This is the speech delivered by Dr.
Eric Williams -the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago- on August 31,
1962, the first day of Trinidad and Tobago's independence from Great Britain.
Fellow Citizens,
It is a great honour to me to address
this morning the citizens of the Independent Nation of Trinidad and Tobago as
their first Prime Minister. Your National Flag has been hoisted to the strains
of your National Anthem, against the background of your National Coat of Arms,
and amidst the beauty of your National Flower.
Your Parliament has been inaugurated
by Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal, the representative of Her Majesty the
Queen. You have your own Governor General and your own Chief Justice, both
appointed on the advice of your own Prime Minister. You have your own National
Guard, however small.
You are now a member of the
Commonwealth Family in your own right, equal in status to any other of its
members. You hope soon to be a member of the World Family of Nations, playing
your part, however insignificant, in world affairs. You are on your own in a
big world, in which you are one of many nations, some small, some medium size,
some large. You are nobody's boss and nobody is your boss.
What use will you make of your
independence? What will you transmit to your children five years from today?
Other countries ceased to exist in that period. Some, in much less time, have
become totally disorganised, a prey to anarchy and civil war.
The first responsibility that
devolves upon you is the protection and promotion of your democracy. Democracy
means more, much more, than the right to vote and one vote for every man and
every woman of the prescribed age. Democracy means recognition of the rights of
others.
Democracy means equality of opportunity
for all in education, in the public service, and in private employment--I
repeat, and in private employment. Democracy means the protection of the weak
against the strong. Democracy means the obligation of the minority to recognise
the right of the majority. Democracy means responsibility of the Government to
its citizens, the protection of the citizens from the exercise of arbitrary
power and the violation of human freedoms and individual rights. Democracy
means freedom of worship for all and the subordination of the right of any race
to the overriding right of the human race. Democracy means freedom of
expression and assemble of organization.
All that is Democracy. All that is
our Democracy, to which I call upon all citizens to dedicate themselves on this
our Independence Day. This is what I meant when I gave the Nation its slogan
for all time: Discipline, Production, Tolerance. Indiscipline, whether
individual or sectional, is a threat to democracy. Slacking on the job
jeopardizes the national income, inflates costs, and merely sets a bad example.
The medieval churchmen had a saying that to work is to pray. It is also to
strengthen our democracy by improving our economic foundations.
That democracy is but a hollow
mockery and a gigantic fraud which is based on a ruling group's domination [of]
slaves or helots or fellaheen or second class citizens or showing intolerance
to others because of considerations of race, colour, creed, national origin,
previous conditions of servitude or other irrationality.
Our National Flag belongs to all our
citizens. Our National Coat of Arms, with our National Birds inscribed therein,
is the sacred thrust of our citizens. So it is today, please, I urge you, let
it always be so. Let us always be able to say, with the Psalmist, behold, how
good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.
United at home in the common effort
to build a democratic Nation and ostracize outmoded privileges, let us present
to the outside world the united front of a Nation thinking for itself, knowing
its own mind and speaking its own point of view.
Let us take our stand in the
international family on the basic principles of international rectitude. When
our time comes to vote, let it always be a vote for freedom and against
slavery, for self-determination and against external control, for integration
and against division.
Democracy at home and abroad, the
symbol of it is our Parliament. Remember fellow citizens, we now have a
Parliament, we no longer have the colonial assemblies which did not have the
full rights of a Parliament of a sovereign country. The very name
"Parliament" testifies to our new Independent status. By the same
token, however, we at once become the object of comparison with other
Parliamentary countries, inside and outside the Commonwealth.
This is a consideration which
involves not only the Members of Parliament but also the individual citizen.
The Members of Parliament have the traditional Parliamentary privileges
guaranteed in the Constitution. The Speaker, the symbol of the power of
Parliament, has his status guaranteed in the Order of Precedence. We shall soon
have a Privileges Bill protecting and prescribing the powers of Parliament
itself. Measures are being taken to establish the responsibility of Parliament
in the field of external relations.
The Constitution recognises the
position of the Leader of the Opposition and the normal parliamentary
convention of consultation between Government and Opposition are being steadily
developed and expanded. The Constitution itself, Independence itself, represent
the agreement of the two political parties on the fundamental question of
national unity. The ordinary citizen must recognise the role of the Parliament
in our democracy and must learn to differentiate between a Member of Parliament,
whom he may like or dislike, and the respect that must be accorded to that same
Member of Parliament ex-officio.
I call on all citizens from now on to
accord the highest respect our Parliamentary system and institutions and to our
Parliament itself.
Democracy, finally, rests on a higher
power than Parliament. It rests on an informed and cultivated and alert public
opinion. The Members of Parliament are only representatives of the citizens.
They cannot represent apathy and indifference. They can play the part allotted
to them only if they represent intelligence and public spiritness.
Nothing has so demonstrated in the
past six years the capacity of the People of Trinidad and Tobago than their
remarkable interest in the public affairs. The development and expansion of
that interest is the joint responsibility of the Government, the Parliament,
the political parties and relevant civic organisations.
Those, fellow citizens, are the
thoughts which, on my first day as Prime Minister, I wish to express to you on
Independence Day. Your success in organising the Independence which you achieved
will exercise a powerful influence on your neighbours with all of whom we are
likely to have close associations in the next few years, the smallest and
nearest, as part of our Independent Unitary State, the larger and more distant
as part of the wider and integrated Caribbean community. Problems of
difficulties there will be. These are always a challenge to a superior
intelligence and to strength of character.
Whatever the challenge that faces
you, from whatever quarter, place always first that national interest and the
national cause. The strength of the Nation depends on the strength of its
citizens. Our National Anthem invokes God's blessings on our Nation, in
response to those thousands of citizens of all faiths who demanded God's
protection in our Constitution. Let us then as a Nation so conduct ourselves as
to be able always to say in those noblest and most inspiring words of St. Paul,
"By the Grace of God we as people are what we are, and His Grace in us
hath not been void.
