by RICKEY SINGH

ANY CARIBBEAN NATIONAL or someone else with little more than a passing interest in CARICOM, will find a treasure of information and analyses in the latest collection of books released by Ian Randle Publishers as a joint project of the CARICOM Secretariat and the University of the West Indies.

What could well inspire reading also of the collection of seven publications – all of which should now be available across the Caribbean – is a book released separately by Ian Randle on The Political History Of CARICOM by Anthony Payne.

First published in 1980, it has been a significantly revised and has updated developments since then, spanning the past 27 years in CARICOM's political and economic history.

The writer, a professor of politics at the University of Sheffield, has written extensively on Caribbean politics and international relations.

Payne offers a narrative on the background to the formation of CARICOM, its struggles for survival, progress and failures that makes easy and compelling reading.

There are some rather striking observations by him in his concluding chapter on The Paradox Of Regional Integration On The Caribbean in his assessment of CARICOM's political history.

For example, his contention that even up to early 2007 (at the time of his writing), with Caribbean regional integration "still a tender plant", it would be "foolish to discount entirely the possibility that the structure that has been laboriously created might at some point collapse . . . . Nothing in the politics of the contemporary Commonwealth Caribbean in an era of globalisation can be judged to be that firm . . .".

Integration

Payne's narrative is a welcome addition to the enlightening collection of seven books released last year which focused on various aspects of the region's economic integration movement that is now in its 35th year of existence.

These include: CARICOM Single Market And Economy – Genesis And Prognosis, jointly edited by Professor Kenneth Hall (former University of the West Indies (UWI) principal, Mona Campus and currently Governor-General of Jamaica) and Myrtle Chuck-A-Sang (project Director for the UWI/CARICOM publications).

Based on informed essays and discourses by some of the region's key players and commentators in governance politics; integration processes, academia, social and economic developments; international trade, labour and law, this publication, as explained, was prepared for four primary groups – laypersons; students; academicians and politicians.

As one of two major publicatons commissioned as part of activities to mark the 30th anniversary of CARICOM, the concluding chapter on Beyond Thirty – Charting New Directions, the book concludes with the observation that:

"The lives of the CARICOM people continue to hover in the shadow of a gap between aspiration and fulfilment; between the potential for betterment and the reality of betterment . . . .

"The ominous look created by pressures from the domestic and international environment serve to urgently remind that a people's welfare is an outcome of the interaction with the local and global environment and of the quality and functioning of the institutions to shape this interaction . . . ."