Panday reneged on all the principles we valued and allied himself with rich oligarchs. Now he is a convicted man

Racial and political passions raged through Trinidad and Tobago last month when Basdeo Panday, the former prime minister and leader of the opposition, was jailed for making fraudulent returns to the Integrity Commission, the body charged with maintaining probity in public life. Panday, ruled the magistrate, had deliberately failed to disclose the existence of a bank account, held at a branch of NatWest in London, over the three years 1997, 1998 and 1999. The account contained TT$1.6m, or about £138,000.

Panday claimed in his defence that the account was jointly held with his wife and that the money was hers, so he was under no obligation to disclose it. He also produced a witness, a local billionaire, to say that the money was intended to finance the education of Panday's two daughters at university in Britain. The magistrate, however, disregarded this defence and off to prison went the Silver Fox - so named for the mane of grey hair atop his cunning head. He has since been released on bail pending an appeal against his two-year sentence.

I know Panday, and have kept a close eye on him throughout his political career of about 40 years. Early in 1969 I left London to pursue radical politics in Trinidad and Tobago, with a list of contacts given to me by the distinguished radical intellectual C L R James. At the head of that list was Panday. We met in the heat of a transport workers' strike and were both arrested after a confrontation with strike-breakers who were supported by the police.

He had entered the political arena some three years earlier as a parliamentary candidate for the Workers and Farmers Party, then led by James. It was the first challenge to the ruling People's National Movement, which had made its peace with the very colonialism that it had replaced.

Trinidad and Tobago, like most of the Caribbean islands, had by then a tradition of working-class revolt, which had been at the heart of the anti-colonial movement. The British labour movement served as both an inspiration and model, and Panday could be described as the Trinidadian version of Aneurin Bevan, in whose footsteps he sought to tread. He more or less abandoned his legal career throughout the 1970s to pursue the struggle to lift the sugar workers, mainly of Indian descent, out of penury. And, with others, he formed the United Labour Front, driven by the slogan "Let those who labour hold the reins".

Panday, the middle-class leader of this working-class party, was unquestionably a loose cannon, and he violated basic principles of party democracy whenever he pleased. I was an overseas member but visited Trinidad fairly regularly to participate in party deliberations, and I can recall a couple of incidents which boded ill for the future.

The party had a rule that the maximum permitted donation from well-wishers or members was TT$2,000, or about £172 at today's rates. When a local businessman sent a cheque for TT$5,000 the money was returned with some kind words, but I remember there being an argument on the matter, and some vacillation.

On another occasion, after the party had won enough seats to become the official opposition in parliament, we had to nominate a list of senators to the upper house. There was a consensus that one of these would be an Indian sugar worker who lived in humble circumstances. Panday, I recall, wasn't so keen.

Panday subsequently plotted, planned and schemed, and split after split ensued until the organisation fell apart in racial animosity. In his new party, he chose to be undisputed leader of the Indian working class, exacerbating conflicts with the African workers that persist to this day. And he reneged on all the principles we once valued, taking his party into alliances with Trinidadian businessmen grown rich on globalisation - no better than parasitic oligarchs.

Often in recent years Panjay had told his party it needed to "expand its base" in just the way that the British Labour Party has done, tapping new sources of income. So there is no limit to how much money the oligarchs may contribute to Panday's party - and often it turns out that those same oligarchs are recipients of valuable government contracts. The money flowed freely, too, at the last election, when a Washington public relations company was brought in to manage an elaborate campaign.

Now, just as £138,000 turns up in an account in Panday's name in faraway London, the British Labour Party, which he so admired, finds itself sunk in its cash-for-peerages quagmire. I wonder whether the convicted man can appreciate the symmetry?

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