LEARIE CONSTANTINE 1901 - 1971
SPEECH GIVEN BY PROFESSOR BRIDGET BRERETON ON THE OCCASION OF THE LAUNCH OF THE LEARIE CONSTANTINE COLLECTION AT THE NALIS HERITAGE LIBRARY
ON OCTOBER 17, 2001
"What do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?" We might adapt the question famously asked by CLR James, Constantine's life-long friend, thus: "What do they know of Constantine, who only know about his cricket?" Learie Constantine was a very great cricketer and it was cricket that made him famous, but he did much more than play the game. In Britain he was a high-profile figure in race relations issues and for years, the best-known spokesman for black people there, in Trinidad and Tobago he was the first chairman of the PNM and an important Minister in the PNM's first government.
Learie Constantine was born in 1901 in Diego Martin and grew up in Diego Martin, Maraval and Cascade, where his father, the almost equally great cricketer Lebrun Constantine, was overseer on cocoa estates. He was the grandson and great grandson of slaves. Though his family was cash poor he recalled in later years a happy rural childhood - those areas were very rural in the early 1900s - with a strong family, more than enough to eat, and endless backyard cricket. He left school at age 15 and never went to a secondary school - which makes his later achievement in being called to the Bar a tribute to his determination and powerful self-discipline.
It was of course cricket which absorbed much of his attention after he left school, though he always had a "day job", first as a clerk in a solicitor's office in Port of Spain, then working with Trinidad Leaseholds (later Texaco) down South. It was cricket which took him to Nelson, Lancashire, in 1929 as a professional player and he lived there for the next 20 years with his wife, Norma, and daughter, Gloria Valere. Of course the family encountered tremendous hostility and mistrust which was only slowly overcome, and despite his fame and popularity on the cricket field, Constantine knew very well the discrimination and prejudice faced by black people in the Mother Country.
He became involved in the League of Coloured Peoples, a body active in the 1930s - 1940s fighting discrimination in Britain, and later became its President. During world War II he worked as a Welfare Officer looking after the welfare of West Indians brought to Britain to work in munitions factories and shipyards in Merseyside (Liverpool). His own ability and personality, his prestige as a famous sportsman, his intimate knowledge of northern England, his blackness and West Indianness - all made him highly successful in this position. The scheme to use West Indians in wartime factories succeeded largely because of him, and his staff.
Constantine was famous in Britain, he was honoured by the King (MBE 1946) - but that didn't protect him or his family from discrimination or slights on the street. In the 1940s he sued a famous London hotel for denying his family accommodation (it said US servicemen there would object!). This was a high-profile case, which he won. He felt he had an obligation to fight these causes on behalf of less privileged black people. This is why he wrote his book Colour Bar (1954), an insider's view of race relations in Britain from the black perspective. Constantine wrote this book for black people in Britain who could never enjoy the fame or acceptance he had as a cricketer - though not as an anonymous black man walking the streets.
It's a tribute to Constantine's powers of hard work, determination and self discipline that - as a man who never went to secondary School at home in Trinidad - he educated himself at home in Nelson, then began legal studies - a struggle to pass all the law examinations which took him eight years. Despite the frustrations and the occasional failures, he never gave up, and was called to the Bar in 1954, aged 53.
This is when Constantine's life changed. He returned home to Trinidad to work as assistant legal adviser to Trinidad Leasehold Ltd. (soon to become Texaco). This was in 1955 - a dynamic political moment. Eric Williams persuaded him to become Chairman of his brand new PNM and to be the candidate for Tunapuna in the 1956 elections. His agreement gave the new party considerable standing because of his fame, and his moderate views helped to attract supporters who might otherwise have seen the PNM as too radical. He won Tunapuna - narrowly, be less than 200 votes, from the PDP - and became Minister of Communications, Works and Public Utilities in the first PNM government (1956-61).
He was generally an effective minister, in a high-profile ministry. He was responsible for major road works, for dealing with sea transport between Trinidad and Tobago (controversial even then), for struggling with the issues surrounding the railway (whether, or when, to close it down) and the management of bus transport. But Constantine was not a natural politician. He disliked the bitterness of party politics and resented Opposition attacks in the Legislative Council. Intensely loyal to Williams, he was not very popular, it seems, in the Party - perhaps he was too famous, too 'British' even. He opted to leave politics in 1961 and didn't contest the elections of that year. As he said himself, he was no politician and he hated the rough and tumble of Trinidad politics; but he served party and government well in the crucial first five years.
Williams appointed him first High Commissioner to Britain in 1961, even before Independence. It was an obvious choice but not an altogether happy experience for him. He was so famous in Britain that everything he did or said received heavy media attention, and perhaps he was no more a natural diplomat than he was a politician. In 1963 he intervened in an incident where West Indians were denied jobs as bus conductors in Bristol. His public utterances on the issue were deemed by some to be undiplomatic. It seems clear that it wasn't the British as much as the Trinidadian authorities who felt so. Williams objected, partly because the West Indians in Bristol were Jamaicans and so not Constantine's responsibility. Williams felt Constantine had exceeded his brief and proceeded to do what he did so well: put Constantine in the doghouse. He did nothing to discourage Constantine from resigning, and the Williams-Constantine breach wasn't healed in the latter's lifetime.
After Constantine left office as High Commissioner, early in 1964, Constantine embarked on legal practice in London - courageous for a man of 63 - and got involved in a wide array of public causes, usually blazing a trail for blacks in Britain. He was a member of the Race Relations Board from its inception and made important contributions to it. He was appointed the first black Rector of St. Andrews University (where his daughter went) in 1967, the first black Governor of the BBC in 1968. (He continued to do free-lance broadcasting for the BBC, which he had started in the 1930s). And in 1969 he became the first peer of African descent, as Baron Constantine of Nelson and Maraval; his introduction to the House of Lords was a great occasion. Sadly, he was already in poor health in 1969, and he spoke only once in the Lords - an impassioned plea for Britain not to neglect West Indian interests if she joined the European Common Market.
Constantine died in July 1971; he was given a State Funeral here, and awarded the Trinity Cross posthumously.
Learie Constantine was - besides a great cricketer - a passionate hater of injustice and discrimination, a strong advocate of human tolerance and understanding, a man with a deep social conscience. He always tried to use his fame and success in sports as a vehicle to help others, especially those of his race who would never enjoy his high profile. He was a great Trinidadian and a great human being whose life deserves to be better known to our nation and especially its younger people.
Bridget Brereton (Professor)
October 2001