INDEPENDENCE
GREETINGS
PRESS RELEASE
On
behalf of the Central Executive, General Council and general
membership All Trinidad General Workers Trade Union, I wish to extend
my sincerest congratulations and best wishes to the people of
Trinidad and Tobago, as we celebrate fifty-one years of independence.
The message is exactly as last year’s because the issues and
sentiment remains the same.
Fifty-one
years of Independence have seen us, as a nation achieve much in terms
of infrastructural, political, economic, social and cultural
development. Our people have accomplished so many great achievements
in the realm of sports, science, law, education, music, social
sciences and the humanities, that Trinidad and Tobago is now a
household name in many parts of the world.
It
is however quite easy, to fall into a delusional state of celebratory
rhetoric and by so doing become taken up with the superficial
symbolic trappings of independence celebrations, while forgetting the
monumental task that was required to begin the process and continuing
today, of forging a nation out of the diversity that is ours.
We
must always reflect on the struggles of the past and the sacrifices
of our forefathers as they emerged out of the plantation fields to
which they first came and sacrificed to carve a niche not only for
themselves but also for us, in this land, that is Trinidad and
Tobago. We must never do them the injustice of forgetting the battles
fought, the tears shed and the victories won, to deliver unto us the
land that we now enjoy.
Let
us remember that ours is a nation built on the extermination of
indigenous peoples, European conquest and rivalry, economic
exploitation, cultural imperialism, a deliberate creolisation process
emerging out of slavery and indentureship and the emergence of a
diverse society, loosely based on physical and cultural differences,
co-existing to form a unique Trinidad and Tobago flavour, held
together by the shared history of the plantation experience.
Slave
trade, amelioration, emancipation, indentureship, the hosay riots,
the camboulay riots, the numerous strikes and demonstrations, the
water riots, the dock workers strike, the 1934 upheaval in sugar,
1937 riots, the changing dynamics of the 1960’s, the revolutions in
thought and acts of 1970, bloody Tuesday 1975, significance events
that created the nation we know today.
Fifty-one
years after Independence let us continue to work together to
construct a nation built on the principle of unity in diversity. Let
us continue to strive to develop the will, the determination and the
process necessary to increase the patriotism and nationalism
necessary to bind us as a people and so truly to become one nation,
one people that is Trinidad and Tobago.
I
thank you.
Yours
sincerely,
NIRVAN
MAHARAJ (ATTORNEY-AT-LAW)
PRESIDENT
GENERAL,
ALL
TRINIDAD GENERAL WORKERS TRADE UNION
