{"id":3197,"date":"2010-05-11T11:25:44","date_gmt":"2010-05-11T15:25:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=3197"},"modified":"2010-05-30T04:09:31","modified_gmt":"2010-05-30T08:09:31","slug":"williams-daaga-and-black-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=3197","title":{"rendered":"Williams, Daaga and Black Power"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?cat=310\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Dr Eric Williams and Makandal Daaga\" src=\"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blogimg\/ericdaaga.jpg\" title=\"Dr Eric Williams and Makandal Daaga\" width=\"400\" height=\"267\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dr Eric Williams and Makandal Daaga<\/figcaption><\/figure><big><b>How 1970 uprising changed Government policy&#8230;<\/b><\/big><\/p>\n<p><i>By Ken Ali<br \/>\nMay 11, 2010 &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/guardian.co.tt\/news\/politics\/2010\/05\/11\/how-1970-uprising-changed-government-policy-williams-daaga-and-black-power\">guardian.co.tt<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<p>Dr Eric Williams, Trinidad and Tobago\u2019s first Prime Minister and acclaimed \u201cFather of the Nation\u201d, was an apostle of the ideals of Black Power.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nWilliams spoke and wrote liberally on the subject before and after he imposed a State of Emergency on Monday April 20, 1970, and snuffed out the Makandal Daaga-led uprising. The issue has returned to relevance in light of Daaga\u2019s election candidacy and, especially, Prime Minister Patrick Manning\u2019s stout criticism of the alleged desecration of the Cathedral of Immaculate Conception in Port- of- Spain by Black Power protestors. The Black Power Movement \u201cenlisted the sympathy of a number of people, especially young people, who bitterly resented discrimination against black people, both here and abroad,\u201d Williams told the nation in a television and radio address on May 3, 1970. He added: \u201cThis is a legitimate grievance and I would have been no party to any attempt to repress it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But he voiced concern that the Black Power slogan \u201cdegenerated into race hatred and even attacks on black business in Tobago and Point Fortin.\u201d Daaga and his cronies led public marches for weeks across the country and Williams said he decided to act \u201cwhen the total breakdown of the trade union movement was imminent.\u201d In a speech on March 23, 1970 \u2014before his State of Emergency crackdown\u2014Williams also upheld the pillars of the Black Power cause. The fundamental feature of the demonstrations, he said, \u201cwas the insistence on black dignity, the manifestation of black consciousness and the demand for black economic power.\u201d He surmised: \u201cThe entire population must understand that these are perfectly legitimate and are entirely in the interest of the community as a whole.\u201d If that is Black Power, \u201cthen I\u2019m all for Black Power,\u201d Williams said. He had made similar points in an earlier article in the PNM\u2019s Nation newspaper.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/guardian.co.tt\/news\/politics\/2010\/05\/11\/how-1970-uprising-changed-government-policy-williams-daaga-and-black-power\" title=\"Williams, Daaga and Black Power\">Full Article : guardian.co.tt<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How 1970 uprising changed Government policy&#8230; By Ken Ali May 11, 2010 &#8211; guardian.co.tt Dr Eric Williams, Trinidad and Tobago\u2019s first Prime Minister and acclaimed \u201cFather of the Nation\u201d, was an apostle of the ideals of Black Power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[141,11,310,1,178,296,396,30,7,154,142],"tags":[104,215,144,371,329,82,1015,49],"class_list":["post-3197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cop","category-culture","category-elections-general-tt","category-general-tt","category-media","category-njac","category-peoples-partnership","category-pnm","category-politics","category-race-and-identity","category-unc","tag-african","tag-dr-eric-williams","tag-kamla-persad-bissessar","tag-ken-ali","tag-makandal-daaga","tag-patrick-manning","tag-politics","tag-tt-govt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3197"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3556,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3197\/revisions\/3556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}