Toward an understanding of the Gonsalves years (Pt 3)

Duality, adaptability and the consolidation of power

By Marlon Bute

It was 2004. Thursday Oct. 27. Independence Day at Victoria Park, now known as Independence Park.

It was mid-morning, just before the sun rose overhead and stood there for what must have felt like forever to the hundreds of Girl Guides, Scouts, cadets, nurses and police officers who made up the yearly Independence parade, donned in their full uniforms, pressed stiff like starch.

Ralph Gonsalves, the country’s prime minister, a man who had long fashioned himself an anti-colonialist and the proud son of Portuguese immigrants who had risen to the top of a majority Black country, as he reminded us in his victory address on April 1, 2001, was centre stage, flanked by the commissioner of police, the governor general and other officials. He rose from his seat, which appeared more comfortable than the others, and walked to the podium with purpose.

He surveyed the crowd and spoke of the importance of his government and the things it was doing to improve the lives of Vincentians. Education and housing were again touted by Gonsalves as historic achievements in expanded access.

Then he turned to history.

In that Independence Address of Oct. 27, 2004, he said:

“It is not that our former colonial masters were homicidal maniacs, intrinsically evil or devoid of any sense of morality or humanity whatsoever. It is that expansionist mercantile capitalism and economic imperialism turned nominally Christian people into an unrecognisable other. We, formerly subject peoples, do not demand reparations but surely an apologetic admission of past wrong doing by former colonial rulers coupled with an ongoing commitment of genuine partnership, based on fairness, equity, and a preferential treatment towards us, would be of immense value in helping to cleanse the dark deeds of the past.”

The tone was measured. The moral indictment was redirected by Gonsalves from individuals to systems.

And significantly, he declared at that time that we do not demand reparations.

That declaration matters.

On a day commemorating political independence, he moderated the claim of historical injury. He asked not for compensation, but for apology and partnership.

Years later, that position would change. Reparations would come to include compensation. He would emerge as one of the region’s best-known advocates for reparatory justice.

That evolution is important.

Was it conviction deepened? A fuller appreciation of the historical trauma that shaped Caribbean peoples? A recognition that slavery, genocide and colonial extraction had enduring economic and psychological consequences?

Or was it political adaptation? A response to a swelling regional and global movement that gathered intellectual and moral momentum?

Did he help to shape the wave, or did he ride it?

History will decide.

What remains is the visible tension between the 2004 moderation and the later advocacy.

In that same independence address, on that very day meant to commemorate freedom, he went further. He said:

“Colonialism, of course, was not all underdevelopment, evil, public amorality, official violence, and subjugation. It was colonialism which gave us the majesty of the English language; it bequeathed to us a sound public service, a quality judicial system, a broadly democratic system of government, and a bundle of fundamental rights and freedoms which are protected in law. These are inheritances which we must use, not misuse or abuse, to advance our freedom, good governance, living and production, and our civilisation itself. We must nurture these, consolidate them, build upon them, and extend them in the interest of our own humanisation.”

That framing is not merely incomplete. It is morally misplaced.

On a day set aside to celebrate freedom, Gonsalves was crediting colonialism with our advance.

Colonialism was a system of conquest, extraction, and subjugation. Whatever institutions survived its passage were not gifts. They were instruments of administration and control.

To credit colonialism because structures remained is to confuse consequence with intention. Oppression often leaves infrastructure behind. That does not convert oppression into virtue.

The English language, the public service and the legal framework did not arrive here as benevolence. Britain imposed them on us. That they were later repurposed by the formerly colonised does not cleanse the system that imposed them.

We, the majority African in this society, did not begin our history in chains. We did not arrive from a people without language, law or civilisation. We came from civilisations older than any European civilisation. We came from societies that had law, governance, scholarship, trade, metallurgy, astronomy and organised statehood long before Europe consolidated its own state systems.

Africa was not merely a cradle of civilisation. It was the cradle of civilisation from which knowledge, science and culture spread outward.

Slavery interrupted that trajectory and colonialism perpetuated it.

It did not create our civilisation. It disrupted it, redirected it and subordinated it.

 The distinction is fundamental.

Remember the duality I spoke of earlier, the working-class champion and at the same time the suitor or admirer of the elite.

There was duality here as well.

In how he spoke of colonialism, two positions stood side by side. The anti-colonial intellectual and the colonial minded statesman. The critic of empire and the defender of its institutional residue.

There is also the matter of representation.

In referring to we, formerly subject peoples, he situated himself within the experience of enslavement and colonial subjugation. Constitutionally, as prime minister, he spoke for the nation.

But ancestry is not symbolic.

He is not Black. He is not descended from enslaved Africans. His lineage did not endure plantation bondage. The majority before him that morning were descendants of those who did.

To declare that we do not demand reparations was to moderate the claim of a people whose ancestors endured the horrors of slavery.

Words matter.

While rhetoric shifted regionally, domestically power was being configured.

Consolidation did not occur in one dramatic act. It unfolded.

And it unfolded not only through appointments, but through symbolism.

On an occasion Gonsalves told the electorate that they should not replace him with anyone unless that person looked like Jesus.

In a Caribbean shaped by centuries of colonial Christianity, that is not a casual remark. For generations, enslaved and colonised peoples were presented with a white skinned, blue-eyed Christ. That image still hangs in churches across this region. It still hangs in homes. In living rooms. In bedrooms. In kitchens. It is part of the colonial inheritance.

At the time he made that statement, the principal political figures of the day were visibly Black. He was not.

The implication did not require interpretation.

To suggest that the electorate should not replace him unless the replacement looked like Jesus was to draw upon a deeply embedded association between whiteness and divine legitimacy.

It was political.

It reinforced authority not only through policy, but through psychology.

Power consolidates not only through institutions. It consolidates through belief.

A lawyer from his chambers, Blazer Williams, a comrade from the days of the Movement for National Unity, went on to chair both the powerful Public Service Commission and the Police Service Commission.

The early Director of Public Prosecutions, in that powerful office, Colin Williams, had been a junior lawyer in Gonsalves’s chambers and had been an opposition senator when Gonsalves was leader of the opposition.

Julian Francis, his first cousin, served as unelected government senator and as minister responsible for public works, the ministry with the largest capital allocation. Over time he became one of the most powerful figures in Cabinet. Controversy followed when a major cross country road contract was awarded to companies associated with Francis’ brothers, prompting the then opposition led by Arnhim Eustace to walk out of Parliament in protest. Whether defended as lawful or criticised as improper, the episode reinforced the perception that political proximity and public resources were intersecting.

Camillo Gonsalves, his son, moved through crown counsel, senior crown counsel and Ambassador to the United Nations and Foreign Affairs Minister before eventually assuming the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development.

His daughter-in-law, Camillo Gonsalves’s wife, became head of the powerful Financial Intelligence Unit.

Within the police force, promotions occurred at breakneck speed. Those favoured often came from his constituency or were connected to him in ways that suggested loyalty was valued. In small societies, perception shapes legitimacy. When proximity and promotion appear aligned, authority consolidates.

The trade unions that once stood at the forefront of the roadblock revolution were gradually absorbed into the governing orbit through appointments and opportunities. Leadership that had once mobilised resistance found itself aligned with continuity. Some emerged as part time hosts of the ULP’s propaganda programmes on the party’s radio station, another instrument in the consolidation of power.

The National Youth Council weakened until it ceased to function meaningfully and eventually disappeared. In its place came a Prime Ministerial Youth Advisory Committee, handpicked and appointed rather than organically constituted as the groups within the NYC had been.

Boards, commissions, legal offices, economic management, security leadership, labour representation and youth platforms reflected closeness to the political centre.

Each development can be defended individually.

Taken together, they reveal method.

Power was gathered.

Power was shielded.

Power was normalised.

And over time, that normalisation began to feel permanent.

Permanence in politics is always illusion, even when it lasts for decades.

But in that moment, consolidation appeared complete.

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