Stephen Vasciannie
MORE THAN 10 years have passed since I started writing this column for the leading newspaper in the erstwhile 'Outer Empire'. In that period, some of my perspectives have changed, and certainly, reactions to my views have varied strongly.
People now accuse me of either being pro-Government or of not being 'pugilistic' enough. Not so long ago, I was confronted as a pro-Seaga propagandist; and before that, when I was a member of the NDM, both a minister of Government and a former editor of this distinguished paper indicated that I should stop writing as I was too biased. I have also been publicly accused of being a CIA agent, among other things.
In different ways, The Gleaner columnists of the 1970s prompted my desire to write for this paper. Perkins, Hearne, Cargill and DaCosta, with diverse styles, but similar perspectives, reminded us that the pen was mightier than the sword - even next time. Many of the Perkins articles in particular are still of publishable quality today, and give an important picture of Jamaica in the 1970s, from a conservative standpoint.
And since today's column is largely about reminiscing, I recall that as a sixth former at K.C., I kept a red scrapbook of Perkins' Gleaner articles, not only for political content and argumentation, but as models on how to write. Jimmy Carnegie, himself a stylist of note, mentioned to me many years ago that Perkins was putting out book quality material two or three times a week. When I look back at some of those columns 30 years later, I have to agree. My scrapbook, by the way, was stolen - and it still makes me angry to think about it.
STONE UWI
Carl Stone was also influential. Professor Stone was busy writing for both academic purposes and for The Gleaner. I wondered where he found the time, for he combined his publishing with teaching, polling and from all accounts an "uncharacteristically unacademic" range of social interests. I once found myself in a queue for the photocopier at the then Institute of Social and Economic Research, standing near to Stone (or Petras as he then was). He was holding a column he had just completed: output on the way to The Gleaner, the power of the pen. I had no thoughts of asking him about the column, though, for in those days only the 'nuff' students felt at liberty to approach lecturers, just so. Socialism was different from socialising.
I cannot remember clearly whether The Gleaner had a fully structured institutional view of the UWI from the 1970s. After all, Petras was writing for them. But then the Petras factor would not have barred The Gleaner from having a dim view of Mona. Over the last decade or so, Ian Boxill, Geoff Brown, John Rapley, Robert Buddan, Peter Espeut, Deborah Hickling, Orville Taylor, the present writer, and many other denizens of UWI have been in The Gleaner's stables, but this has not barred the paper from bemoaning the limited impact of UWI in the wider society.
FRONT PAGE
The editor of The Gleaner in the 1970s, Hector Wynter, was himself once a UWI man, and this could have influenced - for better or for worse - some of his views of the latter institution. If memory serves me right, Perkins took aim at the Department of Economics (which he mistakenly denoted as the 'Faculty of Economics'), and Courtney Jackman, the then Governor of the Central Bank of Barbados, on accepting an award from Chancellor Hall, regretted that "common and garden scholarship" was emanating from that UWI department (where I was a student at the time). The Gleaner gave this front page treatment: this was to imply that every Jack man had a dim view of Mona, the cynics scoffed.
Some of this must have been unfair to UWI. Mona at the time of Jackman's statement included, among others, Professor Al Francis, who combined an outstanding, scholarly, academic career with service to various local and international institutions, Compton Bourne, now head of the Caribbean Development Bank, Colin Bullock, Jamaica's Financial Secretary, and David Wong, who has gone on to an illustrious, intellectual career in California.
These people, some heading this way and others the other way, have all been sources for my column. Naturally, though, the pool is much larger than this.
Stephen Vasciannie is a professor at the University of the West Indies and a deputy solicitor general.
