Former cabinet minister sheds some light

Did former prime minister Dr Eric Williams suffer a mental breakdown during the 1970 upheaval?

The question is raised, tentatively, in documents of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) dated August 12, 1970, in a dossier of documents just released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to journalist Matthew Guariglia of online site MuckRock.

The CIA said, “Because the prime minister’s current outlook does not appear entirely logical, some of his formerly close party associates, many of whom he has alienated since the troubles in Trinidad this past Spring, have concluded that Williams has suffered at least a partial mental breakdown.”

However the document added that this diagnosis was made at a distance by politicians not capable of making it and so should not be taken seriously.

“While it is certainly possible that Williams has suffered a breakdown as a result of the traumatic experiences of Spring 1970, it is more likely that he simply is behaving like Williams without the facade of reasonableness he is normally obliged to assume.”

The document said that a factor affecting Williams’ state of mind was his realisation that people were deeply dissatisfied with how he had managed national affairs for the past 14 years. “This is something he is almost incapable of facing up to,” said the CIA.

“He sees himself as above this kind of judgement, and his partial realisation that those making the judgement may be correct has frustrated him and made him seem illogical in a good deal of what he is trying to accomplish.”

Former cabinet minister Overand Padmore flatly denied that Williams had a mental breakdown in 1970. As proof, he cited Williams declining an offer of help by unnamed foreign forces during the 1970 upheaval. “A man who was panicking would have said ‘Come!’ but he declined.”

Padmore said the CIA itself said the people making that allegation were not medically qualified to do so, and he scoffed that at other times foreign diplomats queried Williams’ mental state, although not qualified to do so as psychiatrists.

“I spoke to Williams in the immediate aftermath of 1970. There was no indication that I was talking to a man who he had ‘lost it’. And if he had, it would have been a remarkably swift recovery. There was absolutely no indication.

“In 1970 on April 22 the State of Emergency was declared.

In the beginning of May I spoke to him about joining the Government and there was no indication of that (mental breakdown.) “Speaking to people in 1970, the point made to me was he was the most calm and unruffled of the people around him at that time.”

Of Williams’ colleagues who may have made such a statement to the Americans, Padmore said, “The behaviour of many of them disgusted him.

“I was not around him at that time but the point that was made to me is that he was always calm and self-possessed. He was the one who did not panic.”

Padmore said Williams handled 1970 very well. “When I spoke with him he was expressing some of his displeasure and dismay with some of the people around him.”

Saying he could find no justification of mental breakdown in Williams, Padmore said the remark in the CIA document seemed to have been just thrown in the mix for people to make their inferences, but was not any clinical diagnosis.

Padmore explained Williams’ guardedness.

“I worked with the man. There were times I was unhappy as a Cabinet member when things were happening and I did not know of them, and I had to say that to him on occasion. However I also understood why that was so.

I remember talking to one of our senior newsmen and he said to me, ‘Everything you had talking about confidential Cabinet and you can’t discuss it, the minute a Cabinet meeting is finished we know what is happening.’

“Dr Williams had to be careful what he said, even to the Cabinet. Now when somebody could tell me that and that reality is not unknown to Dr Williams, it tells you why he had to be careful what he said even to the Cabinet.”

Padmore said Williams knew of leaks and once told him, “If I want such-and-such out I know exactly who to talk to. It will get out.”