Richard Hart - A brown man for black people

The problem with living for almost a century is that you run the risk of dying in obscurity. Young people have no idea who you are. And most of your contemporaries are dead - friend and foe alike. The ones who are alive probably don't even know themselves, much more you. There's hardly anyone left to sing your praises or damn you to hell.

Richard Hart died two Saturdays ago at 96. He was a founding member of the People's National Party (PNP). I wondered if the PNP Youth Organisation (PNPYO) was aware of the significance of Hart's life. I visited their Facebook page. There's not a mention of Hart's death! An enthusiastic post on December 12 announced: "Today is another special day, it is the birthday of our Prime Minster and we wish her a prosperous birthday and pray she sees many more. People Power!!!!"

I don't blame the PNPYO for not knowing that Richard Hart's 'deathday' is a special day in Jamaican history. It's not their fault. It's their elders who must take complete responsibility for failing to highlight all the really important dates. And what does "people power" actually mean? I visited the Jamaica Labour Party's G2K Facebook page to see if Richard Hart's death was acknowledged there. It was not.

I don't expect G2K to know, all by themselves, that Hart was arrested in 1940 for organising a demonstration to demand the release of Alexander Bustamante who had been imprisoned for so-called subversive activities - fighting against colonialism. That was more than 70 years ago. A whole lifetime! Somebody would have had to tell G2K the truth: Politics in Jamaica hasn't always been so partisan. On occasion, principle takes precedence over party affiliation.

TEARING DOWN THE WHITE WALL

Hart was a political activist, solicitor, historian - just a decent man - who dedicated his life to the fight for social justice. He was a Marxist who understood the deep-rooted inequalities in Jamaican society and across the region. And he tried his best to do something about it. Incidentally, many young people don't know a thing about Karl Marx and a host of other revolutionaries: Frantz Fanon, C.L.R. James, Walter Rodney, Angela Davis, St William Grant, Maurice Bishop, and on and on.

Soon, there'll be a whole generation of Jamaicans who won't know who Louise Bennett, Bob Marley, Rex Nettleford and Olive Lewin are. A few years ago on TVJ's Schools' Challenge Quiz show, students were asked to name a prophet from August Town. Their answer was 'Sizzla'. They should have known Alexander Bedward's story. Born in 1859, more than a century before Sizzla, Bedward was a Revival preacher and healer who attracted 30,000 followers at the height of his movement.

Bedward's mission was to lead his people out of exile into the promised land, Africa. Bedward was Aaron, the high priest. Marcus Garvey was the prophet. Though Bedward ended up in the lunatic asylum, he was perfectly lucid about racial politics in Jamaica. He's alleged to have said, "There is a white wall and a black wall. And the white wall has been closing around the black wall: but now the black wall has become bigger than the white."

Like Bedward, Hart knew there were walls of oppression restricting the progress of black people. As a brown Jamaican from the privileged class, he could have easily chosen to prop up the white wall. Instead, he threw in his lot with black people, digging down social barriers. Hart's Blacks in Bondage: Slaves Who Abolished Slavery (1980) and Slaves Who Abolished Slavery: Blacks In Rebellion (1985) provide hard evidence that it wasn't abolitionists in England who initiated the collapse of plantation slavery. It was the long-sustained revolt of enslaved Africans that made the system crash.

HART-LESS PNP

In 1954, Hart was expelled from the PNP because of his unrepentant Marxism. He formed the People's Freedom Movement which contested the general elections in 1955. The party failed to win even one seat and seven years later it disbanded. Hart then went to Guyana in 1963 to continue his activist work, this time as the editor of a radical newspaper. After two years, he retreated to England where he worked as a solicitor for 17 years.

Richard Hart never abandoned the struggle for social change. In 1974, he became a founding member of Caribbean Labour Solidarity. The name of the orgnisation's journal, 'The Cutlass', suggests both a tool of labour and a weapon of war. In 1982, Hart moved to Grenada to support the People's Revolutionary Government as a legal consultant. When the dream became a nightmare in 1983, he returned to the UK and resumed his practice as a solicitor.

Hart was much more fortunate than many near-centenarians. He remained in public life long after his formal retirement in 1988. In 2001, he was readmitted into the PNP, 47 years after his expulsion. I wonder what the party has learnt about 'people power' over all those years.

Carolyn Cooper is a professor of literary and cultural studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona. Visit her bilingual blog at http://carolynjoycooper.wordpress.com. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and karokupa@gmail.com.