First Election

The British colonies in the Caribbean Sea--13 islands and numberless neighboring islets that together form the palmiest tropical haven short of Bali Ha'i--last week ran off their first election as a federation headed for nationhood and independence. The voters picked 45 members for a House of Representatives; Her Majesty's Governor General, Lord Hailes, will now name the 19-member Senate. Princess Margaret will inaugurate the legislature April 22 in the new capital, Trinidad's Port of Spain--and The West Indies will be in business.

In relaxing its ties with London, the new nation (see color pages) seems certain to become increasingly neighborly with the U.S., trading more and more goods and culture. Soon, cheap jet-airliner travel should turn the islands into a favorite winter and spring playground for the U.S.

Calypso & Poverty. The 1,600-mile bow of islands joined by the federation would all fit tidily inside Massachusetts. Their total population is about 3,000,000. They are studded with depressing poverty and unemployment, but they are richly individualistic:

P: Jamaica (pop. 1,600,000), the largest, exports bauxite, sugar, rum. bananas and cigars, makes shoes and textiles, imports rich tourists. Kingston is where Harry Belafonte had to "leave a little girl" in the famed calypso song. P: Trinidad (pop. 622,500). the richest (per-capita yearly income: $434), bustles with its prosperous oil industry. It stages the hemisphere's most tireless pre-Lenten carnival dance, in which the performer leans over backwards and wriggles under a bar nine inches off the floor. Racially, it is a polyglot of Negro. East Indian, Portuguese and Chinese. P: Barbados grows seven-eighths of a ton of sugar a year for each of its 230,500 inhabitants (called Bajans). who plant every inch of its white-coral soil.

P: Windward Islands (pop. 321,600) produce bay rum on St. Lucia, nutmeg on Grenada (pronounced Gre-nay-da), arrowroot for babies' cookies on St. Vincent, and cocoa on Dominica (pronounced Dom-i-nee-ka,). St. Lucia houses a U.S. missile-tracking station for Cape Canaveral's downrange.

P: Leeward Islands (pop. 131,600) grow sugar and sea-island cotton, are dominated by Antigua (pronounced An-tee-ga), tourist capital of the smaller islands.

Britain's Idea. Federation, though supported by most of the islands' politicians, was pushed through by London's Colonial Office. Since the sugar-prosperous 18th century, when the West Indies were Britain's prize possessions, colonialism has gone out of style, and the islands have turned into economic liabilities, many of them now on a steady dole. But because tiny islands could not hope to become individual countries, independence automatically implied federation. The constitution was eleven years in the making. As finally approved last year, it still left the new legislature with two major tasks.

First, it must enact a customs union of the islands. Tariffs are now a jumble. Antigua collects duties on goods in transshipment to St. Kitts. which in turn collects another duty upon arrival (smuggling is commonplace). Jamaica's industries are protectively walled off. will presumably suffer from competition from other islands. The new law will have to eliminate these barriers, create a common market, set common tariffs, provide for negotiating commercial treaties with other nations.

Then the legislature will have to strike down migration bars. Even high federation officials must put up with far more red tape than U.S. tourists in traveling from island to island. The hordes of jobless in Jamaica and smaller islands cannot go to prosperous Trinidad to work. At the end of a five-year preparation period, the representatives will establish interisland-travel freedom.

Britain's Heritage. Last week's election pitted two loose coalitions of parties that have grown up individually on the islands during the last two decades, as they have taken on greater measures of local self-government. The West Indies Federal Labor Party combined the ruling Socialist parties of Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados and some of the lesser islands; the less favored Democratic Labor Party united the rightist opposition movements on the two bigger islands plus a scattering of other backers. In a double upset, the Socialists ran second in Jamaica and Trinidad. But a nearly unanimous Socialist vote from the Windwards and Leewards gave the Federal Labor Party an overall majority, with 25 seats. Barring shifts of allegiance by F.L.P. members, the legislature seems certain to elect the F.L.P.'s Sir Grantley Adams, 59, an Oxford-educated lawyer, Premier of Barbados, as first Prime Minister of The West Indies.

Planters and merchants sipping pink gin on hotel verandas tend to grouse about federation: "It's all very well for the Colonial Office to wash its hands of these islands, but they're not leaving any protection for people of substance." The voters, too, proved unenthusiastic; only about a third cast ballots last week. But Britain is leaving the invaluable tradition of democracy and justice, and it will also subsidize the federation for a while. The next steps--inevitable because the Colonial Office wills it--will be slow withdrawals of Lord Hailes's power, followed eventually by dominion status.

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