Hector, Tim

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Hector, Tim

November 24, 1942
November 12, 2002

Leonard Timoshenko "Tim" Hector was an Antiguan activist and social critic well known throughout the Caribbean for his radical politics and his contributions to Caribbean cricket. He credited his mother, Mabel Hector, and a local educator, Mildred Richards, as being the primary contributors to his personal and intellectual growth. He also identified several important male role models and influences, a list that included many local personalities, his grandfather, and regional contemporaries Walter Rodney, George Lamming, and Cheddi Jagan. Reflecting on his radicalism and socialism, Hector once stated, "I did not become a socialist, but was bred one from age 6, or thereabout" (Hector, 2000–2001, p. 113). Hector's politics were a regional variation on socialism, communism, and Marxism. As a student of C. L. R. James, he advocated greater popular participation and organization for the masses and was increasingly concerned that Caribbean politicians seek political and social alternatives more appropriate for their societies and not continue to mimic the systems of Europe and the United States. While his home environment was crucial in forming his social and intellectual base, it was the social and political ideologies of Trinidadian scholar and political activist C. L. R. James (1901–1989) that influenced Hector's politics.

Born in St. Johns Antigua to a single mother, Hector distinguished himself early as a "bright boy." While his formal colonial education taught him the basics it was the informal education at his home—a place where many local thinkers and educators came to discuss both local and world affairs, where he insisted he was truly educated. As a child he was allowed to listen and even to participate in debates with adults. Hector, a commonwealth scholar, distinguished himself as an extraordinary teacher until 1973, when he was fired from his job as a teacher at a public school, largely because of his political activism against the labour party. He continued to teach after 1973 at a private high school and expanded his political activism and his journalism. Hector had joined other leftists in 1972 to form a radical pan-African group, which they transformed by 1973 into a political party—the Antigua-Caribbean Liberation Movement (ACLM). The ACLM was committed to African liberation and to forming and maintaining linkages across the African diaspora. In 1972 the first African Liberation Day was organized and by 1973 the group was networking with similar organizations throughout the Americas and Africa to orchestrate simultaneous marches throughout the world. The ACLM also established relations with socialist Cuba and Libya, creating a great deal of concern in the Richard Nixon administration in the United States.

The ACLM's biweekly publication, The Outlet, played a crucial role in Antiguan politics for some thirty years. Hector's column, Fan the Flames, became a regular feature in which he wrote on a range of political and social topics. Several of Hector's articles triggered investigations by the British government, and in the mid-1970s Hector disclosed a scandal involving the Canadian company Space Research Corporation (SRC), which was engaged in the shipment of arms to the apartheid government of South Africa via Antigua.

As a political party from 1972 to 1993 the ACLM never sought to win elections on the island, instead existing for over thirty years as an ideological opposition to the governing party. This was Hector's response to the two-party syndrome and other problems of party politics in the West Indies. This political system had emerged in the Caribbean region, where two political parties dominated the political landscape, fighting each other for control of the government using whatever means necessary, including character assassination and unjust arrest. Until its demise in 1993, the ACLM achieved its aim of constituting a permanent and viable opposition to Antiguan politics. Despite numerous arrests and law suits brought against The Outlet, it survived until 2002, almost ten years after the ACLM. Hector's articles, with titles that included "Independence: Yes! The Old Mess: No!" and "Cricket Is More than Meets the Eye" reflected the range of his interest in Caribbean societies. In addition to his educational and political contributions, Hector made a contribution to the development of Caribbean culture, in particular to Caribbean cricket and to the survival of steel band, a musical form he described as "the solitary new musical instrument created in the entire 20th century" (Hector, 2000).

See also James, C. L. R.; Journalism; Politics