Urban life - Darcus Howe fails thw Tebbit test
Published 05 December 2005
When Trinidad qualified for the World Cup finals, I failed the Tebbit test
Trinidadians have been experiencing the best of times. First, Dwight Yorke, once of Manchester United, led the national side into the World Cup finals and we danced and sang for days, from Toronto to Florida, in Britain and on the island itself.
Collectively we failed the Tebbit test, ignoring those who want us to negate our historical reality for some vague notion of Britishness. We demonstrated that we did not come alive in Britain, and that we have a past and traditions of excellence developed in another place.
Yorke was careful to point out that it was not simply an achievement of Trinidadians. Most of the team members play in the English and Scottish leagues. Chris Birchall of Port Vale, who scored a crucial goal against Honduras that got us to the play-offs against Bahrain, had never been to Trinidad until May this year. His mother, however, was born on the island. Roots are much stronger than our detractors conceive.
And then, days later, Brian Lara strode out to the crease at the Adelaide Oval. He is now 36, and perhaps playing in Australia for the last time. The crowd rose to applaud and he responded with a double century that made him the highest run-scorer in the history of the game. Unlike most of Yorke's team, Lara began his career in Trinidad, developed there and became the greatest batsman of all time in those small spaces on a tiny island.
When we come to make an assessment of who we are in this green and pleasant land, I say we are a mix of the best and worst of our former colonial masters, of conflicting traditions, of widely different attitudes to life and society which harmonise slowly into a social personality that is new and enchanting.
Yet, always stalking the best of times is the worst of times. Trinidad is steeped in the most violent and murderous crime. Guyana, our neighbour, has just been designated one of the world's most corrupt countries by Transparency International, and Jamaica has been dismissed in another report as a country with little regard for the sanctity of life.
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