Here was Adolf Hitler, who refused to shake the hand of Jesse Owens, a Black athlete from the USA who won the 100 meters race, out- distancing the superior white Germans in the 1936 Olympic Games which were held in Germany; the irony of the whole affair was that, the same Jesse Owens could not enter any white restaurant in the USA and be served; in the British Colonies, black people were treated like dogs, yet Hitler was vehemently and hypocritically criticized by England and the USA for not shaking the hand of a Black man. You see, dear reader Jesse Owens had just shattered the myth held by Hitler himself that white people were a superior race, right in front of his very own eyes. Nobody had to convey the message to him.
Lord Moyne’s Report had to be withheld for some time for fear that Adolf Hitler could use it for propaganda purposes to show up the hypocrisy, the double standards, the fork-tongued behaviour of both the USA and the British, for here they were criticizing him for refusing to shake a Black athlete’s hand, but look at how the same critics who had Black people fighting in the war against him were treating the same Black people less than animals in their colonies and in their country? The 1935 uprising was a great historical event, for it ushered in the right to form and to join Trade Unions and Political Parties, better working conditions which changed from working 6 am-6pm to working from 7&8 am-4 or 5pm Monday to Friday and until 12noon on Saturdays. That uprising also introduced Adult Suffrage 17 years later in 1952. Prior to this date, only persons who worked for a certain salary or who owned property could vote and be elected to Parliament.
The Black people who were in the majority were voiceless and right less (having no rights). The RIGHT TO VOTE was agitated for by those of the LABOUR MOVEMENT against relentless opposition, fierce resistance and ferocious agitation by the oligarchs of the day who believed that it should be a privilege granted only to them and their kith and kin.Now, dear reader, if we have no history of ourselves, how can we feel great about ourselves, eh? It is therefore incumbent upon each and every one of us to insist that our children be taught about the heroic struggles of our National Heroes who sacrificed their freedom and their very lives fighting our colonial masters who in their myopic belief, saw us as a grade of people who were created to be hewers of wood and drawers of water for them.
Is there anything in our history books praising the contributions that these Heroes have made towards our upliftment as a people? Our children must be educated to the historical fact that it was the white planters in whose hands rested the political and economical control, who shot down our ancestors in their 1935 Buckley’s struggle for better working conditions. Our children should also be taught that, even before the introduction of Adult Suffrage (the right to vote by the majority Black people) the St. Kitts- Nevis-Anguilla White Planters Democratic Party, a pro- employers political party was formed and that the Democrat Weekly Newspaper was its Mouthpiece.
The history books must also show that the very first Elections under Adult Suffrage in 1956, the Black people went out in their numbers, defying the propaganda spewed out by the White Planters Party that they were an illiterate group who were totally incapable of making the “X” on the ballot paper and swept the Labour Party into power; not one seat went to the White Planters Democratic Party although they chartered air-planes to fly overhead to rain down propaganda leaflets on us. The people took up the leaflets and turned them into toilet paper when they used the cane fields as toilets; ordinarily, it was the barracada or the castor oil plant leaves which they used for this purpose.
Our history books must tell the truth about the emergence of the Peoples Action Movement (PAM) an anti- worker’s, pro- employer’s party, which emerged out of the bowels of the white planter’s political party in 1965, with a darker shade of actors, but with the same intent of dividing and ruling the working class people in order to halt their social upliftment by keeping them in their place; this contempt for us was ably demonstrated in the first set of fish pot wire houses they built for the ordinary people. The transition from the white planter’s Democratic, anti- workers, pro-employers Party, is evidenced in the Democratic Party’s Mouthpiece, automatically becoming the Mouthpiece of the PEOPLES ACTION MOVEMENT without the tiniest of change to its presentation. Our history must record that PAM attacked with venom, disgust and annoyance, the introduction of Social Security and maternity leave with pay for women, and fourteen working days holiday with pay for both men and women, solely to protect their financiers from contributing to the Social Security Fund and the restful enjoyment of their workers who ventured on holidays.
Our Educational System must tell the truth, that when Free Secondary Education was introduced by the Labour Party in 1966, the oligarchs took their children out of the school and sent them abroad, angrily, vehemently, vexatiously, venomously, cruelly, delusory, disgustingly, deliberately, rudely, protesting the entry of working class people’s children into a school which was formerly the right and the privilege of their children to attend! Dear reader, are you finding it hard to believe that these events occurred in St. Kitts in the West Indies and not in the Southern States of the USA or Apartheid South Africa? All the adjectives I have used, is to hammer home the venom, the disdain, the loathing that those people held in their hearts for us yesterday and still hold today!