Eric Williams

Eric Williams (1911-1981), West Indian scholar and politician. Eric Eustace Williams was born in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. He studied at Queens Royal College in Trinidad, and then won an island scholarship at the University of Oxford in England. He graduated from Oxford with first-class honors in history in 1935 and received a Ph.D. degree in 1938. His thesis, which was published in 1944 as Capitalism and Slavery, argued that Britain had abolished slavery for economic reasons rather than for philanthropic purposes.

Williams was appointed assistant professor of political science at Howard University in Washington, D.C., in 1939. Winning a Rosenwald Fellowship, he toured the Caribbean and in 1942 published The Negro in the Caribbean, in which he advocated West Indian independence. His studies and travels had reinforced his opposition to imperialism and racism, as did his work. In 1943 he began working for the Anglo-American Commission (later the Caribbean Commission) and became deputy chairman of its research council in 1945.

Williams had become convinced of the need for organized politics in Trinidad and Tobago, which had been granted universal suffrage and a partly elected legislature by Britain in 1945. In January 1956 Williams launched the People's National Movement (PNM) and began holding political meetings to educate the public in a Port-of-Spain city square, Woodford Park, which he called his “University of Woodford Square.' His one-man crusade resulted in victory for the PNM in the 1956 general election. Williams became chief minister and instituted social reforms and impressive public services. In 1959, when Trinidad and Tobago became internally self-governing, he became prime minister. Williams continued as prime minister when Trinidad and Tobago became independent in 1962.

In 1970, high unemployment, the economic dominance of foreign firms, and the rise of a black nationalism movement sparked an uprising involving part of the army. Williams quelled the revolt and embarked on a national reconstruction plan. In 1971, in an election marked by widespread voter apathy and contested only by the PNM and the weak Democratic Liberation Party, the PNM won all legislative seats. Williams remained in office as prime minister until his death in 1981. During his final years in office, Williams saw Trinidad and Tobago experience further economic unrest in 1975 and become a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations under a new constitution in September 1976. Williams maintained his interest in regional collaboration and cooperated in setting up a Caribbean development bank, a free-trade area, and a common market, as well as establishing friendly relations with Cuba. See also Trinidad and Tobago.