- "Finally, the entire West Indian tradition is anti-intellectual. People's lives are bounded by the narrow materialistic considerations of the price of produce or the cost of living or the laziness of workers or the growth of crime and delinquency or gambling or chasing after women (or men as the case may be) or just plain gluttony and imbibing. Add to that the movies and the radio and in more modern days the equally pernicious television, and fit in somewhere in the schedule sleeping and working or making pretence of working, and the normal individual's day is complete. Cricket and football, a sports meeting, the races – and the normal year is complete. A Head of Government cannot be limited to such narrow and materialistic considerations. So I read deliberately, in silent protest against the bastardisation of so-called West Indian intellectualism."
-Eric E. Williams, December 3, 1965 (wrote in column)
- "Our independence was part of the world movement against colonialism – the colonial peoples disinclined to tolerate it any longer, the imperialists unable to carry on."
-Eric E. Williams, Inward Hunger
- "I summarize some of the particular aspects of the economy bequeathed to our independent nation by the antecedent colonialism. Our economy was essentially in foreign hands, the capital coming from outside, the profits being repatriated outside. This was essentially true of the oil and sugar industries and the banks. The normal steps taken to encourage industrial development and attract foreign capital for investment, in the interests of import substitution, tended to strengthen foreign control of the economy; whilst the incentives offered to those industries, especially income tax remission and duty-free imports of machinery and raw materials, tended to reduce the government's share.
The economy was essentially undiversified, with oil dominating the exports and government revenues, and export agriculture, principally sugar, dominating the agricultural scene. We remained traditionally dependent upon imports, particularly food. Here we have on the one hand the traditional aversion to agriculture because of its association in the minds of the citizens with the forced labour of slavery and indenture; and on the other hand the large expenditures which are necessarily associated with any properly conceived programme of land reform – access roads, housing, the utilities, credit.
We inherited also inadequate social services in the form of poor housing and of a deficient education system – this is another result of centuries of slavery and indenture."
-Eric E Williams
- "Our independent society inherited the sectionalism and individualism bred by colonialism. The essence of the colonial system was internal disunity – evidenced by the attempts to segregate African tribes, the separation of African freedmen from Indian immigrants, the contrast between countryside and town, the confusion of racial origins among the laboring section of the population, the deliberate imposition of colour distinctions and gradations, the conflict metropolitan flags in the area, the emphasis on the differences between island and island."
-Eric E. Williams
- "The first and most important issue is the foreign control of the economy. There are the precedents before us of the developments or anticipated developments in Canada, Mexico, Chile and Zambia. Our banks, insurance companies, hire purchase arrangements, advertising, external telecommunications and mass media are all in foreign hands, together with a large portion of our lands, especially the lands devoted to sugar cultivation. We have to think in terms of some form of control of this arrangement, by restricting the sale of lands to foreigners, by opposing exclusive beach rights (and casinos) in tourist development, by control of work permits to expatriates, by the requirement that foreign companies must re-invest a portion of their profits in local enterprise, by establishing a commercial bank of our own and a National Petroleum Company, by assuming some control over radio and television, by encouraging private companies to go public and issue shares to the Trinidad and Tobago community, and by government partnership in industry and tourism where the national community is not yet prepared or ready to participate."
Eric E. Williams
