He may best be remembered as the man who coined the term 'Fete Over - Back to Work' urging a self-indulgent Trinidad and Tobago oil boom population to buckle down to reality.

Nor will his battle cry 'Not A Damn Seat For Them!' be forgotten as the rallying call to the PNM in the post-Williams period of election challengers.

George Michael Chambers, who died early yesterday at age 69, may not have been a man who followed complacently in the footsteps of his predecessor, but he came to be known as one who set his own style and a person fiercely loyal to his PNM party, even in the face of a humiliating 33-3 defeat in 1986 which was to be his undoing in political life.

Born in Port-of-Spain, Chambers never hid the fact that his education, which began at Nelson Street Boys RC School, Burke's College and Osmond High School, also included a GCE correspondence course from Wolsey Hall.

His grandmother Catherine - with whom he stayed at 12 Jackson Place - and who was of Martiniquan descent, died in her '90s.

Chambers' father, George, married Ruby Noel, of the Simonette clan from Icacos where George often vacationed. Ruby died two weeks after he became PM. He was the first of three boys and two girls.

Prior to entering politics he worked with the firm of Hamel Smith and Company and the now defunct Dominion Oil Company. He wed Juliana Jacobs, with whom he said he had never had a quarrel, in 1956. They produced a daughter, Andrea, and set up house at St Augustine where they lived up to recently.

Also in 1956, Chambers joined the PNM and was first elected to Parliament as St Ann's East MP. He was to continue representing the area through the elections of 1971, 1976 and 1981, winning the biggest margin of votes there.

In 1981, he topped his own record, leaving his ONR rival trailing in the dust, some 6,400 votes behind. Until he was trounced in 1986 by NAR's Lincoln Myers in the 33-3 NAR 'One Love' victory over the PNM.

Once PNM's assistant general secretary, his first Government post was as Parliamentary Secretary in the Finance Ministry in 1966. He held many portfolios as Minister of Finance, Public Utilities, Housing, National Security, Education, Panning, Industry/Commerce and Agriculture.

In the days following the death of former Prime Minister Eric Williams, Chambers, by then one of three PNM deputy leaders, was summoned to President's House on March 30, along with the other two PNM deputies, Kamal Mohammed and Errol Mahabir.

Reports indicate he was not told why the meeting was being held, but he was later informed that he had been chosen to succeed Williams.

It was a decision that caused not a few double takes. Little was known about the new PM other than his ministerial postings and the fact that he was a voracious reader, enjoyed sea-bathing and was something of an authority on opera.

If he appeared lime-light-shy, he put it aside to appeal in his first address to the nation to assist him in achieving Williams' goals. Forty-two days later he was elected leader of the PNM.

Apart from the party faithful, his inheritance from Williams was to be one of mixed fortunes - a healthy Treasury of oil revenue, but a somewhat self-indulgent oil boom population, disgruntled public servants and protest-happy workers.

At PNM's first convention after his appointment he was to demonstrate clearly that despite his low-profile unassuming stance, he meant business.

His first act: Halting the controversial $240 million Caroni Racing Complex and the Malabar Housing Project, reshuffling several Ministries and declaring the Priority Bus Route for use by hired vehicles and taxis.

He also declared: "What is right, must be kept right and what is wrong, must be set right…" And a month before the 1981 election he vowed to deal with corruption: "…When I say that I mean wherever the axe will fall the man is going to get chopped…"

Chambers in his first months of office also advised against competent and capable people remaining on the sidelines.

From that first occasion, when he departed from Williams' style even in term of dress, by donning a shirt jac suit, he appeared determined to carve out his own image, rather than emulate the so-called Father of the Nation.

Lacking the charisma of the diminutive, but domineering Williams, Chambers developed his own style on basic appeal and a self-assured air which in no way resembled the arrogance and sarcasm which Williams was renown for a t times.

A mere seven months after becoming PM, Chambers faced his first major challenge, leading the PNM Balisier Brigade into general elections against an alliance of the ONR and other forces with the battle cry: "They too wicked - not a damn seat for them!"

The ONR charge, led by former PNMites Karl Hudson Phillips and Ferdie Ferreira, had poked fun at Chamber's silent stance, labeling him "dumb".

But the results indicated that the population was apparently prepared to give "Georgie" a chance rather than heed the ONR's call to 'come home.'

The PNM won 26 seats (the most ever), including Caroni East and Princes Town, and made inroads into Basdeo Panday's Couva North seat and Tabaquite.

Developing his own style, he created a slight stir in appointing so-called outsiders Anthony Jacelon, Wendell Mottley, John Eckstein and Neville Connell to Cabinet, a gamble that paid off.

At the PNM's 1982 convention, the year PNM's membership broke records for increasing numbers up to 220,000, he broke tradition by appointing the PNM's first female deputy leader (Muriel Green).

He also admitted the Exchequer could no longer give away money and Government couldn't continue paying people for doing nothing.

In his term Chambers would also warn about the Caroni deficit, and that TT was at a crossroads with options that would brook neither argument nor postponement.

In 1986 Chamber would also remark that he was certain the PNM would remain in power until 2000.

The Grenada invasion saw Chambers taking flack for TT's non-intervention stance, a position that he said Government was determined not to kneel or bend on.

He fielded verbal bouncers about the issue at the Caricom Summit that year but retaliated with a few of his own, warning that Caricom was in danger of being shipwrecked.

In 1985 as oil fortunes declined, Chambers embarked on a Far East tour of China and India, though hit by criticism that Government's legislation was throttling local business activity.

A self-confessed loner he once said he had lost his privacy as a result of being PM and that being the butt of jokes didn't bother him, Chamber nevertheless showed another side when he was said reportedly incensed by a report published in a US magazine (early in his term) and upon which he had declined comment.

Like others Chambers did have his grouses with the media. He once complained early in the term that a report on a Caroni tour made it seem as if he had a hostile reception.

Another time, though stressing he would never tamper with the constitutionally enshrined principle of press freedom (…never) he complained about an alleged erroneous radio report, noting that the station had not obtained its license yet.

And yet again in Mayaro he remarked that if residents accepted what they read in the newspaper without verifying it first, unlike him, "they would have a serious problem."

It came to a head in during the 1986 election campaign when he refused to speak at a PNM Arima meeting unless a TTT crew which arrived at 6.30 p.m., left the scene. Express reporter Ria Taitt, was also pelted with seeds, ice cubes and fruit by PNMites and accused of being "a NAR agent". PNM Ministers then accused the media and Guardian of siding with the Opposition.

Weeks later the PNM and Chambers was out of office - his seat lost to NAR's Myers and the Government to the NAR's landslide victory. Soon after he resigned as PNM leader, urging the party to examine itself.

Though out of Government he remained in the news, when months later he was named in the Tesoro scandal in a Wall Street journal report "Finance Minister s prefer Blondes".

It was alleged that this was the instruction given to Peter Detweiller of EF Hutton and Co. It was alleged that Tesero Corp chairman Robert West instructed his investment banker to hire a prostitute, preferably blonde, for TT's Finance Minister "who was raising a tax matter that threatened to cut into profits."

Chambers retired from public life after the 1986 election, following a prayerful send-off by PM women and kept a low profile since. In 1994 it was rumoured that he was assisting then PM Patrick Manning but this was not confirmed.

Trinidad and Tobago's second Prime Minister, George Michael Chambers, had the unenviable and, perhaps, impossible task of attempting to fill the shoes of Dr Eric Eustace Williams, "Father of the Nation", who died suddenly in office on March 29, 1981.

Within 12 hours and in the height of the bereavement over Williams, Chambers, then the least known of the three deputy political leaders of the PNM, was named by the party's chairman, Francis Prevatt as the man best able to "hold on" until the party selected a political leader at the next convention.

The former law clerk, a graduate of burke College and Osmond High School, maintained a quiet dignity while many tried to pull him down because he didn't have Williams's QRC/Oxford-type education.

But in a sense, his weakness was also his strength. Chambers, who was seen as the "least of the apostles", was not regarded as a threat to anyone and was therefore able to hold both country and political party together. And he gave the PNM its largest political mandate in history in the general election of November 1981.

His no-nonsense approach - which saw him declaring in his first speech following his unanimous acclamation as Political Leader of the PNM in May 1981, "What is right in this country must be kept right and what is wrong must be pt right" - won wide appeal.

In that same address he also announced that he was halting the controversial $240 million Caroni Racing Complex project, saying that the government and party had to be "sensitive" to public opinion.

It helped tremendously that he was not vindictive and did not seek to go after anyone. In fact, he was never blinded by party loyalty in his search for talent and brought into his Cabinet persons from outside of the PNM party, including former opposition supporters like John Eckstein and Wendell Mottley.

But Chambers was a victim of unfavourable circumstances, which were beyond his control. Oil prices, which rose during Williams's tenure and which led to the growth of the economy, went into a free fall during Chambers's time. Chambers had a difficult 'row to hoe' as he tried to steer the economy, at US $9 a barrel, from a state of collapse.

The general consensus is that he managed this process well, but the ordinary man did not think so because the adjustment measures put to stem the collapse hit people where it hurt most - in their pockets.

The Demas Report and the Bobb Committee warned that the level of spending was unsustainable and recommended adjustment measures.

These measures were not palatable to the population which by then was being exposed to all kinds of revelations of corruption involving former ministers, Johnny O'Halloran and Francis Prevatt. The tide of unpopularity that developed punished the Chambers' administration severely at the polls in 1986.

One of the highlights of his term was his principled stand against the US-led invasion of Grenada in October 1983, which lost him friends in the Caribbean and north America, Chambers protesting the fact that the United States did not choose to consult Trinidad and Tobago, "a black speck of dust".

And his supporters argue that his contribution to national development spanned other areas. They point out that he accepted the recommendation of the then National Security Minister, John Donaldson, to establish a Commission of Enquiry under Justice Garvin Scott into the drug situation. He never made the report public, though his successor in government, the NAR, did.

By then, Chambers had dropped out of public life.
 
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Famous "first words" from the late George Chambers:

• "Fete over back to work".

• "Not a damn seat for them!"

• "You are in control of your money while it is still in your pocket".

• "What is right must be kept right and what is wrong must be put right".

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