anywhere else. But you know what we are here for. You signed a petition that was sent to the Secretary of States and that petition asked for a change of government — or rather, a change in the system of government. The Secretary of State wrote to Governor Robinson asking him to appoint a Commission to find out what exactly the people want. Now I have this petition with me and we have all the names of the people who signed. There are quite a few from Fifth Company, so I thought instead of inviting so many of you to make this difficult journey to Port-
“Yes, Sir.”
“So you will tell the Commission exactly what you want.”
Mr Andrews scratched his grey hairs and said, “When I was approached to sign this petition…”
“Who approached you?”
“A man from Mission.”
“Do you know who he is?”
“No. He was taking round the petition. He…”
“Okay. Don’t bother, Mr Andrews. We’ll find out who he is. Go on, please.”
And this verbatim, report of the meeting at Fifth Company of the first Commission on Franchise will go on in the next issue.
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