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10/24/2009 By Earle Clarke In order to follow me through with this article, some facet of our history has to be repeated. It is an historical fact, that in the English Caribbean, where the plantocracy existed, whether it was the cultivation of sugar cane or citrus and bananas, those who owned the land, those who owned the businesses (and there were times when the same people owned both), controlled everything. They owned the churches, they denied us entry into them, they owned the police who could arrest us for not coming out to work because of illness, or, if we changed working places without informing our original employers. When we were freed as slaves, Massa robbed us of our strength, our toil, our sweat, in order for him to be rich. If we stole any of his earthly possessions, we could be tried and sentenced to jail. But Massa, who robbed us of our labour and paid us small wages, was above the Law, for he was the Law. Massa’s children could go to England and study Law to become justices of the Court. We could not reach our hats so high, for our fate lay in the hands of Massa who ensured that our education was minimal. Only geared to the point where we could understand Massa, when he said come and we came; go and we went. Work the fields; cut the sugar cane, clean the cattle pens. These were our lot and we had to endure them. Now and then we were able to learn a little wheelwright in order to make the wheels for the sugar cane carts and a little black-smiting in order to make the hubs for the wheels of the sugar cane carts. That is the extent to which Massa, the all powerful, the all how great thou art, would allow us to reach educationally. His sons went abroad to study the Law, so that they could return to sentence us to prison if we ever stepped out of line. One or two of our black brothers whose parents worked for Massa and could not identify with us, went abroad to study Law, but returned with white wives in order to be catapulted into the social stratosphere of the land. If they were climbing the social ladder, one could easily deduce that they were unmoved, untouched, and totally blind to the conditions under which their black brothers and sisters existed. They spoke with exaggeration to govern the greatest impression that they attended University. Massa and their sons were strengthened in the suppression of the black people, because these black educated lawyers wanted to join their clubs and knock glasses with them. The Law, the Courts, the Police remained in the hands of the Massas. These series of events rolled in until 1966, when the greatest revolution in the history of the Caribbean and all those colonies which England ruled, took place here in St. Kitts, when the doors of the Secondary High Schools were thrown open by the Labour Government of the day. Dear Reader, let me back-track a bit. In the 1950’s, there was a series of earthquakes between St. Kitts and Nevis. It was learned that an Englishman by the name of Mr. Barber bought the Bath House, including the stream in Nevis, where those who suffered aches and pains in both islands could travel, soak themselves in the steam and were relieved of their pains. Mr. Barber stopped the people from using the steam bath was escaping. It is said that the blocking of these vents caused the earthquakes that the two islands were experiencing. Mr. Bradshaw, along with a host of Labour supporters from St. Kitts, journeyed to Nevis, marched into the Bath House and demanded that Mr. Barber reopen the bath house. The crowd pulled up the plugs and tore open the doors to the Bath House. Communication was made to the Administrator, himself a white Englishman, who ordered the police on the island to remove Mr. Bradshaw from the premises. Not only was the Administrator incensed, the white planters were also incensed and lent moral support to Mr. Barber. Here was a facility which was used by the natives of St. Kitts from time immemorial and this racist figure wanted to deny them the right to use their own natural resource. Mr. Bradshaw was sued by Mr. Barber. Mr. Bradshaw lost the case, but Nevisians were able to use the Bathhouse spring up and until this day. Adult suffrage did not visit the islands at that time. It came two (2) years later. In doing good for the people of Nevis and St. Kitts Mr. Bradshaw paid the price in the Hall of Justice. Who was the judge? A white Englishman. The ordinary people pitched in with their shillings and pence and assisted Mr. Bradshaw in paying the fines. The earthquakes stopped with the pulling up of the plugs. The Labour Movement won the battle for the people to exercise their right to enjoy their natural resources, but lost the battle in the Courts. Mr. Bradshaw won another battle in Nevis when this white expatriate ran his boundaries into the sea, denying the residents of the area to pull up their boats and to bathe in the sea. Mr. Bradshaw journeyed to Nevis again and forced him to pull up his boundaries stakes. In 1967, in the attempted overthrow of the Bradshaw Government by the People’s Action Movement and mercenaries from Anguilla and the United States of America, certain PAM officials were brought to justice. Anguillans who took part, confessed to their participation. The perpetrators were released because the same big businesses which financed the attempted coup were the same business places which provided the jurors to listen to the evidence and to bring in a verdict. Could any verdict of guilty be brought in against the perpetrators if the financiers of the coup were the same men who were jurors? In those days, to be a juror was a privilege. Out of that miscarriage of justice, emerged the right for every citizen of St. Kitts, as long as their name is on the Voters List, to be a juror. Labour lost the battle in Court, but the people gained the right to be jurors and nobody has heard about any miscarriage of justice. In 1972 the owners of the Sugar Lands, having failed in the financing of the attempted coup in 1967, and, having further failed in their attempt to set up an apartheid South African system in St. Kitts of the coup was successful, decided to impose economic warfare on the Bradshaw Government and the people of St. Kitts. They refused to plant the sugar cane, citing economic problems. They had to suffer economic problems from the purchasing of guns from England, the financing of the boat trip from Anguilla, payment to the American Mercenaries, the upkeep of the Anguillans who were captured, the payments to their agents to infiltrate the ranks of the captured Anguillans who were the government’s main witnesses, in order for them to change their tunes, the financing of the defence team who were brought in from all parts of the world to defend their errand boys. All these expenses must make the owners of the land to be drained financially. So annoyed were they at the failure of the coup that they refused, as said earlier, to plant sugar cane crop for 1972. This action was believed to achieve what the attempted coup failed to achieve. (To be continued). |
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