As I watch in shock and shame the online battering of our prime minister with the same baton we used to beat his predecessor, the following comes to mind: Four or five years after he was awarded (with Theodore W. Shultz, an American) the Nobel Prize for Economics—for his studies of economic development and his construction of an innovative model relating to the terms of trade between less developed and more developed nations to their respective levels of labor productivity in agriculture—Sir Arthur Lewis accepted from the late Prime Minister John Compton an invitation to visit to the land that gave Lewis birth.
It had been years since Lewis set foot on Saint Lucian soil. A government scholarship had taken him to the London School of Economics, from which he graduated in 1937. He had earned his doctorate in economics three years later. Lewis lectured at LSE from 1938 to 1947, was professor of economics at Manchester University from 1947 to 1958, principal at the University of the West Indies from 1959 to 1962 and from 1963 (the year he was beknighted) to 1983 was a professor at Princeton University.
He helped establish the Caribbean Development Bank, and served for three years as its first president. He also was advisor on economic development to many international commissions and to several Asian, African and Caribbean governments. There is no record of Lewis having worked in Saint Lucia. According to one published account he was forced to leave his home island not long after graduating high school—at which time his heart was set on becoming an engineer. He soon realized “the governments and companies of British colonies, including his native Saint Lucia, did not employ blacks, except in positions most menial. Lewis was in 1933 the LSE’s first black student.
To return to his official visit. Few of his fellow countrymen had heard of him. He’d written several books, none available at local bookstores, libraries or schools. As I reported in my own ‘Lapses & Infelicities’ (available from Amazon): “His appearance at the Morne Technical College proved anything but inspiring. It is remembered largely because of the lukewarm reception by the student body and for a particular question put to him by one member: “We know nothing about you. Where have you been? Why are you here today?’
Sir Arthur responded with a smile. “Well, I had a family to support. I could not find work here.”
Recalling the episode years later, the cocky student, now more familiar with the vicissitudes of life in this nation that is named for a saint, said: “I never imagined how far this whole matter would travel or that it would still be the stuff of rum-shop gossip two decades later.”
For reasons he did not quite understand back in the day, he said, “the government and the principal at Morne Tech were convinced George Odlum was behind the whole thing. That he had coached me to attack our first winner of the Nobel Prize. The education ministry gave me an ultimatum, delivered by my school principal: apologize to Sir Arthur or risk possible expulsion.”
After it had undergone several adjustments by a special committee, the student submitted to Sir Arthur his amende honorable. The now father of two told this writer the authorities made a far bigger deal of his childish faux pas than did his perceived soft target.
“Would you believe Sir Arthur actually took the trouble to write back to me?” he said. “He insisted there never was any need for an apology. My questions had not offended him. Not one bit. Actually, he offered encouragement. He said I had demonstrated the kind of pluck needed to make it in this world. I know now he was speaking from personal experience.”
There’s a lot more to be read about the Morne Technical College incident that had only hinted at the presence in our midst of a growing monster. Sir Arthur’s final visit was even more controversial than the first. Although he passed away in Barbados on June 15, 1991, it was Saint Lucia he chose as his final resting place. The universally appreciated economist was entombed near the college that today bears his name—but not without shameful public behavior by his fellow Saint Lucians.
As George Odlum wrote at the time in his newspaper: “While the world looked on awed and reverential, the mood in the streets of Castries was sullen, contrasting with the adulation and praise from the outside world.”
More telling was what Odlum had chosen to leave out of his account. For instance, that the reported ill-tempered and sulky mood at the passing of the universally acknowledged Saint Lucian genius spoke volumes about the operators of our education system that has never placed much emphasis on the accomplishments of the sons and daughters of Saint Lucia—except, on occasion, posthumously!
While the world fawns over reigning Caribbean queen Mia Mottley and her well reviewed COP26 speech, reminiscent of Barrack Obama after he addressed the 1994 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts, it seems our main interest is focused on who had pressed presidential flesh more times, Saint Lucia’s sitting prime minister Philip J. Pierre or his predecessor Allen Chastanet.
There has been no useful analysis of Pierre’s address, not by local talking heads and certainly not by their soi-disant counterparts on Facebook—where it seems our best brains have all taken refuge under assumed names. Not even by his more garrulous party apparatchiks. Such praise as has been tossed the way of Mia Mottley from the Looshan corner of the Facebook zoo was laced with racist and other mean and mindless comments about both Pierre and Chastanet. More evidence of a nation divided against itself, a nation without local heroes—and seemingly oblivious of the killing consequences!
