January 29, 2009

WHY DID WE FEDERATE?

by Woodville Marshall (continuation)

The question that I am addressing tonight is probably imprecise, even irrelevant, in the way it is phrased. It might imply that we, the constituents, directly participated in the decision to federate. But, as some of you know, the Jamaican electorate was consulted about withdrawal from the project in 1961; but no electorate was consulted before the federation was launched, either by general election or referendum. The most that was done, as far as I can discover, is that the PNP in Jamaica and the Barbados Progressive League (the BLP) indicated support for Federation in the election manifestoes that featured in the 1944 general elections. But you know all about manifestoes and the extent to which successful politicians are bound by their contents. Part of this exercise, therefore, must be to identify precisely who made the decision to federate.
There is a related point. Dr. Eric Williams, in his usual scathing fashion, described the federation in January 1962 as ‘the bastard Federation’. Because we all understand that pejorative epithet to mean that paternity was in doubt, because no one was anxious to claim paternity and/ or because the mother was uncertain about who fathered the child, then, in determining who made the decision to federate, we may also be identifying the parents of the federation.

PLAN OF LECTURE I shall proceed with the discovery in the following fashion. First, I shall attempt to supply a context for the decision by sketching the course of the federation movement, and this, hopefully, will allow us to identify the main parties to the federation decision. Next, I shall outline the ‘objective’ case for federation; and will then try to show what elements of that case informed the decision to federate. I shall conclude by examining any other factors that may have influenced the decision-makers.
COURSE OF THE FEDERATION MOVEMENT All commentators are agreed that the movement which led in 1947 to 13 territories subscribing to a federation ‘in principle’, and to official commitment by 10 of them in 1956 to the Federation of the West Indies, featured West Indians and was intimately tied to a political reform programme. Given the colonial relationship, there was, of course, a British input at both the unofficial and official level, but the agitation of the question from around 1915 was West Indian, mainly eastern Caribbean.
Let us first look at the British input in the movement. At the unofficial level, we find the occasional parliamentary interventions made by members and/or associates of the West India Committee, individuals like Norman Lamont, Sir Samuel Hoare, Sir Gideon Murray who published A United West Indies in 1912, Sir Edward Davson, Morgan Jones, Capt. Gammans. Their significance is that they gave intermittent publicity to the issue by making proposals, asking questions and by forcing spokesmen of the British Government to give public responses about the objectives of British policy in relation to federation.
Up to 1944/45 that policy might be described as publicly passive. The Colonial Office did admit in 1905, partly in response to questions from Norman Lamont, that federation was an attractive proposal that might be regarded as the ultimate objective of British policy but, because of the existence of numerous obstacles to its implementation, it would be ‘premature’ to engage in the experiment at the moment. Then came what, with a little stylistic variation, became the Colonial Office’s mantra for the next forty years. Federation must not be pushed on the colonies, but support for it should come naturally from within or below as the result of administrative activity which would encourage them to draw together. But even when the ‘urge from below’ seemed to manifest itself in the 1920s and 1930s, the official perspective was hardly changed. In Lord Moyne’s words (1939), ‘there is room for doubting the readiness of West Indian opinion to accept federation in principle’, and he continued: because of the existence of serious obstacles, ‘it is doubtful whether the time is ripe for the introduction of any large scheme of federation’. The Colonial Office, therefore, pandering to ‘influential opinion’ or merchant/planter opinion in the territories, constructed no large plan for union before 1945, but mainly contented itself with urging unification of public services and with devising what we could term the forerunners of the Manning Initiatives. Between 1905 and 1939, it sent one Commission (1933) to enquire into the prospects of closer union between Trinidad and the Windwards and Leewards, and it hatched at least six schemes, all of which failed, to amalgamate the administration of territories in the eastern Caribbean--Grenada and St. Vincent, Trinidad and the Windwards, the Windwards and the Leewards, the Windwards, Leewards and Trinidad.
The British Government did actively take the ‘lead’ on the federation question from the mid-1940s, but that marked policy shift had little to do with the nature or intensity of public opinion in these territories. Col. Stanley’s announcement in March 1945 that the policy of the Colonial Office would be to ensure that the development of self-governing institutions in the individual British Caribbean Colonies ‘should keep in view the larger project of their political federation’ was mainly a response to certain metropolitan and international pressures. These included the necessity to rebuild the war-shattered British economy, the influence of a Labour Party with an anti-colonial stance, amalgamation movements in the Empire, and US pressure on Britain to de-colonize that had been clearly delivered in the Atlantic Charter. Sponsorship of federation could therefore be both a means of shedding administrative and financial responsibility and the apparent promotion of the processes of self-determination.
In contrast, the local federation movement, whatever the imprecision about the scope, character and advantages of the federation that it promoted, had the merit of persistence. That movement, clearly apparent by the 1920s, was essentially a political reform movement that was born out of the sense of marginality, virtual exclusion and dependence that colonial status and un-representative government created and perpetuated. It was a regional movement, initially an eastern Caribbean movement, because its leaders quickly recognized that they shared the same experiences and problems, because they realized that the Colonial Office had a regional perspective on West Indian issues, and because they understood the ineffectualness of unit action in removing the causes of grievance. We could therefore say that these early activists, leaders of Workingmen and Representative Government Associations—William Galway Donovan, Domingo Sebastian de Freitas and T. Albert Marryshow of Grenada, W.M. Grant and Ebenezer Duncan of St Vincent, Cecil Rawle of Dominica, H.T. Wilson of Antigua, Capt. Arthur Cipriani of Trinidad, Hubert Critchlow of Guyana--discovered the West Indies during their search for effective means to advance their political reform agendas. As a result, they pooled effort to win ‘the common benefits of combination’ (Rawle) and moved to give substance to their watchwords of EDUCATE, AGITATE, FEDERATE (Marryshow) and EDUCATE, CO-OPERATE, FEDERATE (Cipriani).
What must be emphasized is that that their reform measures/proposals were a package deal: representative government and later self-government; broader franchise and sometimes universal adult suffrage, legalization of trade unions; and federation. Equally to the point, Cipriani’s definition of federation, as recorded at the 1926 Labour Conference was indistinguishable from self-government.
‘When all was said and done, what was the form of government he advocated? What was meant by the federation which he was now urging them to adopt? What was the form of government for which he was so earnestly pleading and asking their support? It meant plainly and simply and in a few words that these colonies would be run by their own people and by their own Parliament’ (Augier & Gordon: 287).
By the 1940s the federation movement was wider in geographical spread, more focussed in its concept of federation, and more strident in its agitation. This was mainly the consequence of the emergence of a vibrant labour movement, reflected in trade unions and labour parties, which had been spawned by the labour rebellions of the 1930s. The Caribbean Labour Congress, founded in 1945 as the successor to the British Guiana and West Indian Labour Congress (CLC), exemplified all these features. Full regional co-operation could be seen in the participation of Norman Manley and Richard Hart of Jamaica, Grantley Adams of Barbados, Vere Bird of Antigua, Hubert Critchlow of Guyana, participants at one level or other in the 1930s rebellions; and the list included other leading players in the trade union movement like Robert Bradshaw of St. Kitts, Albert Gomes of Trinidad and Hugh Springer of Barbados. Most of these leaders, like their predecessors in the reform movement, put together a package deal, which Bolland sums up as ‘democracy in a regional nation’. This featured: full legitimization of trade union activity, constitutional reform including adult suffrage, responsible government and eventual self-government, and federation. Clearly, they saw ‘the need for labour unity and West Indian unity as connected and interdependent’. Therefore they simultaneously advocated action through legislation and trade unions to improve the lives of working people and the creation of a federal government as well as a federal labour organization. To them, a strong labour movement would provide ‘a powerful popular base for a strong federal govt that would enable Caribbean people to improve their living and working conditions, not only through labour and welfare reforms, but also by promoting economic development’ (Bolland: 474-480). The point must be stressed: federation for the CLC was intimately bound up trade union organization, with constitutional advance.
This could be clearly seen in the proposal that Richard Hart submitted on behalf of the Jamaica Trade Union Congress to the CLC Congress here in Barbados in 1945. He argued that the self-government by itself could not solve the problems of dependence on primary production and imperial preference, of limited production for the local market, of low living standards and low purchasing power, of unfavourable balance of trade and rising debt to meet costs of imported goods. However, a self-governing federation could supply the space and the opportunity to tackle the problems, especially if it was strong enough to treat the federated region, including Belize and Guyana, as ‘an economic whole’ (Hoyos: 111-112).

This was the thinking that animated the Federation resolutions that CLC submitted to the Montego Bay Conference in 1947. But, though Adams described those resolutions as the ‘authentic’ voice of the West Indian people, neither he nor other CLC leaders (at the Montego Bay conference) vigorously supported them, presumably because they were seduced away by the hint, early delivered by Colonial Secretary Creech Jones, that unit constitutional advance was likely to be on offer. By 1948/49, the fatal split on ideological grounds in the regional trade union movement had ensured that the CLC perspective n federation hardly featured in the planning of the federation, and that any base of popular support for federation had been eroded.
WHO MADE THE DECISION TO FEDERATE? At one level, that is relatively easily to determine. One party, the British Government, as the colonial state, had the power and the opportunity to grant what the other party, the leaders of the various colonies, had been saying for a long time that they wanted. At another level, however, the extent of the opportunity available to West Indian leaders to make significant input, to attempt to fashion the arrangements to suit local circumstances and agreed positions, the matter is a little more complex.
For a start, the initiative was clearly with the British Govt. The reports of the various conferences as well as the major decisions, like the powers of the federal government, clearly indicate that, no matter what pressure there was to de-colonize, the British Government was intent on retaining the ‘lead’ throughout the protracted negotiations between 1947 and 1956. Its representatives chaired all the conferences and planning committees except the Regional Economic Committee; it supplied all the experts to study issues like customs union, capital site, etc; and naturally its representatives could draw on the accumulated experience of dealing with colonials. There is therefore a case for saying that the British Government had ample opportunity, if not to impose its views, at least to influence decisions in its own favour.
Were the West Indian leaders powerless in this situation? Some of them undoubtedly possessed the intellectual capacity to deal adequately with any issue, to lobby effectively to overturn decisions that they did not support, as Eric Williams conspicuously did in relation to the capital site in 1957. But it might be suggested their ability to function effectively was hobbled by their own lack of unity, by the absence of well-prepared positions on crucial issues and, perhaps, by a lack of self-confidence. In this context, it is useful to hear Albert Gomes of Trinidad, who was a major player in the federation project until 1956:
‘Significantly, throughout the negotiations that preceded and achieved, the agreements that made possible the formal establishment of the West Indies federation, it was the influence of the Englishman in the chair that managed the miracle of West Indian unity when it seemed almost impossible of achievement. Left to our own devices we were soon at each other’s throats and angrily contemplating the possible forcible use of the furniture to give weight to our arguments’. (Gomes: 44)

But there may have been an even more telling area of weakness. Most of the leaders may have wanted to appear ‘responsible’ in the eyes of the officials of the Colonial Office, in order to ensure that they each received their promised instalment of internal self-government and the power and authority that went with it. The point, then, is that the sense of unity, on which the advocacy of federation was presumably based, was hardly apparent when the leaders met with the officials of the Colonial Office. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that we got the federation that the British Government was prepared to give us, not necessarily the federation that some of the leaders had claimed that they wanted.
THE ‘OBJECTIVE’ CASE FOR FEDERATION AND ITS ROLE IN THE DECISION TO FEDERATE I could try to construct that case by borrowing K.C. Wheare’s well-known classification of factors that subserve the existence of successful federal unions; but I choose for obvious reasons to cobble together elements of a case that are drawn from the conclusions of two highly qualified commentators. These two authorities are Sir Arthur Lewis and Dr. Eric Williams, both distinguished scholars and federationists (though of different stripes). The elements of the case for federation read like this: an emotional basis for a West Indian nation, or a sense of nationalism; the basic size prerequisite for an effective nationhood; the need for functional co-operation; the hope/expectation of economic development; the need for competent administration, or administrative efficiency; and the protection of political freedom. I shall examine each of these in relation to what the principal parties said and/or did about it.
Sense of nationalism The significance of this factor, identified by Arthur Lewis in 1938 and again in 1968, is by its nature difficult to assess. Most advocates of federation invoked it, from Marryshow to Manley; none attempted to analyse it; and few proposed practical methods to overcome the prejudices, born of insularity and limited communications, which bred distrust and discord. Therefore, it was either sentimentality or rhetorical flourish for our leaders to speak about ‘a people of common interests, of common stock, upbringing, traditions and ideas’ (Rawle), that ‘we belong one with the other’ (Gomes) and to assert that it was the ‘common destiny’ of the several West Indians to share a nation. Little of this made contact with the facts of history (the almost total failure to establish any federal union, for example) or with the realities of the social structure and demography. The most that can be said is that the fledgling UCWI may have represented some hope for a West Indian future, and that the leaders’ perceptions about a romanticized past and present were indicators of their commitment to the federation project, and therefore may have played some small part in the decision to federate.
Prerequisite for effective nationhood As early as 1941 Eric Williams was declaring that ‘some form of federation is demanded by commonsense’. He elaborated the assertion in this way. Federation would do two things: get rid of ‘the present absurdity of a congeries of tiny isolated governments duplicating each other at tremendous cost’; and ensure that the West Indies would not be at ‘the economic mercy of the more advanced and more powerful countries of the world’.
The necessity for a certain minimum size (in population, especially) for the effective exercise of nationhood was a given for all federationists. Federation as expanded space and augmented population is what the early reformers counted on to give them clout in their confrontations with the Colonial Office; and it was also the base for the CLC’s programme of economic planning and development. But it was the Colonial Office, in its promotion of federation in 1945 and 1947, which first explicitly linked self-government (and federation) with population size.
‘…it is clearly impossible in the modern world for the present separate communities, small and isolated as most of them are, to achieve and maintain full self-govt on their own. It is not, for example, practical politics to suppose that communities of 200,000 souls, or in some cases even less, should play an independent part in international discussions. On the other hand, a community of well over two million in the Caribbean area, with much that is homogeneous in their culture, could reasonably hope to achieve self-govt, and to be strong enough to stand against economic and cultural pressures and to formulate and carry through a policy and a way of life of its own’ (Creech Jones: 1947 Memorandum).

Many of our leaders echoed this formulation during the federal negotiations, dubbing unit self-government as ‘a mirage’ and ‘arrant nonsense’. Manley, for example, spoke eloquently at Montego Bay about the West Indies afloat on a hazardous and stormy sea, ‘each huddled in some little craft’, now being offered ‘a boat, substantial, capable of being made seaworthy and ready to be manned by our own crew’. Albert Gomes told the Trinidad Legislative Council when it debated the Montego Bay resolutions that, on the point of a basic minimum size for nation status, ‘the Colonial Office officials are infinitely more intelligent than the raucous representatives of the people’! Moreover, it was probably this stark reminder from the Colonial Office that combined with the promise of eventual unit self-government to moderate Alexander Bustamante’s early scepticism about entering a ‘federation of paupers’. We can therefore safely say that the necessity to meet the criterion of a certain minimum size for effective nationhood was one of the reasons why we federated.
Functional co-operation Arthur Lewis identified this point out of what was becoming, by the 1940s, standard operating practice inside our region. This related to co-operation on a range of vital services, from negotiation for export markets and prices to consultation and joint action on currency, higher education, transport and communications, etc. The necessity to strengthen and formalize agencies in this area could also be regarded as a given for our political leaders; and the establishment in 1952 of the Regional Economic Committee, the second pre-federal institution (after UCWI), is clear evidence of the priority that they accorded to co-operation in matters of mutual interest. The only point of reservation is this: was a federation needed to effect that level of co-operation, when it was already standard operating practice?
Agency for economic planning and development The answer to the question is probably apparent when examination is made of the federation’s possible role in regional economic planning and development. Eric Williams, not the development economist, Arthur Lewis, was the most consistent advocate of this role for the federation, particularly after he moved into electoral politics in 1955. He made it clear that his preference was for a strong federal centre that could integrate the territorial development plans and create a sense of national identity. By 1956, he was declaiming: ‘If federation is to mean anything at all, therefore, it must mean an economic development of the British Caribbean that is carefully and quickly planned’. His Economics of Nationhood in 1959 took the point even further: ‘only a centrally directed economic co-ordination and inter-dependence can create the true foundations of a nation…[The various territories] will be knit together only through their common allegiance to a Central Government’.
Williams’s points were at one and the same time fundamental and irrelevant. They offered a clear and viable concept of federation, but neither his colleagues nor the British Government shared this concept of federation at decision time. The point is easily illustrated. The CLC’s federation proposals, articulated by Richard Hart and explicitly endorsed by Adams, Manley, Gomes, can be read as an early version of The Economics of Nationhood. But, despite the powerful support that had been promised for the resolutions, they were virtually ignored at the Montego Bay Conference, and their thrust was not revived until Williams entered the political arena. The explanation for this sidelining is twofold. The Colonial Office regarded proposals for a self-governing federation with a strong federal centre that would promote economic development as precipitate and unfeasible, partly because in those post-war economic conditions it had no interest in developing colonial economies so that they might become self-sustaining. Rather, it was seeking to boost colonial productivity to meet urgent consumption needs in Britain. For their part, the CLC-mandated leaders at Montego Bay and in subsequent conferences were apparently prepared to trade a strong federation for unit constitutional advance. In those circumstances, functional co-operation rather than federally directed economic planning and development became the preferred option for securing economic advantage out of federation. By the time Eric Williams resurrected the issues in 1955, vested interests of one sort or other had foreclosed on them. Therefore, while West Indian support for the creation of the federation may have been premised on some expectation of solid economic advantage, little was done in the making of the federation to deliver any substantial economic benefit, especially to the smaller territories.
Administrative Efficiency Arthur Lewis noticed this factor in 1938 and again in 1968; but variations of it had been central to every British attempt from the 17th century to rationalize its administration of the region. Lewis identified at least two advantages that unification of services could bring, especially to the more vulnerable and needy Windward and Leeward Islands. ‘Expert central departments’, he pointed out, could ‘better and at a smaller aggregate cost’ administer most of the services (education, health, police, judiciary). Equally important, a unified public service, ‘offering wide scope for promotion’ might limit the brain drain by inducing skilled professionals and public servants to stay at home or to engage in ‘inter-island rather than external migration’.
The Colonial Office and our leaders shared much of this perspective. Even before 1947, the Colonial Office had been proposing limited unification of services, and in 1947, Creech Jones identified the necessity for administrative efficiency as one of the ‘weighty considerations’ in the implementation of the federation project. ‘If any considerable and sustained advance is to be achieved’, he wrote, it would seem essential that the separate units, especially the smaller ones, should take a wider view of the problems which confront them all’. Moreover, he continued, it was ‘important’ that highly qualified individuals ‘who should wherever possible be British West Indians’, should be available to administer the various govt offices, but ‘in most cases’ it would not be economic for people so qualified ‘to be restricted to comparatively small units of administration’. For their part, our leaders, who would have needed no prompting on the point, duly included unification of public services (‘so far as it may be practicable’) in the terms of reference of the Standing Closer Association Committee that they established at the Montego Bay Conference.
Protection of political freedom Arthur Lewis in 1968, fully aware of what one of our Prime Ministers later called ‘political banditry’, argued that ‘the West Indies needs a federation as the ultimate guardian of political freedom in each island’. He feared that opportunities existed in small islands for ‘the domination of a boss’, where personnel in public and private agencies could be intimidated and where widespread persecution and corruption could become the norm. He advised that a properly functioning federation could check the incidence of such excesses by providing avenues for appeal to the federal courts, police, civil service commissions, other islands newspapers, etc; and in the last resort a federal government could forcefully intervene to uphold the rule of law.
This is an important and sensitive issue, highly sensitive for other politicians. For that reason, no matter the reservations that individual leaders may have harboured about the conduct of colleagues, it is unlikely that the issue would have surfaced in any public or semi-public discussion about the advantages of federation. That conclusion is borne out by the Federal Government’s deft handling of the Gairy Pardon Motion in the first session of the Federal Parliament. A majority was quietly garnered to defeat the motion, but no one spoke against it! The conclusion must be that this factor was unlikely to have had any influence with those who made the federation.
Other factors/balance sheet I come to my long conclusion. It seems obvious to me that our leaders went into federation with an exceedingly weak commitment to that project. They made their decision because there was some interest in exercising national status in the international arena, because there may have been a fuzzy sense of regional nationalism, because they could recognize that some advantage might flow from functional co-operation and from unification of services. But they agreed to nothing that would make the federation an active force in the lives of West Indians. They made the federal centre as weak as it was possible to be: a pittance for its running expenses; little power for independent action; a Crown Colony constitution that was backward when compared with that of Jamaica and Barbados.
The explanation for this weak commitment has already been suggested. Before and after Montego Bay, most of our leaders were more committed to exercising power at the unit level than in accepting any reduction of personal authority or of status of unit; and that commitment was strengthened at Montego Bay when they were more or less told that, while the federation could not start its life as self-governing entity, there was a distinct prospect for units to move towards some form of self-government.
Let me fill in the steps of argument that lead to that conclusion.
The British Government, in its attempt (1866-1885) to create a federation of the Leewards, Windwards and Barbados seemed to have established a close nexus between the constitutional status of the units and the administrative arrangements for the whole. In other words, the plan was to create a federation of Crown Colonies; and what survived the wreckage of that plan was the Leeward Islands Federation, a Crown Colony.
When, during and after the 1920s, the political reformers began to campaign for the liquidation of Crown Colony arrangements, they reasoned, perhaps correctly, that the nexus was still in place, that constitutional and political change would not be granted outside some form of federation or administrative union.
This reading of the mind of the Colonial Office explains what I have been calling the presentation to the Colonial Office of package deals. All the activists up to the 1940s employed the same tactics. They petitioned the Colonial Office for improved constitutions and federation, being prepared to concede to the Colonial Office what they were convinced that the Colonial Office wanted (federation) but which they themselves did not accord high priority- to concede that for what they desperately wanted (improved constitutions for the units). No doubt commitment to this tactic explains why they did nothing to promote the mini-federal schemes that the Colonial Office floated from the 1920s onwards.
It is entirely probable that the Colonial Office saw through the ploy; and this would explain why, despite increasing calls during the 1930s and 1940s from West Indians for federation, they did little or nothing to advance the project. They were not yet willing to concede improved constitutions, and they knew full well that the local elites, ‘influential opinion’, supported that stance, so they had no real interest in accepting the package deal.
By the early 1940s, the British Government, under increasing pressure to promote self-determination and decolonization, was now willing to liquidate the remnants of Crown Colony Government; and the implementation of this new policy, seen in the grant of the 1944 constitution to Jamaica, signalled a willingness to examine the full package deal—improved constitutions and federation.
As soon as there was clear evidence that the nexus between constitutional status and administrative arrangements had been weakened, enthusiasm for federation among West Indian leaders was likely to dissipate. And, very early at the Montego Bay Conference, Creech Jones more or less gave a green light to those who put unit status above federal union by brushing aside any possibility of the creation of a self-governing federation and by appointing committees to study ‘how the constitutions of all the separate units could be made as representative and responsible as possible’. West Indian leaders had got what they wanted and, for them, federation was now at best a secondary consideration.
To repeat myself, our leaders advocated federation mainly because they wanted unit self-government, and when some of those leaders recognized that the attainment of unit self-government was not tightly tied to federation, then enthusiasm for the federation project, if enthusiasm ever did truly exist, waned and probably died. The real tragedy is that my generation’s imagination (and even career prospects) was caught up in this project, but we neither fully understood how and why we got into federation nor how deeply flawed that project was.


REFERENCES

Augier, Roy & Shirley Gordon (1962) Sources of West Indian History
Bolland, Nigel (2001) The Politics of Labour in the British Caribbean
Brathwaite, Lloyd (1957) ‘Progress towards Federation, 1938-1956’, Social and Economic Studies 6:2
Emmanuel, Patrick (1970) Crown Colony Politics in Grenada 1917-1951
Gomes, Albert (1974) Through a Maze of Colour
Hamilton, Bruce (1956) Barbados and the Confederation Question 1871-1885
Hoyos, Fab (1974) Grantley Adams and the Social Revolution
Lewis, Arthur (1938) Labour in the West Indies
Lewis, Gordon (1968) The Growth of the Modern West Indies
Mordecai, John (1968) The West Indies: The Federal Negotiations
Moyne, Lord (1939) West India Royal Commission Report
Munroe, Trevor (1972) The Politics of Decolonization: Jamaica, 1944-62
Nettleford, Rex (1971) Manley and the New Jamaica: Selected Speeches and Writings 1938-1968
Palmer, Colin (2006) Eric Williams and the making of the Modern Caribbean
Proctor, Jesse Jr. (1957) ‘The Development of the Idea of Federation of the British Caribbean Territories’, Caribbean Quarterly 5:1
Sheppard, Jill (1987) Marryshow of Grenada: An Introduction
Spackman, Ann (1975) Constitutional Development of the West Indies 1922-1968: a selection from the major documents
Springer, Hugh (1962) Reflections on the Failure of the First West Indian Federation
Sutton, Paul (1981) Forged from the Love of Liberty: Selected Speeches of Dr. Eric Williams
Wallace, Elisabeth (1977) The British Caribbean: From the Decline of Colonialism to the end of Federation
Williams, Eric (1942, 1969) The Negro in the Caribbean
Williams, Eric (1969) Inward Hunger: the Education of a Prime Minister.