Message by the Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams on the eighth anniversary of Trinidad and Tobago Independence. When we achieved our Independence on August 31, 1962, the tide
of decolonisation was at its height. France had been decisively defeated
in Vietnam; the UAR had taken over the Suez Canal; Algeria
had won its war of liberation; Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania had
achieved their Independence. The Independence movement had also
spread to the Caribbean, and Jamaica’s National Day precedes our
own by a few days.
