FERDIE FERREIRA Monday, February 14 2011

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GOING DOWN LOW: Patrons of the Rotorama All Inclusive fete, hosted by the Rotary Club, at Princess Elizabeth Grounds, on Friday, go down low to the mu...

At a panel discussion on Monday January 31 2011, sponsored by the COP, I had the privilege and pleasure to join my old friend Slinger Francisco, the “Mighty Sparrow”.

While Sparrow has been celebrated and honoured both at home and internationally, I have always considered Sparrow’s greatest achievement to be his boycott in 1957 of the Carnival Queen and King Show at the Grand Stand, Queen’s Park Savannah. This happened on Carnival Sunday night in 1957, forcing the new PNM Government to take control of the national competition from the Trinidad Guardian Neediest Cases Committee and saw the establishment of the Carnival Development Committee, which was placed under the chairmanship of Sir Hugh Wooding.

Sparrow’s decision put an end to the discriminatory and racial practices of the former organisers of the competition, under whose control the Carnival Queen had to be of a certain complexion. She was the beneficiary of a brand new car while the Calypso King received a few hundred dollars, some kaka pool rum and maybe a torch light. Thus did the Mighty Sparrow lead the revolution of the carnival industry in Trinidad and Tobago where today the victors in these competitions, including the Chutney Monarch, are the recipient of prizes in the vicinity of $2,000,000. The boycott was immortalised in what to my mind is one of his greatest calypsos.



“Let they keep the prize in the Savannah for they own self.

Let the Queen run the show without steelband and calypso.

Who want to go up could go up dey.

But me ain’t going no way”



This was Sparrow at his glorious best. Now at age 75 and not enjoying the best of health, the good Lord has kept him alive to see that his effort and sacrifice were not in vain. For calypsonians, boycotting the biggest show in TT in 1957 was not an easy choice. After Carnival, calypsonians were at the mercy of the promoters in the entertainment industry. The rest of this history is still being researched by our cultural historians. Today, I want to salute my dear old friend whose career I have followed from inception to date. Sparrow, our adopted son, has been, and continues to be, one of the greatest contributors in our march to nationhood. I wish to thank Senator Professor Watson and the COP not only for recognising his invaluable contribution but providing him with the opportunity to share his knowledge and experience with the national community.

As we proceed towards our 50th anniversary on August 31, 2012, there are so many events that we are unaware of, so many contributions that escape us. Yet ever so often, we have to listen to some of our citizens who continue to question whether we should have been granted independence or not. Some go so far as to suggest, insanely absurd as it is, that we should have done like Guadeloupe, Martinique, Aruba and Curacao and accepted provincial status from our former imperialist masters. Others, still a little more insane, genuinely believe that we should have become the 51st state of the US.

Well I have some news for them regarding the absolute contempt in which these “colonial bastards”, as the original Chief Servant T U B Butler called them, in his struggle for home rule, in the thirties, forties and fifties.

On January 11 1941, President Roosevelt wrote in part to Secretary Cordell Hull during the negotiations for the 99-year lease of land for the construction of US bases in TT and the West Indies.

“I am not yet clear in my mind whether American sovereignty over these little islands and their populations and two mainland colonies is something worthwhile, or a distinct liability. If we can get our military bases why, for example, should we buy two million headaches consisting of that number of human beings who would be a definite drag on this country, and who would stir up questions of racial stocks by virtue of their new status as American citizens”.

President Roosevelt evidently decided that sovereignty of these ‘headaches’ was not worthwhile. This is from an address given by the late Dr K O’Neil Lewis, Ambassador to Washington on October 11, 1983 in Washington, DC.

As the late Kwame Nkrumah, founding father of Ghana told the Governor General of the Gold Coast, on being released from prison proudly wearing his prison cap with the insignia P G Prison Graduate, “Sir, give us a chance to guide or misguide ourselves”.

The great Mahatma Gandhi was even more specific. When told by the last Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten, that when the British leave, you all will have problems. The great Mahatma responded, “After all Sir, it will be our problems”. The Lord got the message. India, like the Gold Coast was granted independence. The rest is now history. We must be masters in our own destiny.

(Ferdie Ferreira is a founding member of the PNM and remains an avid political activist)