Robert Buddan, Contributor
THE UNITED Nations declared 2004, the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery, this being the 200th anniversary of the Independence of Haiti, the first free nation.
Last week, Cristobal Colon, a direct descendant of Columbus, visited Jamaica and apologised for the harsh treatment meted out to the Tainos (Arawaks) under the Spanish. Cristobal Colon suggested that British colonialism did more harm to Jamaica than the Spanish did.
The British government has yet to apologise for slavery. Even the promise of freedom for non-slaves had been denied. Although the English Bill of Rights of 1688 had declared the supremacy of Parliament, the right to free elections, freedom of speech, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, the right to bail, and the right to trial by jury, English settlers in the Caribbean claimed that these rights only belonged to Englishmen.
EARLY STRUGGLES
Jamaicans of all races have had to fight for rights of democratic citizenship over the succeeding hundreds of years although, ironically, many thought the New World would grant them more freedom and economic opportunities denied them in the Old World.
Africans, Indians, Chinese, Irish, Scots, Portuguese, and Jews were brought by enslavement, trickery, or deportation as slaves, bondservants, and indentured labourers.
Laws denied them rights of citizenship. A Jamaican law of 1711 ruled that non-whites (mulattos, indigenous Indians, Negroes) and Jews could not hold public office (such as Justice of the Peace, judge or constable), nor vote and be elected.
RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
Roman Catholics too, were barred from elections. Many Jews had fled to the New World to escape religious persecution by Catholics in Europe and Irish Catholics in turn had fled to escape persecution by Protestants in England. But even though they enjoyed more religious tolerance in Jamaica, they still faced stiff civil and political restrictions.
After the slave trade was abolished, and especially when emancipation seemed imminent, the Jamaican planters sought to win over non-whites to their side against the soon-to-be-free black majority.
In 1813, a law allowed free persons of colour to give evidence in court allowing them to play a part in the oligarchic justice system for the first time. They were also allowed to hold public office and inherit property from whites without limit. But they still could not be elected or hold military rank. That law said, 'free people of colour' have no right or claim whatever to political power, or to interfere in the administration of the Govern-ment.
As emancipation drew nearer a new law in 1829 gave Roman Catholics the right to get elected but they had to swear loyalty to the Protestant Monarchy. Non-whites (including those of mixed African decent) got the right to vote in 1830 and Jews did in 1831. Between 1833 and 1835, more civil disabilities were removed allowing free Africans to give evidence in court and serve in the militia.
In 1834, slavery was abolished but up to Emancipation in 1838, Africans lived in a state of apprenticeship to citizenship ? neither slave nor free.
FREEDOM WITHOUT POWER
At Emancipation, Jamaica had approximately 300,000 Africans, 44,000 persons of colour and 17,000 whites who were now free. They were joined by 37,000 East Indians who arrived as indentured servants between 1845 and 1917, and by 1940 there were about 12,000 Chinese.
Among the new citizens, coloureds and Jews were the first to enjoy social mobility by the Act for the Removal of All Disabilities of Persons of Free Condition. They were primarily urban, employed in trades and professions like law, teaching, and journalism.
At the Wolmer's Free School, there were 430 children of free coloureds out of a student population of 500 in 1837. Although race and religion no longer disqualified persons from voting and being elected, property qualifications still did, and this severely restricted the power of the largely landless blacks.
Land was the key to power. The planters tried to keep restrictions on black political power by making land too expensive to buy or making property qualifications too high to meet.
People became landless and disenfranchised at the same time. Small propertied blacks allied themselves with coloureds to get each other elected to local government councils and the National Assembly from 1841.
BLACK VOTERS
For example, Samuel Clarke, a carpenter, mobilised black voters to support coloured candidates for two local council seats which they won in 1851. Clarke himself was successful in 1853. Paul Bogle was allied with George William Gordon as Gordon's political organiser in St. Thomas. Gordon was himself elected to the Jamaican Assembly in 1844, 1849 and 1863.
Right after Emancipation, a new idea had begun to circulate among the colonial officials and the planter class. They wanted to restrict or even abolish the legislature to emasculate the growing power of blacks and browns.
The Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865 provided the opportunity to do so. It was a rebellion by pro-democracy blacks and sympathetic coloureds. In the end, its defeat reversed the limited democracy Jamaicans had enjoyed.
MORE INFLUENCE
The elective legislature was abolished and the Governor ruled on behalf of the Crown. From about 1870, an emerging black and brown middle class began to exercise more influence. While the poor fought on bread and butter issues, this small middle class concentrated more on winning rights voting, representational, trade union rights, and so on. By various alliances between these classes and races, a number of breakthroughs occurred.
After 1884, the government allowed some members of the legislature to be elected. By 1919, trade unions had been legalised. Some women over 25 could vote from that year. In 1928, Marcus Garvey formed the first political party. Although only 5 per cent of Jamaicans could vote in the 1930s, all adults over 21 won this right in 1944.
From 1944, a democratic revolution took place. The first general elections was held in 1944. In 1953, ministerial government was established. Self-government was achieved in 1959 and Independence in 1962.
Between 1944 and 1962, the struggles for greater democratic citizenship had provided Jamaica with the most advanced political and constitutional progress in the Anglo-Caribbean, and one of the most advanced in the Common-wealth.
In 1944, the PNP and JLP developed the first comprehensive political programmes for Jamaica's development. From the 1950s, a period of legislative activism transformed the society.
New laws for agriculture and industry; mining and tourism; education, housing and health; roads, water and electricity, social and legal rights; reforms of government and constitution, marked years of struggle. After 100 years of post-Emancipation economic stagnation, the Jamaican economy was one of the best performers in the world for 25 years after adult suffrage.
The twenty-first century marks a new phase of struggle to include civil society and the rights of marginalized people into the fold of democratic citizenship.
UNFINISHED SOLUTIONS
That struggle requires finding unfinished solutions to squatting, land and housing; the death penalty, police and justice reforms; self-governing control over justice through the CCJ; a more humane and Jamaicanised constitution; better educational performance and social mobility; improved local and central governance; and debates over the kind of leadership we need, and the vision that is best for the country.
Emancipation Day is something that we must celebrate but the emancipation process is something which we must continually advance. To do so we must bear in mind that our rights of democratic citizenship were not won by apathy and cynicism, nor were they given to us by foreign powers.
STRUGGLE FOR POWER
We enter a period of leadership succession which involves no less than finding the right people to advance this emancipatory process. This involves recognition that this process is not just one that involves a struggle for power between parties but a struggle against all historical forms of discrimination so that all citizens, of all races and classes, can be brought into the mainstream of democratic citizenship.
Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. E-mail: Robert. Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm
Get the facts right
Mr. Buddan:
I WOULD think that a lecturer at the University in the Department of Government would know the importance of getting the facts correct.
In Sunday Gleaner you write when speaking of Mr. Samuda "In neither case did he suffer 'serious sanctions'. He was not expelled from Parliament or from either party (having resigned in both cases),....." First an MP is elected by the people of a constituency to be their representative in Parliament and therefore only they have the right to effect his/her removal by way of a vote. In addition, Parliament does not recognise political parties so the expulsion of a Member of Parliament from a political party does not strictly speaking affect his/her status as an MP. Most importantly however, Mr. Samuda never resigned from the Jamaica Labour Party. He was expelled in 1990.
So check your facts Mr. Buddan and be careful not to mislead the young in your anxiety to make your point.
- Justin S.
