The Editor, Sir:

Cricket has an important lesson for people of the Caribbean. For two decades, throughout the 1970s and the 1980s, the West Indies cricket team was widely regarded as the world champions. They were the team which every other cricketing team in the world aspired to beat.

For the Caribbean region, there is a valid lesson to be learnt from our game of cricket, and it stems from the common experience shared by people of the region described internationally as being of Afro-Caribbean descent.

If it is our national history which forges who we are today, then it is of immense importance to the region that on August 1, 1834, after two centuries of bondage, some half million people of African descent in the Caribbean were released from the burden of slavery. For sure, there followed a four-year period of Apprenticeship, but it is on the August 1 Emancipation Day that the concept of 'slave' ended throughout the English-speaking Caribbean.

Special prominence

In history, such monumental events which impact on a people are given special prominence and reverently remembered, to the extent that they will bind a nation and race of people across international boundaries. This is so, regardless of the country in which an individual may incidentally be located at the time. Take, for example, Thanksgiving Day for the Americans, St. Patrick's Day for the Irish, and Passover for Jewish communities. These special days are celebrated by the people who identify with their significance. It is in this context that we should urge the politicians of our Caribbean region to proclaim an international 'Caribbean Day'.

A country's Independence Day is a nationalistic matter. In point, each CARICOM country may have its own Independence Day. However, people of the English-speaking Caribbean are united by something far more enduring than politics, more significant than the geographical location of their island, and more fundamental than national pride. Rather, the overwhelming majority of the constituents of the regional Caribbean community are united by the phenomenal human impact that Emancipation Day had on our foreparents 'when freedom came'.

Geographical location of the Caribbean islands did not matter on that eventful day. Every slave in the English-speaking Caribbean was restored with their human dignity in synchronisation. This is why as a region, the people of the Caribbean have cause to join in celebration. We should come together not to recall the end of slavery, but to rejoice and celebrate our relationship as one Caribbean family born of a common history.

Caribbean unity

A 'Caribbean Day' is an event for our political leaders in the Caribbean to realise. The reality is that the average man on the street, in or outside the Caribbean, is more likely to have a view on the current performance of the West Indies cricket team than an informed comment on matters discussed at the most recent CARICOM summit.

This is not to belie the important work CARICOM does for the region, but should serve to emphasise the lesson that Caribbean unity can be better driven by the desire of the people of the region rather than the ambition of a few politicians. One noted former politician described it as the need to build CARICOM from the bottom up, instead of from the top down.

I am, etc.,

HAMILTON DALEY

hamiltondaley@yahoo.com

London

Via Go-Jamaica