By: Earle Clarke
“Facts are stubborn things and whatever might be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” Quote by the Portable John Adams, the uncompromising defender of liberty, esteemed diplomat and successor to George Washington the First President of the USA.
Dear reader, in living up to the motto of the esteemed Newspaper in which I write every week, I hereby present some historical facts in comparing the Labour Party, the Democrat Party now called PAM -A darker skinned version of their predecessor, the PLP and the unity mirage, which now governs our beloved Federation and which is pulling down and trampling the good reputation of our beloved country. As I have repeated on numerous occasions, “HISTORY is like unto a recurring decimal or a revolving door.” Some of the contents of this article might have been read before, but I arose at 2.30 am armed with the idea that I should make a comparison of all the political parties in St. Kitts, so that future scholars in history would not have to tumble the pages of many newspapers in order to discover the truth. They would discover the true historical background in this Article. One of the reasons why I decided to chronicle all these historical facts is that the Black working class people of St. Kitts and the world do not have a clue as to who they are and where they came from. This lack of knowledge, has rendered them easy prey who are easily fooled by scoundrels dressed up in political garbs mounting the political rostrum with all kind of vain and inglorious political promises, and they, being uneducated in the history of the struggles waged to bring them to where they are today, and they, not fully equipped to analyze and parse these promises, readily run and give the reins of Government to these con-men, only to bawl later on.
Just imagine, that from 1838 when we were actually freed from slavery, (1838-2017) over 179 years ago, the Black working class of the land, still do not know who is working in their favour and who is not. That, when they have the bone of progress in their hands from which they can bite and chew every day, they must always hold on tightly to that bone which gives them sustenance, instead of grabbing ferociously at the plastic bone of hardship and despair which is offered to them by the glib talking, faked con men who appear on the political scene with empty promises, which they totally and impossibly cannot fulfill. When the brothers and the sisters were so-called freed from slavery, what were they free to do? Where did they have to live? What did they have to eat? Where could they go to work? Who was still in control of their lives? Wasn’t it the same Massa who had them enslaved? Didn’t they have to turn around and return to him to work under the same slave-like conditions with him determining how much they will be paid, how many hours per day they would work, how many days in the week they would work and where they would sleep, when they go to sleep and when they arise? Isn’t a fact that slavery still in existed in all its forms? Did anything really change except the removal of the chains from the wrists and ankles? Wasn’t Massa still monarch of all he surveyed, his rights there was none to dispute, from the mountains right down to the sea, he was still lord of the fowl and the brute?
Massa was the Law of the land. Massa the enslaver was still in control of everything. We were still his property to do what he likes with. We had no say; we had no clout; we were in disarray. There was no one for us to turn to for justice. There was none to fight our cause. If a leader rose up from among the slaves, he was immediately assassinated for Massa will never tolerate dissent! Massa, in order to keep us in bondage, came invented a scheme to divide us. He placed his offspring who were of a lighter skin colour to work in his house, he allowed them to wear his discarded clothes, he allowed them to eat the left overs from his plate. Unless they were to be disciplined, they never faced the scorching sun working in the fields or attending the animals; they enjoyed the coolness of Massa’s mansion situated on the hill far removed from the pens where the field workers slept. This enabled them to be always in the company of Massa and his family. This situation also enabled them to be loyal to Massa and not the Black field laboring mother who painfully forced them out into the world. If any conflict broke out on the estate or sugar plantation, they would side with Massa for they were not black. Massa knew that he was vastly outnumbered on the plantations and that help from the other plantations though certain, the time factor could cause his whole family to be totally annihilated before such help could arrive. Massa had to divide and rule us. Division caused weakness in the ranks of the workers, it caused division in the ranks of the workers and it fomented distrust among the brothers and sisters.
Dear reader, one of the things we really have to look at as historians in analyzing the situation of Black people, is that we were a deculturized people. There is no doubt about this statement. The indentured servants– the Portuguese, the Indians, the Irish, were brought in to work for a period. They knew that when that time was up, they would be freed to either stay in the land or be repatriated to their homeland. During their stint, they practiced their culture – they spoke their language; they were never considered to be the property of Massa although he ruled with an iron fist. But we the Blacks who were once Kings and Queens and highly educated people were brought as slaves and were considered property. It was as if the white Europeans hated the Black race whose civilization was far more advanced than theirs, for what explanation can be given for Massa to free the Irish, the Portuguese, the Indians after their stint of service was up, but kept us as his property? Donald Trump, the 45th President and current President of the USA, is displaying the same contempt for us, in his attempt to erase the historical fact that a Black President, the most educated ever, occupied the White House for two terms It would appear that the white Massas were jealous of the advances made by the Black race and so wreaked vengeance upon us by enslaving and deculturizing us! The Pharaohs of Egypt who constructed the pyramids were Black people and it is a marvel even today as to how they were able to move those huge stones and erect them without modern day machinery.
Egypt is in Mother Africa, but, in order to bamboozle us with our history, they divided up Mother Africa into South, Central, North, (which is the Middle East) and East Africa. Mother Africa was the cradle of civilization. In their bible, they demonized and defamed the Pharaohs (who were Black) by stating that they enslaved God’s children – the Israelite who were depicted as white folks. Every race of people on Planet Earth has their culture, their method of worship so why was ours beaten out of us leaving us an empty and an unidentifiable vessel of people who do not know who they are, just aping Massa all the time? Massa’s religion says that there shall be no other God but his God who was depicted as white and off limit to Blacks who were debarred from reading his Bible and entering the doorways of his church. Any slave caught reading or being taught to read the mouthpiece of his religion was boiled in the copper in which they boiled the sugar cane juice, along with the person who was teaching him to read it. You see dear reader, every estate or sugar plantation, manufactured its own sugar called muscovado sugar which was shipped away in barrels. The Basseterre Sugar Factory began construction in 1910 and became operational in 1912. Massa’s religion locked us out of his church; when he decided to allow us inside, we were forced to sit behind. We could not eat the body and drink the blood of the crucified Christ for this was off limits to us Black people.
There are some churches in the southern states of the USA and South Africa which still bar Black brothers and sisters from entering to worship! The question has to be posed and truthfully answered, “Based upon its history, was the Christian Religion ever intended to be a Black People’s Religion? When will the Christian Churches atone for the sins they committed on Black People? Was that religion founded on LOVE and a God of JUSTICE and FAIR PLAY, who created man in His own Image, even in today’s world, 524 (1493-2017) years after Christopher Columbus landed it on our shores? Mind you, I believe in a Supreme Being. I believe that every race has its Supreme Being with whom it can easily identify. If the Christian Religion is based on “For God so loved the world,” why should there be any discrimination in the House of Worship? Why should Christian man enslave his Christian Brother and Sister? Why should the colour of a skin matter instead of the worth of the man??
This emptiness, this cultural void, this not knowing our potential, this lack of identity, this not knowing who we really are, has enabled Massa to pit us one against the other for we have no identity. Our behavior like crabs in a barrel is due to this lack, this void, this desert of cultural awareness, this cultural deprivation. We are imitations of our Massas. In this day and age, 179 years after we were so-called emancipated, we are yet to discover our identity as a Black people by coming together and working in our best interest. The Indians have done it, the Chinese are doing it, but, for us, none is prepared to bell the cat. On reflecting historically, my statement is not totally correct, for, in 1935 the African Blood of free men and women boiled up in the Black workers who decided to make the ultimate sacrifice by telling their oppressors that enough was enough; that they are human beings and demanded that they be treated as such. But, how many of us know about this part of our history? How many of us can really, truly and totally identify with this history? How many of us look up to these Freedom Fighters of the 1935 Buckley’s Revolution as our HEROES? How come this history is not taught in our schools?
Through their Heroic Sacrifice, we today are able to enjoy many of the freedoms they could not enjoy. The Leaders of the Revolution were uprooted from their families and sent to Prison in Antigua which was part of the Leeward Islands, to serve harsh sentences; the powers that be feared that their presence on the island would spark protests. Some were murdered here; some were sent to prison here. One man had his testicles- his manhood shot out. The white man wants to refer to it as a rebellion, but this could not be just a rebellion when so many privileges formerly not enjoyable, could now be enjoyed from the heroic sacrifice they made? They were not fighting for themselves to receive higher wages just for the then; they were fighting for the future of their children. Their children must not endure what they endured under Massa’s whip. Their children must be able to attend Kindergarten, Primary School, High School, Colleges and Universities to pursue the profession of their choosing: Their children must never work from sunrise to sunset like them-they must work 8 hour shifts; they must enjoy a 40 hour working week and not the 72 hour working week they toiled. They must enjoy 14 working days, (not 2 weeks) holiday with full pay which they never enjoyed. They must enjoy Maternity Leave with pay in a hospital, attended by Doctors and Nurses and not the animal Doctor (the vet) pulling the child out of their bellies and returning immediately into the fields to continue weeding the field, bleeding and groaning and wreaking with pain.
They wanted their children to have multiple choices of where to work and not the compulsory sugar industry where they worked under slave-like conditions!
TO BE CONTINUED!