WILLIAMS, ERIC (EUSTACE)

born Sept. 25, 1911, Port of Spain, Trinidad died March 29, 1981, St. Anne, near Port of Spain first and longtime prime minister of independent Trinidad and Tobago (196281), who founded (1955) his party, the People's National Movement (PNM), and led his country to independence. Williams was educated at Queen's Royal College, Port of Spain, and at the University of Oxford, from which he received a B.A. in 1932 and a D.Phil. in 1938, with studies in history and political science. In 1939 he went to the United States and joined the faculty of social and political science at Howard University. While he was at Howard, Williams became associated with the Caribbean Commission that was established by the United States, Great Britain, France, and The Netherlands in an effort to coordinate the economic development of the Caribbean area. His aggressive, commanding role in the commission, however, tended to alienate the national powers, especially the United States, and in 1955 he returned to Trinidad to organize the PNM party. His party made only a fair showing during the period of the short-lived West Indies Federation (195862), but in the national elections of December 1961 for Trinidad and Tobago, the PNM won a landslide victory. Williams became prime minister of the colony and then of the new republic upon its achieving independence in August 1962. As prime minister, Williams practiced what was called empirical socialism, which stressed social services, improved education, and economic development through the cautious attraction of foreign investment capital. The policy was fruitful in making Trinidad and Tobago the wealthiest Commonwealth Caribbean nation. He was successively reelected and served as prime minister until his death. Williams was the author of a number of books, among which were The Negro in the Caribbean (1942), Capitalism and Slavery (1944), History of the People of Trinidad and Tobago (1962), British Historians and the West Indies (1964), Inward Hunger: The Education of a Prime Minister (1969), and From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean, 14921969 (1970).