Birth of a Nation

At 5:20 p.m. one day last week, a delegate burst from a closed hall in Jamaica's University College of the West Indies, where the British West Indies federation conference was meeting, and cried: "Trinidad wins!" With the choice of a capital, a new nation was born, the Western Hemisphere's first since the creation of Panama 53 years ago.

The former British colonies--11 main islands with 8,000 sq. mi. of land and 3,000,000 people sprawled across 1,500 miles of the Caribbean Sea--had in earlier weeks picked a name for the nation: The West Indies. Now, with the touchy trading over the capital accomplished, only the formalities remain: the Queen's appointment of the Governor General this summer; the election of the first legislature early in 1958, capped by the selection of the first Prime Minister.

Even the choice of the capital by an 11-5 vote represented a declaration of independence. A royal commission from London had plumped for Barbados, but prosperous Trinidad had the most to offer its smaller, poorer neighbors, and copped the prize. Port-of-Spain's No. 1 Calypso Singer King Sparrow chanted:

Barbadians are sorry, but Sparrow's glad

The West Indian capital is in Trinidad!

They tried their best to wreck this thing,

Now they've got to listen to the Calypso King.

Shaped like a thousand-mile boot lying on its side, with Jamaica at the top, the Leeward Islands at the heel. Trinidad at the toe, The West Indies unites:

P: Jamaica, which has more than half the land area and population of the new nation--4,411 sq. mi., 1,500,000 people. The island is pulling itself up by a pair of bootstraps labeled tourism and bauxite. But it still has more than 100,000 unemployed. Says Socialist Chief Minister Norman Washington Manley, 63, the half-Irish, half-Negro dean of West Indian statesmen: Jamaica "is one of the problem areas of the world."

P: The eight tiny Leeward Islands, 1,000 miles to the east, of which Antigua (108 sq. mi.) is the largest. Site of Alexander Hamilton's birthplace (Nevis, 1757) and Britain's first toehold in the Spanish Main (St. Kitt's, 1623), the Leewards are historically rich, economically poor.

P: The four Windward Islands (Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Grenada), which are also small, beautiful and backward.

P: Barbados, 166 sq. mi. of sugar cane jampacked with 228,000 people, a population of 1,475 to the square mile. Led by stolid, dour Prime Minister Grantley Adams, 58, a onetime Socialist militant who softened in office. Barbados is the loyal "little Britain" of the islands.

P: Trinidad, the second largest island (1,864 sq. mi.) and the first in industry. Lying ten miles off Venezuela's coast, Trinidad with its big oilfields is relatively rich. The islands that voted for Trinidad as the capital last week hope that Trinidad in return will lower its immigration barriers, give their people a chance to enter and share its wealth and bustle. Dry, schoolteacherish Dr. Eric Eustace Williams, 45, Trinidad's Chief Minister and political boss, did nothing to discourage this belief. A onetime teacher at Washington's Howard University, Williams turned from pedantry to politics in 1955, formed a new party, within eight months skyrocketed to power. Williams, is part of the Oxford-educated trio of Manley, Adams & Williams, one of whom seems certain to be The West Indies first Prime Minister. Lately, Williams has begun to overshadow the other two.

Tie to London. The new constitution does not please the trio, for it is studded with checks designed to stop The West Indies short of complete self-government. Britain will still control foreign relations and defense. The Governor General will be empowered to veto finance laws,. The Queen can make certain laws by an order in council. The 18-man Senate, appointed by the Governor General, will be able to hold up legislation in the manner of the British House of Lords. But the 45-member House of Assembly will be freely elected, and Jamaica's Manley successfully insisted that the constitution be accepted without major change. He argued that a fight over the constitution would only have meant delays in completing nationhood, and that the islands can soon rewrite the constitution anyway.

Moreover, the leading politicians do not want complete independence now; they prefer to preserve the umbilical cord to London. Britain has spent $50 million on the islands in the past ten years, pledges similar sums for the next ten. Despite the Socialist tinge in island governments, there is great respect for Western democratic concepts and British law, coupled with scorn for Soviet Communism. At most, the islands want Commonwealth status within the empire and expect to get it some time in the next decade.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.