Some years ago I was in conversation with Michael Manley, the late prime minister of Jamaica. I could not see how the Caribbean peoples could possibly continue without some form of political union. There was no chance of it, Manley said. The idea was dead and was buried in 1962 when Jamaicans voted against it in a referendum. But C L R James, the Caribbean political guru, once said: "They will be forced to."
Now, since the World Trade Organisation issued the edict that eastern Caribbean bananas should not be given preferential treatment on world markets - leaving the industry open to fierce competition from the cartels of central America - Dominica, St Vincent and other islands have been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Public servants are not paid on time; and all the prime ministers of these islands can do is beg, borrow and steal. With 11 September and the fall in tourism, the pauperisation of Caribbean peoples has intensified. They depend for the most part on the sale of drugs and other vices, such as child sex. At least 45 per cent of the Jamaican economy is unofficial - a smart way of saying that marijuana and cocaine keep it alive.
So the idea of a political federation has returned with a vengeance: Ralph Gonsalves, the prime minister of St Vincent, told me this recently, and I am convinced that there is no alternative. Eugenia Charles, the former prime minister of Dominica, confessed on retirement that she had spent her entire time in government tearing her hair out trying to find the money to pay teachers, doctors, nurses and other government workers. Rosie Douglas, another ex-premier of Dominica, collapsed and died as he travelled hither and thither trying to solve the problem.
Patrick Manning, prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, supports federation and has the economic leverage to make it a reality. He has offered oil to the wilting economies of the Caribbean at a price way beneath the world market; he also has huge resources of natural gas. A little generosity here, some charity there, will certainly seduce the poor voters of the smaller islands into calling for political unity. As they used to say in my youth in Trinidad, "who have more corn feed more fowl".
Jamaica's government fiercely opposes federation. The island's earnings from drugs allow Prime Minister Patterson to babble on about sovereignty. But St Vincent and Trinidad are willing to go ahead alone, certain that the others will follow.
