“…You have to know what you are, and what you can do.
And this nobody can teach you except yourselves, by your own activities and the lessons that you draw from them…”

Ijahnya Christian

Cyril Lionel Robert James was one of the greatest minds to have come out of the Caribbean Region. My current research in preparation for Anguilla Day and the observation of the International Day of Solidarity with Haiti has reawakened my intellectual love affair with CLR and I am sharing the excerpt from the Preface of his book on Party Politics in the West Indies to express my own feelings and urgings toward sovereignty. I am also responding to the loss of what we had come to think of as a historic and neighbourly right to enter French St. Martin and the reality that our fates are still being decided in Europe. I suppose we should be grateful for our Governor’s efforts and to the authorities next door for allowing us the privilege of entering with our Anguillian passports just a little bit longer but no more can Anguillians say, “When yuh reach S’Martn, yuh reach home.” Haiti aside, CLR was writing at the dawn of the age of Independence in the Caribbean and the Preface was written on January 12th, 1961 so his language reflects the times. However, I believe that there are some lessons for Anguilla in what follows and I surely hope that we apply them to our political thinking and action especially as we reflect on that new Anguilla that we set out to build during the Anguilla Revolution.
‘…A great mass movement of any kind is not seeking a new kind of government. That is important only if the new kind of government is a means to a new way of living. The West Indian people have reached the final obstacle in the way of a change. What usually has happened throughout the centuries is that those who led the struggle at the beginning fill new positions, many opportunists join them and the two together become so afraid of the disappointed people that they make a compromise with the old rulers and join them in sending the people back home.
The way out of this is hard. There is only one way. The people must organize themselves according to the best methods of the day which they find suitable for themselves. That is what this book is about.
As with any serious political problem, there is much more to this simple programme – the people must organize themselves – than meets the eye. It is also a commonplace of history that the people never know exactly how to get what they want: they are not readers of books or students of politics. They do not know exactly what they want. They do not know who are their real friends or who are mortal enemies – enemies, that is to say, of a new way of life not only for the few but for the many. People find out these answers only by activity, they make experiences and from these they learn. In this third of the twentieth century the kind of activity needed is the mass political party. The people of underdeveloped countries cannot themselves form the government. But by “independent political activity” they find out what they can do, their privileges and their responsibilities.
We live in a tremendously disturbed world. We are a very small and insignificant part of it. But there is much that we can be and do as a national and even an international scale. What that is or can be we shall never be able even to find out, far less carry out, unless the people are politically organized. Even when they elect the government of their choice they have to remain politically alert, and make it clear that they are not to be bamboozled, trifled with or pushed around.
There is another lesson of history that must never be forgotten, one of the greatest lessons which history teaches. It is this. Know it and never forget it. Any government that is not conscious of the power of the people, is bound to be a bad government. That is to say, it will fool you, cheat you and if need be, reduce you to hewers of wood and drawers of water, and without mercy keep you in what it considers to be your place. That is the last hill which the people of the West Indies will have to climb. It is the hardest of all. When you climb it you will have arrived at a height from which you will never fall.
People of the West Indies, you do not know your own power. No one dares to tell you. You are strange, a unique combination of the greatest driving force in the world today, the underdeveloped, formerly colonial, coloured peoples; and more than any of them, by education, way of life and language, you are completely a part of Western civilization. Alone of all people in the world you began your historical existence in a highly developed modern society – the sugar plantation. All those who say or imply that you are in any way backward, and therefore cannot in a few years become a modern advanced people, are your enemies, satisfied with the positions they hold and ready to keep you where you are forever. They still bear in their souls the shackles of slavery and the demoralization of colonialism which you, the people have broken and are ready to cast aside forever. Be of good cheer. Know that at this stage of world history and your own history there can never be any progress in the West Indies unless it begins with you and grows as you grow. All that these underdeveloped countries are striving for is at your feet. You have to know what you are, and what you can do. And this nobody can teach you except yourselves, by your own activities and the lessons that you draw from them.’

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