The Empowering Impulse: The Nationalist Tradition of Barbados

The Empowering Impulse

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-The

empowering Impu l s The Nationalist Tradition of Barbados

Ed/ted by Glenford D. Howe and Don D. Marshall

C^fvoe Pi&w BARBADOS • JAMAICA • TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO

Canoe Press, University of the West Indies 1A Aqueduct Flats Mono Kingston 7 Jamaica © 2001 by Glenford D. Howe and Don D. Marshall All rights reserved. Published 2001

05 04 03 02 01

5 4 3 2 1

CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA The empowering impulse : the nationalist tradition of Barbados / edited by Glenford D. Howe and Don D. Marshall p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN: 976-8125-74-8 1. Barbados - Politics and government. 2. Nationalism - Barbados History. I. Howe, Glenford D. II. Marshall, Don D. F2041.N372001

972.98

Cover and book design by Robert Harris Set in Stone Informal 10/12 x 24 Printed in Jamaica by Stephenson's Litho Press

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments / vii Introduction / ix Glenford D. Howe and Don D. Marshall Abbreviations / xii 1

The Slave-Drivers' War: Bussa and the 1816 Barbados Slave Rebellion / 1 Hilary McD. Beckles

2

Forging a Barbadian Identity: Lessons from the 1816 'Bussa' Slave Rebellion / 34 Pedro Welch

3

Samuel lackman Prescod / 56 George A. V. Belle

4

De(Re) Constructing Identities: World War I and the Growth of Barbadian/West Indian Nationalism / 103 Glenford D. Howe

5

The Struggle for Political Democracy: Charles Duncan O'Neal and the Democratic League / 133 Keith Hunte

6

The 1937 Disturbances and Barbadian Nationalism / 149 David V.C Browne

vi

Contents

7

Grantley Herbert Adams, Asquithian Liberalism and Socialism: Which Way Forward for Barbados, from the 1920s to the 1940s? / 165 Anthony De V. Phillips

0

Sir Grantley Adams as Seen by Others: Oral Histories of the Private Man / 186 Karl Watson

9

Pan-Africanism in Barbados / 196 Rodney Worrell

10 Radicalism and Errol Barrow in the Political Tradition of Barbados / 221 Hilary McD. Beckles 11 Popular/Folk/Creative Arts and the Nation / 232 Curwen Best 12

Fashioning an Identity: The Development of Bajan as a 'Nation' Language / 256 Korah Belgrave

1 3 Gathering Forces: Barbados and the Viability of the National Option / 269 Don D. Marshall 14 Roots: A Genealogy of the 'Barbadian Personality' / 301 RichardLW. Clarke Afterword / 350 Kerrie D. Symmonds Contributors / 353

Preface and Acknowledgments

This book has attempted to capture some of the many strands and facets of the development of Barbadian nationalism. It does not by any means purport to be an exhaustive study of this complex and shifting subject matter. Nevertheless, we hope this book will make a significant contribution to the historiography of Barbados and help inform the many discourses on Barbadian nationalism that, though intensifying over the past decade, need desperately to be imbued with more empirical research and conceptual analyses. In this regard, we hope that the book will make more data on the Barbadian nationalist enterprise more widely and easily available to the general public, both at home and abroad. The book is also intended to highlight how recent global changes have been impacting on and challenging the various constructions and the development of Barbadian national identity and culture. Finally, we urge that other historians, social scientists and social commentators see this collection of essays as a beginning or stimulant for more research on the various individuals, topics and issues addressed by the contributors to the collection. Indeed, case studies are urgently needed on such topics as the life history of the national heroes of Barbados. In this context we would like to express our sincerest thanks to Carolyn Marshall for challenging us to produce this book and providing much help in proofreading the various papers in this collection. Other members of our families, including Victoria Marshall, also provided much support and encouragement in making this project a reality. Over the three years it took to assemble this collection of essays, other articles were unsuccessfully solicited from other writers on such topics as Clement Payne and his vii

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Preface and Acknowledgments

legacy, cricket and nationalism, Barbadian whites and their role in the nationalist project, among others; perhaps they may yet appear in a revised version of this book. We must also express our gratitude to the Central Bank of Barbados which was readily supportive of this collection of essays and, as such, provided substantial financing to make the book a reality. Thanks also to the Research and Publication Fund Committee of the University of the West Indies for helping to finance this publication. Finally, and most importantly, we thank God for continuing to bless us in our endeavours.

Introduction

G L E N F O R D D. HOWE and DON D. M A R S H A L L

Barbadians, it would seem, are experiencing a cultural reawakening of nationhood. This reawakening can be traced back to the revisionist historical debates in the late 1980s and early 1990s sponsored by the Department of History of the University of the West Indies (UWI) at Cave Hill, Barbados. The intellectual and educational ferment generated by these very debates constitute a stream of consciousness currently being tapped to enliven a sense of national pride. Witness the enactment of Emancipation Day in 1996, and the invocation of national heroes in 1998. The debates on the choice of national heroes, the relocation of the Lord Nelson statue and the proposed changeover of the country to a republic beckon the need for an investigation into the historical, aesthetic, cultural and political-economic processes that made Barbados. They also point to the need for critical reflection on the structures of feeling, of producing, of communicating and remembering nationalism. Nationalism, in one sense, is a concept laced with ideological elements quite difficult to disentangle and to name; in another, it is but a mere hermeneutic employed to name processes of cultural mutation and restless (dis) continuity. This volume, read in its entirety, represents an attempt to sort out how Barbadian 'subjects' are and were formed. Grasping the relevant phenomena both processually and in history, the authors seek to answer how guiding ideas, attitudes and modes of action were shaped by class rule and hegemony (state policy, law and public institutions, child training), as well as by class resistance. Throughout, notions of freedom, patriotism and identity are brought into sharp relief. ix

x

Introduction

We should be aware that there is no fully formed nationalism anywhere. Political geographers often preface discussions on nationalism by highlighting how the accumulation of capital has long been and remains a profoundly geographical and spatial affair. This is attested, they argue, by the various forms of state, and patterns of world order over the many centuries. Put in other words it is through the production of a fixed space that entrepreneurial pursuits are possible and a multiplicity of social domains can emerge beyond the level of family and household. Channelling this differentiated population into a landscape of social and economic relations has historically occurred through violence, social conditioning and programmes of nationhood. Nations grew over time through intensified flows of capital and labour; through the unification of currencies and measures; through urbanization and migration processes; through the expansion of formal education, the hegemonic spread of standard languages; through the establishment of universal codes of law; through the diffusion of new norms of comportment and etiquette relevant to expanding 'civil society'; as well as through the elaboration and proliferation of key ideas that celebrate or scapegoat new collectivities. Today, a nation states have become partners in wider alliances and participants in transnational networks of exchange, many of these subgroups and regions have re-emerged with claims on their own behalf, testing the limits of integration into nations. In the Caribbean, national identity, national and nation-state processes historically emerged out of a response to territorial, military, economic, political and cultural forms of domination. Differences in the nature of the sociocultural and class segments would render this process uneven and cause it to be shot through with conflicts. In Barbados, these conflicts manifested themselves sometimes in dramatic ways -witness the Bussa Revolt of 1816, as discussed by Hilary Beckles and Pedro Welch, the Confederation Riots of the 1870s, and the disturbances of 1937 given adequate address by David Browne - but more generally in artistic, literary and vernacular expression. In tracing the lineaments of Barbadian nationalism, one discerns a single theme of freedom, an empowering impulse, running through popular conceptions of nationhood, sometimes sitting uneasily alongside elite perceptions of the national interest. Freedom in this context differs from the Enlightenment project that equates freedom with supreme rationality as a way of managing

Introduction

xi

oneself and the world. Arising out of the lived experience of plantation slavery and society, freedom serves as the counterpoint to domination and demands equality. As the various chapters in this book would attest, the historical struggle for freedom articulates four paradigms of cultural criticism global or outer-national in nature. These paradigms are as follows: the notion of personhood in opposition to the chattel slavery experience, now organically linked to the concept of equality; the reclamation of the historical processes that define the African contribution to modernity and planetary civilization; the enshrinement of social justice as a basic operating principle of governance; and anti-imperialism, one extended to the promotion of a world order free from subordination and exploitation. Of course, these observations are not meant to underestimate the complexities that arise at historical moments when the lure of ethnic particularism and nationalism constituted a danger. The danger greeted the black working majority in the conspiracy of plantocratic rule after emancipation, as the essay by Belle intimates; global, coalitional politics, as the essay by Rodney Worrell on pan-Africanism attests and the paper by Glenford Howe affirms; and minority groups and identities within popular artistic conceptions of the nation as Curwen Best and Richard Clark in their separate contributions discuss. The sense in which global restructuring may adversely affect social relations is captured in Don Marshall's discussion of the need for an appropriate development response to free trade, one that moves beyond the valorization of merchant capital specializations and the promotion of services sans industry. Indeed, the development strategy presently constituted is seemingly governed by a sense of Barbadian exceptionalism. The reader is likely to find this book both useful in its supply of facts and analysis. The essays are generally jargon-free, scholarly and are written with a wide audience in mind. Theoretical speculation, however, flourishes as each contributor was self-consciously aware of a wider urgent obligation to re-evaluate the significance of the modern nation state as a political, economic and cultural unit.

Abbreviations

ACP ANC BIDC BLP BWIR CAIC CARICOM CBC CPN DIP EPZ EU FSC GATT GDP HDI IBC IFI ILP IMF IT ITA LRC NAFTA NDP NIC NIFCA OECS

African, Caribbean and Pacific countries African National Congress Barbados Investment and Development Corporation Barbados Labour Party British West Indies Regiment Caribbean Association of Industry and Commerce Caribbean Community Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation Cross-national production network Democratic Labour Party Export processing zone European Union Foreign sales corporation General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Gross domestic product Human development index International business company International financial institution Independent Labour Party International Monetary Fund Information technology Information Technology Agreement Labour Representation Committee North American Free Trade Agreement National Democratic Party Newly industrialized country National Independence Festival of the Creative Arts Organization of Eastern Caribbean States xii

Abbreviations

PAMOB PPM RAMC SALC SLP SRC SWAPO TNC UNDP UNIA UWI VAT VOB WMA WTO YMCA YORUBA

Pan-African Movement of Barbados People's Progressive Movement Royal Army Medical Corps Southern African Liberation Committee Socialist Labour Party Space Research Corporation South West African People's Organization Transnational corporation United Nations Development Program Universal Negro Improvement Association Universty of the West Indies Value added tax Voice of Barbados Workingmen's Association World Trade Organization Young Men's Christian Association Youth of Rural and Urban of Barbados

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1

The Slave-Drivers' War Bussa and the 1816 Barbados Slave Rebellion *

H I L A R Y McD.

BECKLES

Introduction On Easter Sunday, 14 April 1816, 189 years after its colonization by the English, Barbados - the first West Indian island to engage in large-scale sugar production based upon the enslavement of thousands of imported Africans - experienced its only slave rebellion. There had been aborted insurrectionary attempts in the earlier years, such as the small-scale and localized affairs of 1649 and 1701, and the more general conspiracies of 1675 and 1692, but throughout most of the eighteenth century, a perio now seen by many historians of West Indian slave resistance as characterized by endemic conflict in master-slave relations, the society seemed internally more stable and the slaves subdued. The Barbados slave rebellion was the first of the three slave uprisings that took place in the British West Indies between the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and general emancipation in 1838; the other two rebellions

"This article first appeared in Boletin de Estudios Latinoamericananosy del Caribe 39 (Diciembrede 1985): 85-109. 1

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The Empowering Impulse

occurred in Demerara in 1823 and Jamaica in 1831. The Barbados rebellion has also remained the least documented of the three. Watson's brief analysis was the first of the recent revised interpretations. The earlier primary analysis appeared in Schomburgk's history of the island, published in 1848. Since Watson, Craton has presented comparative accounts of these rebellions in three different works. As a result of Craton's comprehensive and comparative approach, however, his analyses of the Barbados uprising were not intended primarily to unravel its intricate details. The intentions of this essay are to deepen the analysis, present a wider range of data and provide firmer empirical support to some of the themes raised by the Craton and Watson narratives.1 Central to the analysis by Craton is the notion that the three rebellions represented attempts by the slaves to assert some influence on the general abolitionist politics of the time.2 In Barbados in April 1816, the political attitude of the rebel slaves was, according to Colonel Codd, commandant of the resident imperial troops, that "the island belonged to them and not to the whitemen whom they proposed to destroy".3 Yet, few contemporaries believed that rebellion was imminent, or that a revolutionary situation existed on the island. The rebellion began about 8:30 p.m. in the south-eastern parish of St Philip. A local newspaper, attempting to illustrate the topographical unsuitability of the area for such an occurrence, stated that this parish was "the most level and fertile and least laborious, where many of the plantations were so fully stocked with slaves, that they had not sufficient work to keep them constantly employed".4 The African Institute, a pro-abolitionist London-based organization, conducted an investigation of the revolt and supported this view. In its report, the institute stated that, in the first instance, "Barbados was the very worst field for such an experiment, since in no British colony was success in an attempt to obtain even a short lived freedom by insurrection so hopeless."5 In relation to the St Philip and neighbouring parishes, the report stated: "there are no mountains, no fastnesses, no forest. European foot, and even horse, can traverse it in all directions," hence the obvious military advantage of the planters' armed forces in the field.6 Regional topography, however, while being a most important factor in the dynamics of armed rebellion, was overridden, according to the institute, by social forces specific to Barbadian society during this period

The Slave-Drivers' War

3

of the legislative reform of West Indian master-slave relations. The institute noted that the Barbadian planters for over two decades "sullenly refused to accept legislative reforms, and their 17th century slave code remained unaltered".7 In addition, the institute noted, "in no part of the British dominions did this unhappy state of society exist in a more unmitigated form than in this island".8 The rebellion, therefore, according to the institute, was directly related to the planters' refusal to take meaningful legislative actions ameliorative of the conditions of the slaves. In this sense, it was the sociopolitical rigidity of the planters and their conservatism in slave management that resulted in the general rebellious attitudes among the slaves. From St Philip, the rebellion quickly spread throughout most of the southern and central parishes of Christ Church, St John, St Thomas, St George and parts of St Michael. Minor outbreaks of arson (but no skirmishes with the militia) also occurred in the northernmost parish of St Lucy. No fighting between rebel slaves and the militia forces was reported for the eastern and western parishes of St Andrew, St James and St Peter. In geopolitical terms, more than half of the island was engulfed by the insurrection.9 The rebellion was short lived. Within three days it was effectively quashed by a joint offensive of the local militia and imperial troops garrisoned on the island; included among the latter were the black slave soldiers of the First West Indian Regiment.10 Mopping-up operations continued during May and June, and martial law, which was imposed at about 2:00 a.m. on Monday 15 April, was lifted eighty-nine days later on 12 July. The death toll by the end of September, when the militia believed that the rebels were finally eradicated, was unevenly balanced between blacks and whites. Governor Leith's report of 30 April stated, in relation to the rebels, that it is at present impossible with any certainty to state the numbers who have fallen; about 50 however are at present conjectured to be the amount. The number executed under martial law have been about 70, also many prisoners have been tried and still continue to be judged; there being no other mode of ascertaining the nature and extent of the conspiracy and the guilt of individuals.11

By 21 September, Leith had revised his figures to 144 executed under martial law, 70 sentenced to death and 123 sentenced to transportation.12

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The anonymous author of an account of the insurrection (written most probably in September that year) suggests that the governor's figures represent a gross underestimation of the total fatalities. The author stated that "a little short of 1,000" slaves were killed in battle and executed at law.13 Colonel Best, commander of the Christ Church parish militia, stated that his men alone killed forty rebels in battles during Monday 15 April and the following Tuesday morning. The reason, according to Colonel Best, why many more had to be executed in the field was that "the numbers not only implicated but actively employed" were great.14 In addition, Colonel Best stated, many of those tried had to be executed because "they were all ringleaders".15 Only one white militiaman was killed in battle, one Brewster, a private of the St Philip parish militia.16 Several, however, were seriously injured in combat, and many elderly white people died of what Mrs Fenwick, a resident Englishwoman, described as "fatigue" caused by the rebellion.17 In addition, during the clashes between slaves and the imperial troops at Bayleys and Golden Grove plantations on the Monday evening, two of the 150 men of the West India Regiment were killed while forming their line to attack.18 Damage to property was estimated by the investigative committee of the Assembly at £175,000. Twenty-five percent of the year's sugar cane crop was burnt, as arson was used extensively by the rebels, both as an instrument to undermine the economic base of the planters and to convey logistical signals to their scattered contingents.19

Leadership and Organization The rebellion did not proceed according to plan. It broke out three days prematurely. Unlike the 1675 and 1692 aborted attempts, however, it was not deliberately betrayed from within the ranks of the slave community. The premature uprising was an accident, caused, according to the governor, "by the intoxication of one of the Revolters".20 This statement was also supported by Colonel Best of the Christ Church militia. No details, however, were given as to how this development occurred. It is not known whether the drunken rebel, either by his direct actions, or through incorrect information relayed to other rebels, initiated the uprising. The

The Slave-Drivers' War

5

governor, however, concluded his assertion by noting that, "there is every reason to believe that the premature bursting out of the insurrection on the night of the 14th instance . . . instead of the 17th instance, made it more partial than would have been otherwise the case".21 The rebels had organized what seemed to be an islandwide conspiracy to overthrow the planter class and to obtain their freedom. The governor, the colonels of militia and the commandant of the imperial troops were all convinced that this was the case. They denied that the rebellion was intended to be limited in nature, or directed specifically against a section of the planter class of the island. Nor was it intended to be simply a collective protest by slaves against the planters, demanding the amelioration of their social and work conditions. Colonel Best stated that the rebels had intended the Monday night to be the time for the beginning of an arsonist attack upon the white community. Canes and buildings were to be burnt to the ground. During the panic caused by this action, the Tuesday or Wednesday, or both, was for the "murder of whitemen" across the island.22 One captured rebel who was tried by a court martial confessed that they had intended the whites to cry "Water!" on the Monday night, and "Blood!" on subsequent nights.23 It was this sequential mixture of arson and warfare that lay at the base of the military strategy of the rebels. Evidence produced by prominent members of the white community suggests that the uprising was sudden and unexpected. Whites generally believed that their slaves, not having attempted any insurrections since the minor aborted Bridgetown affair in 1701, were more prone to running away, withholding their labour in protest, petitioning estate owners, attorneys and managers concerning conditions of work and leisure, than to armed insurrection. Slave owners boasted that the ameliorations to social conditions, implemented continuously since the mid eighteenth century, had subduing effects upon the slaves. They claimed that their slaves were given "liberties" that planters in the other islands could not dare even to consider.24 The ability of most slaves to travel the island extensively in pursuit of social and economic activity was held up by the planters as proof of the longstanding mildness of race relations and plantation management on the island.25 John Beckles, Speaker of the Assembly at the time of the insurrection, confessed that the slave laws did "wear a most sanguinary complexion" and were a "disgrace" to the

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island, but he affirmed that they were rarely applied, and in this sense they were largely "dead letters". Furthermore, he argued, the slaves had "comfortable houses", were "well fed and clothed", and were well "taken care of both in sickness and in health", and were "not over worked".26 The planters on the eve of the revolt, while recognizing an increased level in slave unrest, seemed to have possessed an unshaken confidence in the strength and security of their regime. Robert Haynes, planter-assemblyman, in a letter dated September 1816, stated his position as follows: 'The night of the insurrection I would and did sleep with my chamber door open, and if I had possessed ten thousand pounds in my house I should not have had any more precaution, so well convinced I was of their [the slaves'] attachment. . ,"27 This attitude seems to have been general throughout the white community. Governor Leith, in awareness of this long held complacency which he had never shared, informed the secretary of state for the colonies at the end of April that the planters of Barbados who have flattered themselves that the general good treatment of the slaves would have prevented them resorting to violence to establish an elusion of material right, which by long custom sanctioned by law has been hithertoo refused to be acknowledged, had not any apprehension of such a convulsion.28

The slaves had been planning the rebellion soon after the House of Assembly discussed and rejected the imperial Registry Bill in November 1815. Watson noted that the decision was made by the rebels in February 1816 that the rising should take place in April that year.29 The alleged primary leader, though this was not stated by the investigative committee of the Assembly, was a slave by the name of Bussa (or Bussoe), an African-born man, chief driver at Bayleys Plantation in St Philip.30 As yet, no specific evidence has been found to attribute this status to Bussa, though he has remained so identified within the folk tradition of the island. Biographical data on Bussa are also unavailable, but certain inductive points may be raised. First, it is of much significance that an African-born man should be the prime leader of a predominately Creole rebellion. In 1816 at least 92 percent of the slave population was Creole, and all the other leaders of rebel contingents were Creole.31 Second, that an African should have achieved the status of chief driver suggests that he most probably was not a young man in

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1816, since the slave trade was abolished in 1807 and, in general, it took at least ten years for Africans to acquire the language and managerial skills, plus the confidence of their masters, in order to become the chief slave personnel on estates. H.A. Vaughan, a local historian, has noted that Bussa met his death in battle ahead of his rebel contingent in St Philip.32 This point, if it is correct (Vaughan offers no evidence), suggests that Bussa was not, however, like Cuffee, the "ancient Gold Coast negro" who was said to be the leader of the 1675 aborted rebellion and was the crowned king of Barbados in the traditional Akan regal manner. Cuffee was apparently elected to this status, not because of his military prominence but as a result of forces within West African political culture that threw up figurehead leaders from the ranks of the wise and elderly.33 Whatever the reasons, Bussa, by virtue of his sociopolitical prominence in a predominately Creole society, must have been a man who enjoyed the personal respect and confidence of both whites and blacks. Data supplied by rebels who confessed during their trials suggest a decentralized form of leadership. Each plantation actively involved in the insurrection threw up a rebel group which had one dominant leader. These leaders, all male slaves, met frequently to discuss logistics and strategy. Jackey, a Creole slave, head driver at Simmons Plantation in St Philip, was chiefly responsible for the overall coordination of these groups and convened the meetings, most of which took place on his plantation. The report of the Assembly stated that he frequently invited the leaders of rebel contingents from plantations in St Philip, such as Gittens, Bydemill, Nightengale, Congor Road and Sunberry, to his home in order to coordinate the details of the insurrection. John, a slave and ranger at Simmons Plantation, was Jockey's chief messenger. According to the report, John frequently took messages to rebel groups throughout the southern and central parts of the island, and also kept Bussa at Bayleys Plantation informed.34 James Bowland, a literate slave belonging to the River Plantation in St Philip, confessed that John had been in frequent touch with Bussa since March, and that he often took instruction to rebel groups in all the "different parishes".35 John seems to have believed that some measure of force was necessary in recruitment. During one of his visits to Bayleys Plantation he threatened the slaves there that if they did not join in setting fire to the estate they (the other leaders) were deter-

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mined to burn down all their houses, as well as those of other slaves on plantations that did not join the rebellion.36 At Bayleys Plantation, the chief organizers were Bussa, King Wiltshire, Dick Bailey, Johnny the Standard Bearer and Johnny Cooper. At Simmons Plantation, they were Jackey, John and Nanny Grigg. In addition to these individuals, the politicization of the field slaves and the general spreading of insurrectionist propaganda were done by three literate free coloured men, Cain Davis, Roach and Richard Sarjeant. Davis held meetings with slaves on several plantations, such as River and Bayleys in St Philip, and Sturges in St Thomas. He propagated the view among slaves in these southern and central parishes that local planters were opposing metropolitan efforts to have them freed, and that if they wanted freedom "they must fight for it".37 Sarjeant was also reported to have mobilized slaves in the central parishes using the same kind of information and techniques as Davis. A small number of literate slaves was also reported to have recruited many slaves in a similar manner, stating that they had obtained their information from English newspapers. The most prominent of these literate slaves was Ben James, who belonged to Ayshford Plantation in St Thomas. Evidence of James' political activities is to be found in the report of the Assembly. William, a slave and chief driver at Sturges Plantation in St Thomas, and Jack Groom, a slave and driver at Haynesfield in St John, both confessed to being drawn into the rebellion after discussions with James, who frequently visited Bridgetown on Saturdays, returning with the latest information on the progress of the abolitionist movement in England.38 By April 1816, these politicizing agents had established a network of committed slaves, mostly plantation officers such as drivers and tradesmen, throughout the southern and central parishes of the island. The critical role of this small number of literate slaves and free coloured men who fomented antislavery sentiments was also recognized by the militia. Conrad Adams Howell, lieutenant colonel of the St Michael Royal Regiment of Militia, after presiding over court martial for seven weeks, trying 150 slaves and the four free coloured men, concluded his analysis of the rebellion by stating that it was the critical activity of these "better informed" individuals that accounted for the extensive nature of the rebellion.39 These men were not acting independently but were in consultation with Jackey through messages taken by John. For example, in early April,

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Principal Slave Organizers of the 1816 Barbados Rebellion Name

Origins

Plantation

Occupation

Bussa King Wiltshire Dick Bailey Johnny Johnny Cooper John Ranger Charles Dainty Davy William Sandy Waterman Nanny Grigg Jockey John Mingo Will John Barnes King William Will Green Prince William Toby Little Sambo

African Creole Creole Creole Creole Creole Creole Creole Creole Creole

Bayleys

Driver Carpenter

Creole Creole Creole Creole Creole Creole Creole Creole Creole Creole Creole Creole

Fisherpond Simmons

Sandfords Mapps Palmers Sturges

Byde Mill Nightengale Gittens Sunberry Congor Road Grove Chapel Adventure

Mason Standard bearer Cooper Driver Driver ? ? Driver Driver Domestic Driver Driver Driver Driver Driver Driver Driver Driver Driver ?

Jackey sent a message to one of these free men "who could read and write", to let the slaves on his plantation know what assistance they were to give in effecting the rebellion.40 This particular freeman lived at the River Plantation. In the Assembly report it is noted that he held frequent talks with Jackey. While these men were laying the groundwork for rebellion under Jackey's coordination, groups of rebels were also being organized into plantation contingents for the defeat of the local militia. The final planning of the rebellion took place at the River Plantation on Good Friday night, 12 April, under the cover of a dance.41 At this dance

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were Jockey, Bussa, Davis, Johnny Cooper and many of the other organizers.42 One of the decisions taken was that Joseph Pitt Washington Francklyn, a free coloured man, the illegitimate mulatto son of Joseph Bayley Francklyn, small planter and justice of the peace (owner of the small plantation by the name of Vinyard in St Philip) was to be made governor of this island in the revolutionary government.43 On the morning of Easter Sunday, Jackey had instructed Mingo, the ranger at Bydemill Plantation, to assemble his men and to rendezvous at Simmons for instructions. Mingo was also instructed to take a message to John Barnes, driver at Gittens Plantation, also in St Philip, to meet him with his contingent below his garden at Bydemill before proceeding to Simmons.44 By 8:30 p.m. that day, the rebellion broke out. Canes were being burnt throughout most of St Philip, signalling prematurely to rebels in the central and southern parishes that the rebellion had begun.

Armed Confrontation The image that emerges from the nature of troops and militia mobilization is not supportive of the planters' assertion that their internal defence system was very efficient. News of the rebellion did not reach Bridgetown and the St Ann's Garrison, fifteen miles away, until 1:30-2:00 a.m. on Monday. Colonel J.P. Mayers had travelled from Christ Church to inform Colonel Codd, commandant of the imperial troops at the St Ann's Garrison, of the developments. Governor Leith was off the island, and President Spooner was responsible for calling out the troops and the militia, as well as the declaration of martial law. Colonel Codd was informed that "a perfidious league of slaves in the parishes of St Philip, Christ Church, St John, and St George in their mad career, were setting fire to canes, as well as pillaging and destroying the buildings on many estates, and otherwise pursuing a system of devastation which has seldom been equalled".45 In spite of this information it was not until minutes before 10:00 a.m. that parties of the imperial troops moved out of the garrison. The mobilization of the militia, though slow, was somewhat more efficient than the muster of the imperial troops, whose movements during the entirety of the rebellion show a certain lack of enthusiasm for combat.

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The St Philip and Christ Church militia were fully mustered by 5:00 a.m. At about 6:00 a.m., the Life Guard, part of the militia force, was prepared to convey intelligence to the field officers concerning the spread of the insurrection. According to Colonel Eversley of the St Philip and Christ Church regiments, the first detachment moved out at 5:00 a.m., the second about 7:00 a.m., and the third, under his command, about 9:00 a.m.46 By 9:30 a.m., the imperial troops had not yet fully mustered.47 The battalions of the St Philip and Christ Church militia, once in the field, moved quickly and with great confidence. The second detachment, under the command of Colonel Best, one of the largest planters in the parish of Christ Church, was subsequently highly praised by the Assembly for the efficiency of its performance.48 It was also noted that throughout the rebellion, the speedy manoeuvring of Colonel Best's detachment was matched only by the left wing of the First West India (Black) Regiment under the command of Major Cassidy.49 The core parishes of the rebellion, St Philip and Christ Church, while being topographically unsuited to the 'hit and run' methods of warfare used by rebel slaves in the New World, were the two most densely populated outside St Michael, where Bridgetown, the capital, was located. The islandwide census for 1817 (see table below) showed Christ Church with a total slave population of 9,915, the largest after St Michael. Next was St Philip with 9,475. Other parishes had slave populations of 3,000 to 6,000. Outside St Michael or, more precisely, Bridgetown and its environs, these two parishes also contained the largest white populations. St Philip had a total white population of 1,393, and Christ Church, 1,618.50 These two parishes had the largest proportion of the island's white males who were able to bear arms, and consequently, at least numerically, the strongest militia. In April 1816 the total black population of the island was approximately 77,000. The free coloured population, which under the 1812 militia act was required to contribute to militia service, was 3,007. By this time the size of the militia force was between 3,200 and 3,350 men.51 When the parishes of St John, St Thomas and St George are included, as the outer circle of the rebellion, then the estimated total slave population exposed directly to the rebellion would be about 36,700. In 1816 the sexual structure of the slave population was approximately 54 percent female and 46 percent male. Of the some 16,982 males, about 30 percent

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Size and Distribution of the Barbados Population, 1816-1817* Parish

Free Coloured

Slave

Whites

Blacks to Whites

1816

1817

1817

1817

100

5,469

1,246

4.3:1

St Joseph

89

3,466

1,124

3.0:1

Christ Church

82

9,915

1,618

6.0:1

St Michael

1,933

18,193

5,038

3.6:1

St Thomas

76

5,173

835

6.2:1

St George

94

6,762

945

7.1:1

St Andrew

178

3,394

630

5.3:1

St Lucy

35

5,466

1,058

5.1:1

St Philip

147

9,475

1,393

6.8:1

St Peter

240

6,230

1,379

4.5:1

St James

33

3,950

755

5.2:1

3,007

77,493

16,021

4.8:1

St John

Totals

Source: The 1817 Census of Barbados, CO 28/86, PRO

were aged (over sixty years) and juvenile (under sixteen years).52 This meant that only about 12,887 male slaves in these parishes were able to bear arms. By piecing together the data on the rebellion, it is possible to state, though tentatively, that no more than 30 percent of these men took up arms and engaged the militia and imperial troops. Therefore, based upon this calculation, about 3,900 male slaves were involved in armed combat with the militia and regular soldiers, who totalled about 4,000 men. Watson, without giving any calculation, suggested that no more than 5,000 slaves were involved.53 No known evidence exists to suggests that women, though they were involved in the organization of the rebellion, for which some of them were executed, took part in the armed clashes. Taking into consideration that a small proportion of the island's total militia forces was deployed in St Lucy, St Peter and St James, and that a detachment of the imperial troops

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13

was sent to guard Bridgetown, it is possible to suggest that the number of slaves involved in armed combat probably did not exceed the number of militia men and imperial soldiers deployed. The first major battle between the militia and the rebel army took place on Lowthers Plantation at noon on Monday. Colonel Eversley noted that the three detachments of the Christ Church and St Philip militia were instructed before leaving the fort at Oistin Bay in Christ Church, to rendezvous at Fairy Valley, immediately south of Coverley Plantation in that parish. He stated: it was about twelve o'clock that we met with a large body of the insurgent slaves in the yard of Lowthers Plantation [one and a half miles north of Fairy Valley], several of whom were armed with muskets, who displayed the Colours of the St Philip Battalion which they had stolen, and who, upon seeing the division, cheered, and cried out to us, "come on!" but were quickly dispersed upon being fired on.54

Colonel Best was accredited by the Assembly for engineering the defeat of the rebels at Lowthers - the battle that is said to have undermined the morale of the rebels and illustrated their military weaknesses.55 His account of the battle represents to date the most detailed report on an encounter between militia forces and the rebel forces. Colonel Best stated that on arrival at Lowthers with the second detachment, they encountered a rebel contingent that outnumbered his men four to one. The militiamen, nonetheless, were confident that they could defeat the slaves, and drew great psychological strength from the realization that, in the words of Colonel Best, "defeat would have been worse than death".56 The militiamen fought as if the entire existence of white civilization in Barbados was at stake. Reports of the rebels' massacre of white soldiers and civilians in Haiti were common topics of discussion among Barbadian whites, and Colonel Best had no difficulty in generating a high level of courage and enthusiasm among his men. He noted that the rebels had consolidated their position at Lowthers, "joined by every negro belonging to the plantation".57 For no other plantation is there evidence that all slaves joined the rebel forces. On seeing the militia approach the estate, they formed what Colonel Best described as an "irregular line" before commencing their attack. The formation of lines was a common strategic technique in European military culture, and its

14

The Empowering Impulse

adoption by the Lowthers slaves reflects either their military confidence, or the extreme degree of creolization experienced by the slave community of the island. Ambush and surprise attacks, the common military techniques used by West Indian slaves and maroons in their battles with white soldiers and militiamen, were initially abandoned at Lowthers, though employed in other battles later that day. The militiamen also formed their line, no doubt a more regular one, and the battle was commenced. Best noted: My lads were too anxious and began to fire while I was leading them close up . . . One negro was brandishing his sword which my soldiers could not witness without endeavouring to knock him over. Others were arm'd with pitchforks, on seeing which the militia commenced firing . . . They gave way immediately.58

Under pressure from the superior fire power of the militia, the rebel army fled in different directions but to reassemble later for the counterattack. Many fled north through Woodbourne, and some cast into Searles. The largest group, however, fled south through Coverley, the direction that the militia took to Lowthers after it had assembled at Fairy Valley. Best continued: We pursued and killed some; their rapid flight however saved numbers. We had to march from estate to estate to quell the insurgents for they all set to plunder and destroy the dwelling houses. We killed about 30 men .. . [and! had not even a man wounded. Yes! One slightly by a shot from a pistol. The Villian was shot down immediately.59

While the Christ Church militia was pursuing the rebels, one group which had reassembled on the periphery of Lowthers "doubled back" and proceeded to finish the destruction of that estate.60 At Coverley, just south of Lowthers, the slaves did not assist the fleeing rebels in combat with the militia. When Colonel Best took a unit of his men through the estate in search of the fleeing Lowthers rebels, the slaves merely observed them passively. Colonel Best was not convinced, however, that this meant their noncommitment to the rebellion. He noted that the following day these Coverley slaves went on strike. Their refusal to work, Best believed, was the result "either of fear of the rebels, or from being too deeply implicated in their plans".61 He offered no specific explanation but left the ambivalence for Abel Dottin, absentee owner of the estate, to reconcile.

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An outstanding feature of the battle at Lowthers was the great courage and loyalty displayed by the free coloured men of the Christ Church militia under the command of Colonel Best. When news of the rebellion spread throughout southern Barbados, the free coloured men, with little or no hesitation, came to the assistance of the white community. It is not known what percentage of the some 31,007 free coloured population had enrolled for militia service, but Colonel Best had many within his detachment. Throughout the years of the war with the French, the propertied and "respectable" members of this community had adopted a posture of support for the planter elite in order to gain political support for their own objectives. They did not aggressively confront the white community but were generally moderate and humble in their political demands. Unlike the free coloureds in other islands whose ideological expressions in relation to slaves and whites show much ambivalence, in Barbados their leadership was firmly pro-planter. Colonel Best believed that his free coloured men were instrumental in the defeat of the blacks at Lowthers and during subsequent mopping-up operations. He wrote: 'The free colour'd people behaved admirably. They, as well as the white soldiers that I commanded were devoted to me . . . They would dash singly into a house full of rebels without looking behind for support and dig out the fellows. It was this intrepid courage that appalled the Blacks."62 The free coloureds were given an extension of their civil liberties in 1817. They were allowed the right to bear witness in courts against whites, the ironic reward for their firm support of the planters during the insurrection. The Christ Church militia, having killed thirty rebels at Lowthers on Monday afternoon, continued to track down scattered groups throughout the night and the following Tuesday morning. By Tuesday midday Colonel Best reported that another ten were killed in combat. He was, however, alarmed by the shift in the strategy of the rebels. Unable to make any headway against the militia forces, the rebels, according to Best, resorted to a more extensive system of arson in order to inflict maximum damage upon the planters. Best wrote: Large quantities of canes were burnt and I think more on the second night than the first, which proved that although the rebels were subdued by arms, they were nevertheless determined to do all possible mischief. Houses were gutted and the very floors taken up. The destruction is dreadful, the plundering beyond anything you can conceive could be effected in so short a time.63

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The Empowering Impulse

Nonetheless, Colonel Best continued, "our success at Lowthers and our subsequent rapid movements for that day stopped the progress of the Rebellion in Christ Church. The news of our success passed quickly to the Rebels in the upper part of St Philip and struck dismay."64 In comparison, however, the progress of the imperial troops was rather less than exemplary. Colonel Codd, commandant at the Garrison, stated that he had received information concerning the rebellion at about 2:00 a.m. on Monday, and at about "10:00 a.m., having waited in vain for authentic information of the strength and position of the insurgents . . . deemed it necessary to march off to the quarter of the country where the alarm had first spread".65 This suggests either a breakdown of military intelligence or a lack of keenness to be involved in the affair. He moved with a force consisting of three field pieces under the command of Major Brough, and in order not to expose his men to what appeared to have been fanatical slaves, he called out 150 (black) men of the First West India Regiment under Major Cassidy's command to support the 200 men of the Fifteenth Regiment under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Davidson. Also accompanying this force were 250 men of the Royal Regiment of the St Michael militia under the command of Colonel Mayers. Left behind was "a force fully adequate to the protection of the Garrison and town under the command of Lt. Colonel Edwards of the Bourbon regiment".66 The march of the imperial troops into St Philip, in spite of the flat and open terrain, proved a difficult one. The heat of the midday sun, which took a great toll on European soldiers in the West Indies, was an obstacle to their speedy movement. The various detachments, having moved out of the garrison at about 10:00 a.m. proceeded through Dash Valley and Boarded Hall in St George, where they rested at midday to move again in the early afternoon. It was soon after this, on arrival at the St Philip border, that Colonel Codd "detached parties in several directions through the country where the sugar canes were blazing on everyside". All troops were halted at five, "after a most fatiguing day's march . . . to refresh", in order to march again.67 The tactics of Colonel Codd suggest that he wanted to protect, as much as possible, the white soldiers from the rebel army. He ordered Colonel Mayers with the St Michael militia to march towards the Thicket, the core of the rebellion. The black soldiers of the West India Regiment were also directed into the area with instructions to take up a position at Bayleys Plantation where Bussa was in control.

The Slave-Drivers' War

17

Meanwhile, he took up a safer position at the St Philip parish church, both to rest his soldiers and to "observe the progress of the fires in order to direct. . . subsequent movement".68 On his way to the Thicket, Colonel Mayers received intelligence that a body of rebels had made a stand there.69 But before reaching the area his detachment met up with men from the St Philip militia, who were being attacked by a rebel group from Sandford Plantation. Both militia groups withdrew and rested the night. At daybreak they jointly attacked the rebels in Sandford Plantation yard, and the rebels were dispersed. Some were killed and prisoners were also taken. These Sandford slaves, unlike those at Lowthers, did not form lines of attack but tried to ambush the militiamen in the plantation yard.70 Some of these rebels were armed with muskets. Charles, chief driver, and also leader of the plantation, was on horseback giving orders and waving his muskets.71 It was during this battle that Brewster, the militiaman, was killed.72 The West India Regiment arrived outside Bayleys Plantation on Monday evening before sunset. Major Cassidy sent a message to Colonel Codd, who was only seven miles away, informing him that he had identified a large party of insurgents but, as he could not ascertain their numbers, he desired orders as to whether he should await his coming up or attack them immediately. Colonel Codd, not surprisingly, informed Major Cassidy that he must act to the best of his judgement, but that he would not bring his troops up until daybreak.73 At dawn the battle commenced at Bayleys between an estimated 400 rebels and 150 men of the First West India Regiment.74 It was probably during this battle that Bussa was killed. One white soldier stated that the rebels, on seeing the black regiment approaching, were temporarily confused.75 There had been many rumours in the slave ranks that an Haitian revolutionary army would be landing at Barbados to assist them in their struggle for freedom. On seeing the black soldiers in red uniforms, some rebels at Bayleys were probably under the impression that these men were their Haitian reinforcements. It is also plausible that some of the rebels knew exactly who the soldiers were but probably thought that racial solidarity might have prevailed instead. In any event, there was some initial confusion in the rebel ranks. The soldier wrote, "The insurgents did not think our men would fight against black men, but thank God they were deceived . . . The conduct of our Bourbon Blacks, particularly the light company under

18

The Empowering Impulse

Captain Smith (an old twelfth hand) has been the admiration of everybody and deservedly."76 When the rebels realized that the "Bourbon Blacks" were there to defeat rather than assist them, they fired and immediately killed two of them, badly wounding another. The fire was returned and, after much exchange, forty rebels were killed and seventy taken prisoner. Most were dispersed, once again, as a result of superior fire power. A large group fled north and reassembled at Golden Grove Plantation, some three-quarters of a mile away. They took cover at the plantation's great house, owned by assemblyman, Mr Grasset. The "Bourbon Blacks" pursued them and surrounded the house, from which the rebels fired upon them. According to the narrative of the soldier, the rebels "were soon dislodged, many of them killed and wounded leaping from the windows and rushing through the doors".77 About 8:30 a.m., after the rebels were defeated, Colonel Codd arrived at Bayleys with his white soldiers. He was quick, however, to order his men to take over the mopping-up operations in the area. He informed the governor: "The only plan I could then adopt was to destroy their [slaves'] houses in order to deprive them of some of their hiding places and resources, and to recover their plunder. After diligently scanting them, I set fire to and consumed several on those plantations where little else remained."78 During this operation, Colonel Codd noted that some of the militiamen of the parishes in insurrection, "under the irritation of the moment and exasperated at the atrocity of the insurgents . . . were inclined to use their arms rather too indiscriminately in pursuit of the fugitives".79 Slaves not in rebellion were killed in this rampage. Many of them returned to their estates having been out in hiding from the rebel forces. During the morning, while these purges were taking place, Colonel Codd received "the most alarming account" from Lieutenant General Haynes of the militia that the rebels were consolidating their forces in St John where great damage was being done to the estates, and that a "body of insurgents had threatened the Town and thrown it into the greatest confusion".80 The slaves were now taking the core of the rebellion into the outer regions of St John, St George and St Thomas. Some rebels who had escaped the Christ Church militia at Lowthers were preparing to make an onslaught on Bridgetown. Colonel Codd immediately called up Colonel Mayers of the St Michael militia to fall back on Bridgetown with a party

The Slave-Drivers'War

19

of the Fifteenth Regiment, taking all prisoners who were captured at Bayleys, Thickets and Golden Grove.81 Colonel Codd documented his movements for Tuesday afternoon as follows: "Having secured my position at Baileys, the rendezvous of the insurgents", "I marched off in the direction of St John to offer protection in that Quarter".82 He arrived there about 4:00 that afternoon (Tuesday) and was soon "perfectly satisfied" that "the insurgents were not in a position strong enough for attack or defence".83 Still worried that rebel slaves out in the fields would double back on Bayleys, as they had done during the Lowthers battle, Colonel Codd returned there with a party of seventy men and a field piece. By Tuesday night, according the Colonel Codd, conflagrations had ceased "and the dismay and alarm which had seized the colonists in a great degree subsided".84 He returned to headquarters on Wednesday. By this time, at least 150 blacks were killed, four free coloureds and over 400 blacks arrested pending trial.85 The Bridgetown scare was short lived, and mopping-up operations continued swiftly in the central parishes. By Wednesday morning the St Lucy rebels were also quelled. They had entered the rebellion not on the Sunday night but during the following Monday. The limited information relating to the rebellion in this parish suggests that a small group of slaves had set about burning selected estates. Three estates in all were extensively damaged. Bourbon Plantation was the most damaged. No fighting between rebels and militia was reported. It seems that these slaves withdrew as a detachment of the St Lucy, St Andrew, St Thomas and St Peter militia arrived in the area. By midday Wednesday, the rebellion was perceived by Colonel Codd to be quashed, as group resistance and arson had ceased.

The Assembly's Analysis of the Revolt On 6 August, the House of Assembly appointed an investigative committee to report on the origins and causes of the rebellion. By this time, most of the rebel leaders held captive had been tried and executed. The committee was composed of Messrs Finder, Nurse, Jordan and Cobham, Colonel Best, and Colonel Mayers. In September it was restructured, excluding Colonel Best, who did not support the view of the committee that the slaves were

20

The Empowering Impulse

led into rebellion by delusion sponsored by a small rebel elite. The report was finally published on 7 January 1818.86 It reflected an opinion generally held by the planters that the rebellion originated in the campaign for slave emancipation led by Mr Wilberforce and the African Institute. Wilberforce was accused by the investigative committee of having agents and spies in Barbados, who had informed the slaves that the process leading to their freedom was being obstructed by the planters and that it was therefore up to them to assert pressure from their end by violent means. It stated: " . . . towards the latter end of 1815, a report became generally prevalent among the slaves of this island, that the benefits of freedom would probably be extended to them through the interposition of their friends in England . . ,"87 Furthermore, the report stated, the rebellion originated solely and entirely in consequence of the intelligence imparted to the slaves, which intelligence was obtained from the English Newspapers, that their freedom had been granted them in England . . . These reports first took their rise immediately after the information of the proposed establishments of Registries in the British Settlements in the West Indies . . . and in the mistaken idea that the Registry Bill was actually their Manumission... these hopes were strengthened and kept alive by the promises held out, that a party in England, and particularly Mr Wilberforce . .. were exerting themselves to ameliorate their condition, and ultimately effect their emancipation.88

An anonymous planter, referring to Wilberforce and other members of the African Institute as a "dangerous crew", wrote a letter to the Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Gazette, stating that they "have pierced the inmost recesses of our island, inflected deep and deadly words in the minds of the black population, and engendered the Hydra, Rebellion, which had well nigh deluged our fields with blood".89 The Times of London suggested that the rebellion was due primarily to the "impolite" and thoughtless interference of Wilberforce in the political business of the Barbadian planters. It informed its readers: The principal instigators of this insurrection, who are negroes of the worst dispositions, but of superior understanding, and some of whom can read and write, availed themselves of this parliamentary interference and the public anxiety it occasioned, to instill into the minds of the slaves generally a belief that they were already freed by the King and Parliament.90

The Slave-Drivers' War

21

The slaves, or at least the more informed among them, were aware, especially after the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, of Wilberforce's hostility to slavery. His success in 1807, and his ability to mobilize parliamentary support in order to impose amelioration measures upon the planters, established him as a hero among West Indian slaves. By January 1816, the leaders of the rebellion, who, according to the Assembly, "had gained an ascendancy over their fellows by being enabled to read and write", had obtained a reasonable amount information concerning the political situation both in Barbados and the London West India community.91 This information was obtained from both local and English newspapers, which were read throughout the slave communities by the literate few. In the confessions of Robert, for example, a slave from Simmons Plantation, it is stated that Nanny Grigg, a domestic slave on the plantation, frequently read English and local papers, and informed other slaves on the developments in Haiti and in the metropolis. Barbadian newspapers carried reports on the progress of the Haitian Revolution which, while incensing whites, no doubt excited the blacks. For example, the Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Gazette carried the following summary on 9 April 1805: "It now seems beyond all doubt that. . . St Domingo . . . that ill-fated country . . . has again become the theatre of massacre and bloodshed, and the last remnants of French power almost completely overthrown."92 Information concerning Wilberforce's campaign, distorted and sometimes totally inaccurate, filtered through the slave communities, adding flame to the burning issue of the day - general emancipation. Daniel, a slave from the River Plantation where Bussa had met with lackey, Davis and Sarjeant on the Good Friday night, confessed that Davis had informed him and others that the English newspaper carried reports to the effect that "Mr Wilberforce had sent out to have them all freed, but that the inhabitants of the island were against i t . . . and that they must fight for it."93 To exemplify the view held by many slaves of Mr Wilberforce as a hero, Thomas Harris, a free man of colour, confessed before the Assembly's committee that, "he heard many negroes say they were to be free, and that Mr Wilberforce was a father to them, and when they obtained their freedom their children would all be called after him".94 News of the rebellion reached Parliament during the discussions concerning the tactics necessary to secure the Spanish abolition of their slave

22

The Empowering Impulse

trade. Wilberforce considered the planters wholly responsible for the propaganda that ignited rebelliousness within the slave community in early 1816, and expressed these views firmly. In a letter to Babington, dated 7 June, Wilberforce stated that, from the very earliest abolition efforts, the Barbadian planters kept clamouring: it is emancipation you mean, you mean to make our slaves free, we all the time denying it. At length - wonderful that not before - the slaves themselves begin to believe it, and to take measures for securing the privilege; in short, the artillery they had loaded so high against us, bursts among themselves, and they impute to us the loading and pointing of it.95

The Barbados newspapers were not alone in suggesting that the Registry Bill was in some way connected to a wider emancipation plan. The Jamaica Royal Gazette of March 1816 stated that the bill was founded upon emancipation views well calculated to produce insurrection among the slaves.96 Although Barbadian slaves were not the only ones exposed to this equation, they alone revolted. Planters went to great lengths to provide evidence that the slaves had no material causes for revolt. The report stated: The year 1816 was remarkable for having yielded the most abundant returns with which Providence had ever rewarded the labours of the inhabitants of this island. The rich and extensive Parish of St Philip, in particular, is peculiarly qualified, from the nature of the soil, for the production of corn and other provisions; and the liberal allowance to the negroes, and abundant supplies in the granaries (of the estates on which revolt occurred), evidently prove that the Origin of the Rebellion must be sought for in some other than in any local and peculiar cause.97

One plantation manager, Joseph Gittens, went as far as to state that the revolt occurred because the slaves were too well treated. He told the commissioners that the slaves had great indulgences granted them by proprietors and overseers, such as, permitting them to have dances frequently on Saturdays and Sundays evenings, easing their burdens by the use of every species of machinery which they could e f f e c t . . . all of which induced them to assume airs of importance, and put a value on themselves unknown amongst slaves of former periods.98

By dismissing the material-deprivation thesis, the commissioners implied that the slave rebellion was directed specifically against the entire

The Slave-Drivers' War

23

system of slavery and white domination. In the words of Colonel Best, the blacks sought "to become masters, instead of the slaves of the island".99 The rebels were therefore attempting to preempt the metropolitan reformist campaign by posing a revolutionary solution to the issue of emancipation in vogue. In support of this, Thomas Moody, a local planter, noted in October 1816 that the rebellion was an attempt by "the mass of the slaves . . . to gain independence".100 Colonel Codd's view that the rebel slaves had planned to destroy all the white men on the island, taking the females for their own use, was also supported by Colonel Best.101 To effect this revolution, the slave leaders, according to Colonel Best, had emissaries throughout the island.102 Revolution had succeeded in Haiti in achieving freedom, and the slaves knew this. Nanny Grigg, a prominent slave woman on Simmons Plantation where Jackey coordinated the rebellion, held the view, which she expressed to other slaves, that if freedom was to be obtained they would have "to fight for it". From the beginning of the nineteenth century, slaves in Barbados were becoming increasingly anxious and restless as they perceived the possibility of obtaining legislated freedom to be, unlike in all previous times, fairly good. Parliamentary discussions in England were serious and fruitful, as seen in the 1807 Abolition Act and subsequent amelioration measures. Then there was also the example set by the Haitians, which, according to Watson, though it is difficult to measure, must not be undervalued in terms of its psychological impact upon slaves in the region. Mrs Fenwick stated that in the years prior to the rebellion, the slaves did not only seem very restless but many were visibly refusing to be cooperative. This was especially so among the artisans and domestics, the elite slaves who were closer to both full freedom and political information.103 These were the ones who seemed to have had much political and social influence over their communities. Some planters were aware of the growing agitation and increasing social tension. During the House of Assembly debate of 10 December 1810, it was noted that "the increase of arrogance and vice among the slaves", particularly those in Bridgetown who were more aware of the activities of Mr Wilberforce, "has occasioned, nay demanded, punishment".104 For the first time since the early eighteenth century, serious discussions were taking place in the Assembly concerning the "relaxed state of the police and the effects which it produces amongst the slaves".105 From 1804, when the Haitian revolutionaries declared their

24

The Empowering Impulse

independence from France, House of Assembly debates became increasingly focused upon the apparent increase of insolence among the slaves. Robert Haynes, planter-assemblyman, stated that he knew there was something "brewing up in their minds", but he never suspected it to be of rebellious proportions.106 It was generally thought that a tightening of police systems was all that was necessary to restore the traditional order. Between 1808 and 1815, the system of slave control came under increased pressure, and this resulted in the development of new forms of social control. Slave unrest reached a stage whereby plantation managers were unable to impose discipline in an effective manner without resort to public facilities, such as prisons and the Bridgetown Cage. The latter was an institution that was used from the seventeenth century to confine runaway slaves while the process of law was being implemented.107 In April 1811, the speaker of the House of Assembly, John Beckles, while accepting the need to improve the efficiency of slave control, the result of increased slave resistance, informed the House that the practice of owners sending their slaves to the Cage as a general punishment was illegal.108 Beckles insisted that only captured runaway slaves, and not generally insubordinate slaves, should be confined to the Cage.109 The Bridgetown Cage was soon reported to be filled with captured runaways and other rebellious slaves. This was a new development. One constable informed the House that for the following month of May 1811, twenty-eight slaves were imprisoned in the Cage for running away, twenty-four lodged there by their owners for general insubordination, and nine legally committed for committing serious public offences.110 Between 1811 and 1816, the names of over two hundred slaves were listed in the Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Gazette as captured runaways, some of whom were executed for rebellion. Many owners refused to repossess their captured slaves. Some insisted that the full force of the law be applied, that is, capital punishment, especially for those who committed public crimes while absent. An analysis of the above lists illustrates that a substantial proportion of runaways were elite slaves, particularly artisans, and also that many were mulattos. These were the elite slaves upon whom the plantations depended for smooth operation and social stability. Their increasing restlessness and hostility to planter authority was illustrated by the full range of actions, from negative work attitudes to open rebellion. Many

The Slave-Drivers' War

25

advertisements for elite slave runaways appeared in the newspaper in 1815-16. For example, notices appeared for Ben Stuart, "a runaway mulatto carpenter, who looks very much like a white man with light straight hair and grey eyes";111 for Joe, a fisherman, popularly known in Bridgetown, St Thomas and Christ Church;112 for April, who "has a very English tongue".113 Also listed in the minutes of Council were those runaways executed at law. For example, in 1811 Isaac Parfitt and James Moore petitioned the Council for £25 each, the value of their rebellious slaves executed at law. The increased number of executions suggests that this upsurge of Maroon activity was not simply the result of slaves' desire for a few hours or days of respite from the plantations. These were the elite slaves who led the rebellion.

Conclusion The rebellion failed to fulfil its immediate objective, but the antislavery movement in the metropolis succeeded in pushing emancipation bills through Parliament in 1833 and 1838, legally ending slavery and terminating almost half a century of intense and heated debate. The rebellion was the contribution of Barbadian slaves to that debate. It was their attempt to influence the future path of their society. They proved to the English Parliament that, contrary to the assertions of the planters, they were not content with their status as slaves, and that their intention was to free themselves by force of arms, as imperial reformist means seemed unduly slow, if not unreliable. The premature uprising of the slaves ensured some chaos and disarray at the levels of strategy and logistics. Many organizational shortcomings can be identified in the slaves' offensive. First, their refusal or inability to obtain substantial support among the free coloured population weakened the impact of their onslaught upon the planter class. In both the Haitian Revolution and the Fedon uprising in Grenada during the 1790s, large numbers of free coloureds played critical roles in the organization of popular antiplanter sentiments. In Barbados, the bulk of the free coloured people threw their firm support behind the whites. The rebels did not expect their loyalty to be otherwise, and indeed some prominent assemblymen expected such solidarity.

26

The Empowering Impulse

Second, the inability of the rebels to secure sufficient arms rendered them an easy opposition for the militia and troops. Rumours concerning a successful raid upon the St Philip magazine have not been verified. The data show that not many rebels had muskets, and most were armed with swords, cutlasses, pitchforks and other such agricultural weapons. The militiamen were therefore able to attack with confidence and efficiency. For example, during the battle at Lowthers Plantation, Colonel Best noted that the rebels were mostly armed with agricultural implements, and few had muskets. King William, the leader of the rebel contingent from Sunberry Plantation, was seen armed with a gun, as was Toby, the leader of the contingent from the Chapel Plantation, and a few others. But the rank and file of the slave regiments were not so armed.114 Third, the inability of the organizers to secure, probably as a result of the premature uprising, the continued support of the majority of the slaves allowed the militia to move quickly in pursuit of fleeing rebels. In St Philip where the rebels were in need of solid support to combat the imperial troops, commitment was scanty. The problems experienced by the rebels in obtaining greater support probably resulted from the elitist nature of the leadership. Much is not known about the daily social relations between skilled elite slaves and common field slaves, but it seems possible that the preferential treatment received by the former led to much resentment, jealousy and suspicion among the latter. The resort to force and threats by the leaders in order to raise popular support suggests that they too felt the field slaves to be docile, and held for them a measure of contempt. It is also possible that the field slaves were probably not convinced that the leadership was honest, and suspected that opportunism was the dominant force behind their actions. Their refusal to support the rebellion could therefore be seen as a rejection of the sociopolitical leadership assumed by the elite slaves. The rebellion as an isolated military event was quickly suppressed, but the process of resistance continued. On 30 April, the speaker of the Assembly stated: this commotion, as was naturally to be expected, has been suppressed, and we sincerely wish that the fate of those deluded men who have fallen victims of their rashness and folly may be a salutary warning to those who have returned to their duty, and that they may hereafter be impressed with this feeling that it is only by a faithful performance of it that they can look for that protection and those comforts which every master is desirous of offering his slave.115

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27

The governor was more forthright in his address to the slave population on 26 April. He informed them that slavery could be abolished only "by a wise unremitting system of amelioration by which it will gradually produce its own reformation. By such means alone, and not by the attempting of a rash and destructive convulsion has slavery . . . happily changed." In addition, the governor continued, I cannot omit to express my satisfaction at the good sense and feeling of so large a proportion of you who rallied around your masters and their families ... I trust, however, that the example . . . of those who lost their lives . . . save me from the painful task of using the ample power at all times in my hands to crush the refractory and punish the guilty.116

Some slaves were obviously not impressed by the governor's analysis of the events nor disturbed by his threats, and continued to express their hostility to slavery, both in and out of the production process. In June 1816 a white Barbadian described the postrebellion feeling among blacks, and the dangers it posed for white society, as follows: The disposition of the slaves in general is very bad. They are sullen and sulky and seem to cherish feelings of deep revenge. We hold the West Indies by a very precarious tenure - that of military strength only. I would not give a year's purchase for any island we now have.117

Under martial law during June and early July, slaves continued to be arrested and tried. In September some were arrested for trying to organize a second insurrection. Colonel Best, who sat on the court martial which tried slaves arrested for planning this aborted September rebellion, informed Abel Dottin: The negroes have hatched up another conspiracy . . . Murder was to have been the order of the day. As on the former occasion, the drivers, rangers, carpenters, and watchmen were chiefly concerned and few field labourers . . . I am under no apprehension as to the consequences . . . It is no longer delusion amongst the slaves . . . I once thought before, I am now convinced that they were not entirely, if at all, led away in the last business by delusion. They conceived themselves to be sufficiently numerous to become the masters . . . of the island.118

The captives, according to Best, confessed that on the last occasion their tactics were wrong. Instead of engaging the entire militia in open combat,

28

The Empowering Impulse

they should have aimed at and killed only the mounted officers, and by this means the rank and file would flee.119 This was the plan for the September affair, but it was betrayed by one slave who informed the militia that he was offered any position in the rebel organization that he desired. Thomas Moody stated that this September affair, which originated in the parish of Christ Church, "excited much alarm and uneasiness in the minds of the inhabitants".120 However, when the secretary for the colonies requested Governor Leith to send all information relating to the insurrectionary attempt, it seems to have caused him much difficulty. He replied: "It does not... appear that the affair in question is of any extent to cause alarm, and may more properly be regarded as the result of one or two turbulent men, disappointed at their failure, endeavouring ineffectually to reproduce insubordination."121 The aborted September affair suggests, however, that slaves persisted in attempts to overthrow the planter regime and by that means gain their freedom. It became clear to the planters that much greater repression was necessary to keep the slaves in subjection. John Beckles summed up the debate in the House concerning the crisis in slave control by stating that the rebellious "spirit" of the slaves was not subdued, nor will it ever be subdued whilst these dangerous doctrines [of the abolitionist lobby] which have been spread abroad continue to be propagated among them. It behoves us to be upon guard, to keep a watch that we may not again be caught so shamefully unprepared. The comfort and happiness of our families require it - the safety and tranquility of the island call for it. It is a duty which we owe our constituents - it is a duty which we owe our country.122

The Slave-Drivers' War

29

Notes 1.

K. Watson, The Civilised Island, Barbados: A Social History, 1750-1816 (Barbados: Caribbean Graphics, 1979), 125-35; R. Schomburgk, The History of Barbados (London: Frank Cass, 1848; reprint 1971), 393-400; M. Craton, 'The Passion to Exist: Slave Rebellion in the British West Indies, 1650-1832", Journal of Caribbean History 13 (1980): 1-20; M. Craton, "Proto-Peasant Revolts? The Late Slave Rebellions in the British West Indies, 1816-1832", Past and Present, no. 85(1981): 99-125; M. Craton, Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), 254-67; see also J. Handler, "Slave Revolt, and Conspiracies in Seventeenth Century Barbados", New West Indian Guide 52 (1982): 5-12.

2.

M. Craton, "Slave Culture, Resistance and the Achievement of Emancipation in the British West Indies, 1783-1838", in Slavery and British Society 1776-1846, edited by J. Walvin (London: Macmillan, 1982), 100-23.

3.

Colonel Codd, Commander of the St Ann's Garrison, to Governor Leith, 25 April 1816, Colonial Office (CO) 28/85, ff. 11-14.

4.

Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Gazette, 10 September 1816.

5.

Remarks on the Insurrection in Barbados and the Bill for the Registration of Slaves (London 1816), f. 7.

6.

Ibid.

7.

Ibid., f. 4.

8.

Ibid., f. 1.

9.

See The Report from a Select Committee of the House of Assembly Appointed to Inquire into the Origins, Cause, and Progress of the Late Insurrection -April 1816 (Barbados 1818).

10.

Ibid. See also Anon., "An Account of the late Negro Insurrection which took place in the Island of Barbados on Easter Sunday, April 14, 1816", New York Public Library, Mss. Division.

11.

Governor Leith to Lord Bathurst, 30 April 1816, CO 28/85, f. 8.

12.

Governor Leith to Lord Bathurst, 21 September 1816, CO 28/85, f. 36.

13. Anon., "An Account of the late Negro Insurrection". 14.

Colonel John Rycroff Best to Abel Dottin, Barbados, 27 April 1816 (New York Public Library, Mss. Division). (The letters by Best are found bound to the back of John Foyer's, History of Barbados [1808] in the manuscript division of the New York Public Library; see J. Handler, A Guide to Source Material for the Study of Barbados History 1627-1834 [Carbondale: South Illinois University Press, 1971], 179.)

30

The Empowering Impulse

15. Ibid. 16. Report from a Select Committee, evidence of Major Oxley, 32. 17. Mrs Fenwick to Mary Hays, 26 September 1816, Barbados, in The Fate of the Fenwicks: Letters to Mary Hays 1798-1828, edited by A.F. Webb (London: Methuen, 1927), 179. 18. Colonel Codd to Governor Leith, 25 April 1816, CO 28/85, ff. 11-14. For a detailed account of the battle at Bayleys Plantation, see also "Extracts from a Private Letter dated 27th April 1816, St Ann's Garrison, Barbados", CO 28/85, ff. 22-23. 19. Report from a Select Committee, 4-5. 20. Governor Leith to Lord Bathurst, 30 April 1816, CO 28/85, f. 9. 21. Ibid. 22. Colonel Best to Abel Dottin, 27 April 1816. 23. Ibid. 24. See W. Dickson, Mitigation of Slavery (London 1814), 439. 25. See M. Craton, Testing the Chains, 254-55. See also K. Watson and H. Beckles, "Concessionary Politics: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth Century Barbados", unpublished ms. 26. Minutes of the House of Assembly, 7 January 1817. See also Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Ga/effe, 30 March 1816. 27. Robert Haynes to Thomas Lane, 23 September 1816, Barbados, Newton Estate Papers, 523/781, Senate House Library, London. 28. Governor Leith to Lord Bathurst, CO 28/85, f. 8. 29. See Watson, The Civilised Island, 129. The Select Committee stated in Report from a Select Committee that the slaves were engaged in the planning since December. 30. Report from a Select Committee, f. 9. 31. The 1817 census of the island recorded that only 7 percent of the black population was African born (Barbados Archives). 32. H.A. Vaughan, "Joseph Pitt Washington Francklyn, 1782-1816, Part 3", Democrat, 8 January 1971. 33. The committee that investigated the 1675 aborted revolt described Cuffee, the alleged leader, as "an Ancient Gold Coast slave". See H. McD. Beckles, "Rebels without Heroes: Slave Politics in Seventeenth Century Barbados", Journal of Caribbean History 19, no. 2 (1983): 1-21. 34. These data are taken from the evidence of slaves who confessed to the Select Committee investigating the rebellion. See the evidence of Daniel, Cuffee, Ned, Robert and James Bowland in Report from a Select Committee. 35. Report from a Select Committee, f. 34.

The Slave-Drivers' War

31

36. Ibid. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid., ff. 36-37. 39. Ibid., f. 57. 40. Ibid., f. 29. 41. Ibid., f. 26. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid., f. 9. 44. These data are also taken from the evidence supplied in Report from a Select Committee. 45. Colonel Codd to Governor Leith, 25 April 1816, CO 28/85, ff. 11-14; also, Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Gazette, 30 April 1816. 46. Colonel Codd to Governor Leith, 25 April 1816, CO 28/85, ff. 11-14. See also "Extracts from a Private Letter", CO 28/85, ff. 22-23; Evidence of Colonel Eversley, Report from a Select Committee, 28-29. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid. 49. Colonel Codd to Governor Leith, 25 April 1816, CO 28/85, ff. 11-14. 50. Census of Barbados, 1817 (31 October), CO 28/86. 51. See Minutes of Council, 13 January 1812, CO 31/45. See also, "An Account of the Island's Population", CO 28/86, f. 76. 52. The decennial age and sex composition of the slave population is given in the 1817 census. I have estimated that at least 30 percent of all slave males were under sixteen and over sixty years of age. See also J. Handler and F. Lange, Plantation Slavery in Barbados: An Archaeological and Historical Investigation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 67-72. 53. Watson suggested, without providing any form of calculation, that the number of rebels did not exceed five thousand (Watson, The Civilised Island, 132). 54. See Report from a Select Committee, evidence of Colonel Eversley, 28-29. See also Colonel Best to Abel Dottin, two letters dated 27 April 1816 and 28 September 1816, Barbados (New York Public Library, Mss. Division). 55. Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Gazette, 30 April 1816, report on the progress of the rebellion. 56. Colonel Best to Abel Dottin, 27 April 1816. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid.

32

61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93.

The Empowering Impulse

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Colonel Codd to Governor Leith, 25 April 1816, CO 28/85, ff. 11-14. Ibid. Ibid. See also "Extracts from a Private Letter", CO 28/85, ff. 22-23. "Extracts from a Private Letter", CO 28/85, ff. 22-23. Colonel Codd to Governor Leith, 25 April 1816, CO 28/85, ff. 11-14. Evidence of Major Oxley, Report from a Select Committee, 32. Ibid. Confession of Robert, a slave, Report from a Select Committee, 30. Evidence of Major Oxley, Report from a Select Committee, 32.

Colonel Codd to Governor Leith, 25 April 1816, CO 28/85, ff. 11-14. "Extracts from a Private Letter", CO 28/85, ff. 22-23. Ibid. Ibid. Colonel Codd to Governor Leith, 25 April 1816, CO 28/85, ff. 11-14. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. See Schomburgk, The History of Barbados, 398-99 Report from a Select Committee, 6. Ibid., 10, 12. Anon., Letter to Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Gazette, 7 September 1816. Times, 5 June 1816. Report from a Select Committee, 6. Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Gazette, 9 April 1805, CO 28/72, f. 91. Examination of Daniel, a slave on the River Plantation, Report from a Select Committee, 26. 94. Deposition of Thomas Harris, Report from a Select Committee, 39. 95. R. Wilberforce and S. Wilberforce, eds. The Life of Wilberforce, 288. 96. .Remarks on the Insurrection, f. 4.

The Slave-Drivers' War

33

97. Report from a Select Committee, 15. 98.

Examination of Joseph Gittens, manager at Padmore Plantation, Report from a Select Committee, 46-47 99. Colonel Best to Abel Dottin, Barbados, 2 September 1816 (New York Public Library, Mss. Division). 100. Thomas Moody to H. Goulburn, 14 October 1816, CO 28/85, f. 44. Moody made this statement in relation to continued slave unrest after the rebellion, specifically after the minor skirmish in September 1816. 101. Colonel Codd to Governor Leith, 25 April 1816, CO 28/85, ff. 11-14. 102. Colonel Best to Abel Dottin, 27 April 1816. 103. Eliza Fenwick to Mrs Fenwick, 10 January 1812; also Eliza Fenwick to Mary Hays, 11 December 1814, in Webb, The Fate of'the Fenwicks, 75-76, 163-64. 104. Minutes of the Assembly, 10 December 1810, CO 31/45. 105. See Lord Camden to Governor Seaforth, 24 November 1804, CO 29/29, f. 43. 106. Robert Haynes to Thomas Lane, 23 September 1816. 107. Minutes of the Assembly, 13 April 1811, CO 31/45. 108. Ibid. 109. Ibid. 110. Ibid.

111. Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Gazette, 13 January 1816. 112. Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Gazette, 6 May 1815. 113. Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Gazette, 20 May 1815. 114. Colonel Best to Abel Dottin, 27 April 1816. See also Report from a Select Committee, evidence of Colonel Eversley. Here it is cited that at Lowthers, "several" rebels had muskets. 115. Reproduced in Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Gazette, 30 April 1816. 116. Ibid. 117. An anonymous letter sent from Barbados to London, dated 6 June 1816, CO 28/85. See also Craton, Testing the Chains, 265-66. 118. Colonel Best to Abel Dottin, 28 September 1816. 119. Ibid. 120. Thomas Moody to H. Goulburn, 14 October 1816. 121. Governor Leith to Lord Bathurst, 21 September 1816, CO 28/85, f. 36. 122. Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Gazette, 25 January 1817. See also E. Stoute, "Glimpses of Old Barbados", Advocate-News, 18 October 1970.

2 Forging a Barbadian Identity Lessons from the 1816 'Bussa' Slave Rebellion PEDRO WELCH

Introduction The island of Barbados provides the physical and conceptual location for this paper. Located southward of the Greater Antilles, to the east of the Caribbean chain, Barbados has a total surface area of 166 square miles (or about 432 square kilometres). The island was mentioned in Spanish cedulas of 1511, and 1518. It had been settled by Amerindians as early as 350 AD but this population appeared to have migrated by the tim English settlers landed on the island in 1627. The latter settlers were acting on behalf of a London syndicate, headed by a prominent mercantile family, the Courteens.1 The easternmost position of Barbados, far from Hispanic settlement, and to the south of the routes travelled by Spanish convoys, probably explains why the island was not settled by the Spanish. In the early years of settlement, a few Amerindian labourers were imported to assist with the planting of tobacco, cotton and tropical subsistence crops. However, the bulk of the labour in this period was supplied by white indentured servants, drawn primarily from areas in Ireland, Scotland and England where the agro-industrial revolution was 34

Forging a Barbadian Identity

35

rapidly developing.2 However, by the 1650s, the costs of white indentured servants had risen relative to the reduced cost of African slaves and the resulting shift to a predominantly African labour base was to have profound implications for the socioeconomic and political future of the colony.3 The nature of the plantation slavery that developed was such that it touched every other aspect of society. It was reflected in the legal and social norms of the colony. The system operated on a basic premise: the social distinctions between the two main social groups, the slave owners and the slaves, were to be maintained. On the plantation, rigorous supervision was applied to the lives of the slaves with the creation of a division of labour that classified even children and infants into gangs. The organization of labour and a structure of discipline that attempted to involve slaves in their own subordination by the creation of a class of slave supervisors (drivers/rangers) were designed to reinforce a racial divide with whites at the apex of the social pyramid. Paradoxically, the very structures put in place to co-opt slaves into their own discipline and the process of acculturation to which slaves were subjected were to lead to some modifications in the nature of power relationships. As slave owners became more confident of their hold on power, perhaps unwisely so, concessions were offered to slaves who fitted in with the social ideals of the masters and mistresses. Ameliorative mechanisms were utilized to provide an illusion of tractability in the slave system (such as the introduction of slave markets, permitting slaves some ownership control over commodities sold in these markets, and permitting slave festivals).4 These had the objective of ensuring smooth production cycles and efficient labour control. However, as this paper will show, it was precisely such modifications and concessions that formed part of an acculturative environment in which slaves could come to see themselves as other than properly. Against that background, this paper seeks to examine the context of the 1816 'Bussa' rebellion in Barbados, using the data that emanate from a House of Assembly report on the same as a template to unravel some of the factors in identity building among Barbadian slaves.

36

The Empowering Impulse

Building National Identity: The 1816 Rebellion as a Template In general, historians of the Barbadian slave society, with one or two exceptions, have tended to downplay the role of a maturing political consciousness among slaves in promoting an ideology of resistance. In particular, the 1816 'Bussa' rebellion has been subjected to a veritable seesaw of philosophical positions, ranging from those who insist that the rebellion was centred in the efforts of a disgruntled free coloured man to obtain redress against white discrimination, to those who argue that it was anchored, fully, in an informed and articulate political consciousness of Afro-Barbadian slaves.5 A number of issues may be cited as having some important impact on the initiation of the rebellion. One of these, perhaps the most important, was the passage of the Registry Bill in Britain in 1816. Following on the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807, debate on the condition of slaves in the colonies continued and widened, with one major issue being the mortality of slaves on the sugar estates. It was inevitable that this debate would incite passions in the Caribbean itself, and that it would be given the widest currency in the local newspapers and legislative debates. Slaves followed these debates closely, as did their free coloured kin, and recognized in the agitation of the white community an attempt to delay the process of emancipation. Indeed, the report of a select committee of the Barbados House of Assembly, submitted in 1818, two years after the rebellion, noted that for several months preceding the Insurrection in one thousand eight hundred and sixteen, the minds of the slaves had been unsettled by a frequent repetition of a report. . . that the time was quickly approaching at which they were to expec their freedom; that these reports took their rise immediately after the formation of the proposed establishment of Registries in the British settlements in the West Indies had been transmitted to the colony; that they were combined with and originated in that information; and in the mistaken idea that the Registry Bill was actually their Manumission . . .6 Apart from the Registry Bill another contributory factor is the slaves' awareness of the success of the slaves in the Haitian Revolution, particularly of the strategies used by slaves there. Two of the slaves interrogated

Forging a Barbadian identity

37

by local authorities in the aftermath of the rebellion reported that St Domingue provided some inspiration for the Barbadians. Cuffee Ned, a slave belonging to Three Houses Plantation reported that leaders of the Barbados rebellion had informed him that slaves had fought for, and had won, their freedom in St Domingue, which he referred to as "Mingo".7 Another slave, James Bowland, of the River Plantation, reported that the slaves felt that "the white people would not give them their freedom and they must fight for their liberty in the same way that they had done at Saint Domingo (Haiti)".8 These two factors, the passage of the Registry Bill and the impact of the Haitian Revolution, may be viewed as external ones, interacting with a politically charged internal environment. However, to view these factors as operating independently of a home-grown ideology of slave resistance would be a serious error. In fact, one issue that requires inclusion in any analysis of this rebellion is the importance of a Barbadian identity in the evolving political consciousness of the rebels. The evidence of Colonel Codd, the colonel general commanding the local militia at the time of the rebellion, charges that rebels consistently asserted that Barbados "belonged to them" and not to the whites.9 The report of Colonel Codd is only one in a series of references that trace the evolution of a Barbadian identity. Dr George Pinckard, who visited Barbados in the 1780s, stated that Barbadian slaves "proudly arrogate a superiority above the negroes of other islands".10 Indeed, they did not hesitate to claim a Barbadian identity when the question of their origin (nationality) was raised. On several occasions, Pinckard overheard the following response of slaves during interaction with transient whites: "[M]e neder [neither] Chrab [Carib]; nor Creole, Massa! Me troo [true] Barbadian barn."11 If Pinckard's observations, focused as they are on black-white interaction, are illustrative of the impact of acculturation on the slave psyche, those recorded by Trelawney Wentworth, which record similar sentiments in an altercation between two slaves, is perhaps even more telling in our attempt to engage the world of the slaves. Wentworth visited Barbados in the late 1820s and recorded his findings in a book published in 1834.12 He observed a quarrel between two slaves on the waterfront at Bridgetown, the chief port and town of Barbados. Apparently, one of the combatants had insulted the other by referring to him as a "Guinea Negro". The response of the other party to the dispute

38

The Empowering Impulse

represents both the success of the white elite in denigrating the African cultural experience and the impact of a creolization in which blacks were constructing the terms of their own existence. He retorts: "Who you call dem, names, eh? Who you call Ginny (Guinea) nigger? . . . [Y]ou curse me, you no look for trouble, you no find he?"13 In an attempt to garner support from onlookers, the aggrieved man continued, "only hear dat, only hear dat, he call me a Ginny nigger . . . I true Barbadian barn so help me Gad".14 Wentworth's crude attempt to reproduce Barbadian speech pattern notwithstanding, the point is made. These were Barbadian slaves who had come to counter the constraints of their social lives by identification with a larger, Creole, cultural reality. It seems clear that whites had identified the creolization of the Barbadian slave society as a major element in the stability of the slave system. Jack P. Greene, in his incisive study of identity in the colonial Barbadian context, cites mid eighteenth century sources that make precisely that point.15 One source cited notes that by the 1740s Creole slaves constituted almost two-thirds of the total slave population. Moreover, whites perceived that the creolization of the slave population had lessened the need for "a strict Hand to be held over them as their Ancestors did" and felt that this helped to explain the rarity of armed rebellion.16 The shock with which whites received the news that the 1816 rebellion had been headed by "the drivers, tradesmen, and most opulent slaves" serves to indicate that they had incorrectly interpreted the implications of the creolization process. Simply put, the evolution of a Barbadian identity as part of a creolization process was to lead to a self-awareness among slaves that was to challenge the prevailing ideology of white supremacy. The discussion that follows attempts to uncover those realities that were vital in the construction of this Barbadian Creole identity.

The World That Slaves Built One aspect of an emerging Barbadian Creole identity highlighted in the investigations of the 1816 rebellion is that of the "room to manoeuvre" options that were open to slaves. Clearly, the range of options for social mobility within the slave population varied according to the occupational category with field slaves and urban slave labourers at one end of the

Forging a Barbadian Identity

39

scale, and artisans, rangers/drivers and supervisory domestic slaves at the other end. Those at the top of the scale, particularly skilled males, might be granted special privileges such as the occupation of an extra house or provision ground. This much surfaces in the testimony of one ranger, Sandy Waterman. Waterman's testimony is recorded in the deposition of a confessant who was witness to his execution, Reverend George Maynard. He records that Waterman had "amassed some property consisting of two houses and a crop of ginger".17 Moreover, he had requested that this property "remain with his family" and that "his debts should be paid from his property".18 The contrast between Waterman's status as property and his status, in his own perception, as property owner provides a useful perspective of the way that slaves were interpreting the boundaries of their existence. If the rangers and drivers on the rural plantation were invested with such privileges, slaves could hardly fail to interpret these in terms of an enhanced social mobility and as a sign that the intractability of the slave system was a myth. Sure, the reality of white control over the means of repression was ever present but, all around, slaves could also see fractures in the system. It is not fully clear how the self-perception engendered by 'ownership' of resources is factored into an evolving Creole identity. However, to the extent that we can identify such issues in the leadership of the 1816 rebellion, it is hard to dismiss them as irrelevant in the slaves' reading of their sociopolitical environment. Quite apart from the privileges identified, there is the phenomenon of the tradesman (artisan) who was permitted to hire out his or her time, remitting a percentage of the take to the owner. This, too, formed part of the images available to slaves in their interpretation and adaptation of their social conditions. The privilege or practice of hiring out might have been limited on the rural plantation to the off-season, when the demands of sugar production were reduced. However, in the urban context which had a strong interface with the lives and economy of the rural slaves through the local marketing system, hiring out provided greater opportunities for slaves to develop semi-independent lives. Interaction between rural and urban slaves in such activities as the Sunday market provided an ambience in which close inspection of the options offered in a slave society might be possible. For many of the slaveholders in the town, particularly female slaveholders, who possessed small units of slaves, 'hiring out' the time of the

40

The Empowering Impulse

slave often provided the sole source of income. Under the system, slaveholder and slave entered into an informal arrangement in which the slave was relatively free to seek his or her employment. In some cases, slaveholders would advertise the services of their slaves in the local newspaper. Such services could range from that of the skilled artisan to the thinly veiled offer of prostitution services. Under the 'hiring' arrangement the slaves often provided their own housing, food and clothing. In return, a fixed payment was made to the owners. An interesting comment on this system, made with respect to an urban slave community in North America, suggests that this type of arrangement "provided masters [and mistresses] with the profits of slave ownership without the accompanying managerial responsibilities".19 Whatever the advantages it brought these slave owners, the attraction it held for the slaves was clear. It is suggested that slaves actively sought such arrangements because of the following reasons. First, blurred lines of authority could lead to a hirer being unsure of the extent of his or her disciplinary control. Slaves could exploit this to their advantage. Second, hirers might have little interest in the off-work activity of the slaves, thus permitting a higher degree of independent action to the slave than would have been possible under the supervision of the owner. Third, the flexibility created by the blurring of lines of authority often forced both owner and hirer to offer positive incentives to their slaves, to guarantee better compliance with their desires.20 In the Barbadian context, the benefits of the system to owners of small slave units, and to slaves, underlie the fact that over 58 percent of slaves in Bridgetown in the period between 1817 and 1834 could be classified as skilled slaves.21 Skilled slaves could merge with the free black population in the urban environment and use their service skills to ensure survival. The demand for some services was so acute that a runaway slave might even solicit the aid of a white person in his or her efforts to escape detection. Such advertisements as those noted below give an indication of the problem that faced some white owners. On 21 May 1788, John Bryan advertised for the return of his slave, Fortune. Runaway from the Subscriber, a Short, Stout well-made negro man named FORTUNE; he is round shouldered, parrot toed and speaks thick, plays well on

Forging a Barbadian Identity

41

the fiddle, and is frequently seen in the Old-Church Yard Bridge-town. Whoever will apprehend and deliver him . . . shall receive FIVE POUNDS reward, and if any person will given information of his being harboured by any white or free person . . . shall receive FOUR MOIDORES reward . . ,22

In another advertisement of 17 January 1809, Ely Lynch, a merchant of High Street, issued the following warning: Caution The Subscriber forbids any person hiring his Mulatto Man Richard, by trade a joiner, without first applying to him at his Store, the corner of High Street.23

The authorities were not blind to the threat that jobbing and hired slaves could pose to the slave system. As early as 1708 (expanded and amended in 1733 and, again, in 1774) the local Assembly passed an Act entitled "An Act to prohibit the Inhabitants of the Island from Employing, their Negroes or other Slaves, in Selling or Bartering". Under the act, persons were prohibited from employing their slaves in the sale of "enumerated" items such as "Wares, Merchandize, Stock, Poultry, Corn Fruit [and] Roots".24 More specifically, however, the Act went on to state that if any person or persons inhabiting this island, being Owner or Possessor of any Negro or Negroes, or Slave or Slaves, shall permit such Negro or Negroes or other slave or Slaves to go at large, and hire out him, her, or themselves to any person or persons, to follow any trade, occupation or calling and receive the profits thereof to him, her, or themselves, or rendering to his or her said Master or Mistress or to any other person or persons whatsoever for their use, a daily, weekly, or monthly sum of money or any other income, or any manner of gratuity whatsoever, every such person . . . for every such offence shall forfeit the sum of ten pounds current money.25

The provisions of this legislation indicate a concern that goes beyond the mere prohibition of vending imported foodstuff and manufactured items. Elizabeth Fenwick, who lived in Bridgetown between 1814 and 1820, found herself an unwilling participant in the hiring system. Her experience may well be based on the fact that she was a female operating in a system in which the norms of slave behaviour were markedly different from those of the rural patriarchal system. She comments:

42

The Empowering Impulse

Our domestics are Negroes hired from their owners, and paid at what seems to me an extraordinary rate ... They are a sluggish, inert self-willed race of people, apparently inaccessible to gentle and kindly impulses . . . Nothing but the threat of the whip seems capable of driving them to exertion . . ,26

In a further comment on the hired slaves under her charge, she noted that "nothing awes or governs them but the lash of the whip or the threat of being sent back into the fields to labour".27 She was particularly incensed at the action of a female slave who "boasted to her owner's other slaves that she knew that I would not suffer her to be flogged and, therefore, she knew better than to work when she was not made to do it".28 Such a blurring of the lines of authority would appear to be more problematic in the rural environment. Indeed, the absence of the patriarchal authoritarian structure so typical of the rural scene is part of the reason for the introduction of other replacement structures. Indeed, there is constant reference to the employment of the "Common Whipper".29 This reference to the "Common Whipper" identifies a structure of discipline that had no counterpart on the rural plantation. Dickson identifies the person so charged with this responsibility as the "jumper". According to his account, "Owners in the towns, when they punish regularly, employ a fellow called a Jumper."30 There was no guarantee, however, that this could deprive the urban slave population of their insolence. Dickson complained that a servant whom he hired was discovered gambling by a magistrate. This was bad enough, but what was more surprising was that "the fellow not only stood his ground after his companions had disappeared but used some very improper language". A flogging by the "jumper" did not cure the slave of his actions. Moreover, Dickson was upset by the leniency of the magistrate who had only ordered six lashes.31 Such a situation was almost unthinkable in the rural setting but it would seem, from the available evidence, that this response, coloured as it was by the 'appropriate language' was not an isolated incident in the urban context. Another example of the way in which the mores of a slave society were being challenged by modifications permitted by whites is recorded in Dr Frederick Bayley's account of a visit to Barbados in 1826. When his ship entered Carlisle Bay, the captain made a signal for a pilot to come on board. The pilot who responded to this request was apparently an African

Forging a Barbadian Identity

43

who "took possession of the vessel, with as much importance as if he had been a fine, rough old English seaman bearing up Channel". What was even more remarkable was the way he addressed the man at the helm (clearly, a white seaman): "Vy you no teer [steer] [sjteady? Got tarn you, Sir, Vy you no teer teady, I say."32 After untangling the dialect recorded by Bayley, what emerges is an individual whose skills (and the demand for those skills in the port environment) gave him liberties that went against the image of the typical slave. When Bayley inquired about the status of the man, he was informed that he was a jobbing slave who contracted his services out on own-account, remitting a percentage to his master or mistress.33 As Beckles observes, the proto-proletarian activity associated with the urban job market permitted some slaves to "pursue their own material interests". In addition, "By combining their work . .. with their own productive and commercial activities, slaves made economic decisions as 'free persons'."34 The implications of such modifications in the distinctions between white authority and black subordination could not be lost on the African community. In commenting on social conditions in the urban context of colonial Caribbean life, Barry Caspar has pointed out that "within the urban perimeter slaves faced conditions of life different from those on the rural plantation".35 Moreover, these conditions were such that they "nurtured a weakening of bonds of dependence of slaves upon masters".36 Given these observations, it is not surprising that the 1736 Antiguan rebellion which Caspar investigates was led by slaves "who profitted from a great deal of social space and freedom from surveillance".37 As he records, further, "the psychological and sociopolitical base for a largescale plot was perhaps strongest among the numerous artisans, especially in the towns".38 While Caspar's findings are centred in the urban arena, there are enough similarities with the 1816 revolt in Barbados to grab our attention. That the leadership of the rebellion in Barbados is drawn from a similar cadre should alert us to the importance of reconstructing the universe as they perceived it, in an attempt to uncover the contributory factors in an unfolding Barbadian identity, almost a nationality, among slaves there. Another factor in the evolution of the world view of the slaves has to do with the reality of operating in a system built on white male domi-

44

The Empowering Impulse

nance. Despite the ideology of racism that pervaded Caribbean slave society and reduced slaves, legally, to the category of things, white men had few reservations in cohabiting with slave women. The other side of the coin, black men cohabiting with white women, was aggressively restricted. In fact, the punishments for such departures were so severe as to convey the intention of white males to brook no challenge to their authority over the slaves. The following extract portrays, graphically, the view of such actions held by white males. In this case, a male slave, Sharper, was found guilty of the rape and murder of a white resident of Bridgetown, Sarah Sutton. On 10 August 1764, the governor's secretary wrote to the provost marshal concerning Sharper's fate: I am commanded by his Excellency to acquaint you that he entirely approves of the proceedings of the Judgement against the Negro man Sharper for the Rape and Murder of Miss Sarah Sutton: and it is his pleasure that on Monday the 13th Instant the said Negro be carried to the Old Church Yard in Bridgetown there to be chained to a stake to be fixed for that purpose. That his privy Members be then cut off and burned before his Face . . . and that the whole execution may be performed with such Solemnity that it may strike the Spectator with the Greatest Awe and Terror . . ,39

The murder of Sarah Sutton was serious enough but the extraordinary attention to Sharper's genitals, in the extract, reflects a more serious indictment. He had dared to challenge the patriarchal authority of the white male. Such responses helped to make black-white sexual association so perilous that in 1807 Waller, in speaking to a Barbadian about "an intrigue detected between a young lady and one of her father's slaves, An African negro lately imported", referred to it as "a rare occurrence".40 Such realities were factored into the slaves' reading of the socioeconomic options available to them. It is not surprising that the world that they wished to create after the 1816 rebellion was one in which the white male was removed. In the evidence lifted from the confession of slaves interrogated by Conrade Adams Howell, lieutenant colonel of the St Michael's militia, the following is offered: "during the period of the Insurrection ... they intended to put to death all the white men who came into their possession; but they were not to kill the white women who were to be reserved for their own purposes".41

Forging a Barbadian Identity

45

Slaves and Free Coloureds: Views of the Room to Manoeuvre Options In yet another area of the lives of the slaves, namely, their relations with, and perceptions of, the free coloured community, it is possible to reconstruct something of the world view that they were constructing. In fact, throughout the Assembly report, there is constant reference to the influence of free coloureds on the slaves' "easily excited" emotions. Indeed, the evidence offered by some slaves clearly links free coloureds and the leaders of the insurrection into a shared community of interest. The limitation of the views expressed by the white investigators is that they do not accord slaves the intelligence to have conceptualized the rebellion without the leadership of free coloureds. While this paper pays particular attention to the world that slaves were constructing, it is useful to pay attention to one attempt that free coloureds made to challenge the system that locked them into an inferior status. This challenge is in reference to a petition made in 1811 that forms part of a picture of agitation, which may well have informed the later cooperation of freedmen with slaves in the 1816 rebellion. A look, later in the discussion, at an 1824 declaration by a group of free coloureds further exposes the tensions that were clearly factors in the slaves' reading of the "room-to-manoeuvre" options resident in the Barbadian slave society. In 1811 free coloureds petitioned the governor and Assembly on the question of the right to testimony and on the threat which absence of this right posed to their physical security. A reproduction of a major portion of this petition, here, is instructive on freedmen's perceptions of their problems. It will, in addition, be instructive on their perception of the strategies to be used in meeting these problems, and on the self-perception of the urban propertied, who made up the majority of the 172 male petitioners. It states: The Humble Petition of the free coloured inhabitants of said island most humbly sheweth: That your Petitioners do with great embarrassment presume to intrude on your Honourable and Worshipful House; but knowing your desire to ameliorate the Condition of all Classes of the Inhabitants, and particularly to attend to the

46

The Empowering Impulse

Prayers of those who appeal to your Goodness and Justice, are inducements that have, tempted them to approach you. Your Petitioners beg leave to state with proud satisfaction . . . that their general conduct have met with universal approbation, and upon no occasion whatever have they shewn an unwillingness to comply with the Rules and Restrictions that the Legislature have thought proper to lay on them; - some of which they conceive in a West Indian country necessary. Your Petitioners also beg leave to state . . . that they have all been Baptized, and brought up in the Religion of the Established Church of England . . . Your Petitioners with due deference, must, however, beg leave to observe to your Honourable and Worshipful House that there are some laws and Restrictions laid on them that the Legislature of the Sister Colonies have found necessary to adopt for the Government of the same class of persons (free coloureds), and however, those Restrictions may have been necessary a Century and a half ago, they trust that [you] will see the utility of adopting Laws more suitable to the improvement of the present age . . . putting them on the like footing of People of Colour in Jamaica, and the other Sister Colonies of their Royal Master the King. Your Petitioners beg to state . .. that from being debarred of giving Testimony is in a great measure Tolerating the Religion they profess, and making of non effect those laws intended for their protection - for however their own Houses may be considered as [a] place of safety and security; yet it often happens, that the lower class of people intrude themselves there, treat them, and all their female relatives unkindly, and go unpunished because they have no evidence . . ,42 The language of the petition reflects a clear perception of the structure of power in the local community. The use of phrases such as "with great embarrassment" and "appeal to your Goodness and Justice" demonstrate a deference clearly intended to defuse the tension that the receipt of the petition might cause in the Assembly.43 Indeed, when the petition was introduced before the Assembly, it was treated with disdain. The speaker disclaimed any knowledge of its contents, claiming that it "had been put into his hands without any previous communication".44 It is highly unlikely that free coloureds could have introduced such a petition into the House without the speaker's knowledge of the tenor of the document. In this regard, therefore, their attempts to mitigate the impact of their petition on the minds of a hostile, white directorate were appropriate. Another aspect of the petition has to do with the freedmen's identification with the Anglican church. In the church, as in the wider society,

Forging a Barbadian Identity

47

freedmen suffered the discriminations prevalent in a society that viewed any taint of African ancestry as a badge of inferiority. Yet, the freedmen viewed membership in the church as an important signature of their 'free' status. It further separated them from their slave kin. To emphasize their association with the church, therefore, was to strengthen their claim to the rights of freemen. In dealing with the disabilities that lack of testimonial rights conferred on them, freedmen made the point that "from being debarred of giving Testimony is in a great measure Tolerating the Religion they profess, and making of non effect those Laws intended for their protection".45 To link their religious affiliation to their claim for testimonial rights represented a brilliant counter thrust against those who were attempting to deny their freedoms and limit their property holding. It was a direct response to legislation of 1721 that had linked the "profession of the Christian Religion and property holding" as prerequisites for the right to vote, or be voted into, the Assembly or vestry.46 The petition of 1811 is at once a study in political etiquette, as it is a clear statement of the self-consciousness of the free coloureds. It reveals a cadre of politically conscious men who were fully aware of their position in the social order, as they were aware of the possibilities and constraints in the political game they were playing. The stakes were high and they were gambling that, somehow, their appeal would meet the requirements of the heterogenous constituency they were addressing. In that constituency there were men, such as John Poyer, who were vigorously opposed to their interests. On the other hand, there were men, such as John Beckle and James Bovell, who might be persuaded of the advantages of a propertied free coloured class as a buffer against the threat of slave insurrection. Also, there might be professionals, members of the Anglican establishment, who, in their business and legal dealings with freedmen and freedwomen might be persuaded to support the petition. Their assessment was not to be faulted. The petition was shelved for eight months but the fact that it was not rejected out of hand and that three persons voted for it provides some support for this view. In their references to the situation in other colonies, freedmen illustrated their awareness and thorough investigation of the legal issues relevant to their situation. They also exhibited an awareness of the class issues involved in their struggle. To refer to the "lower class of people" in

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The Empowering Impulse

preference to "lower class of whites" was to remove the issue of race from the debate and to claim common ground between the propertied of all races. Again, this was a brilliant reading of the dialectics of the socioeconomic situation in Barbados. It is a testimony to the self-perception of the free coloureds. Since the vast majority of the propertied free coloureds were urban residents, it is also possible to view this class identification, on their part, as an outcome of the peculiar socioeconomic conditions in the urban complex. The right to testify was not extended to freedmen before 1817.47 Paradoxically, the loyalty of most of the freedmen community during the 1816 slave rebellion was a prime factor in the decision to extend this right by the Council and the Assembly. However, the contribution of the freedmen and freedwomen, themselves, to these changes cannot be overlooked. When the decision did come, it excluded from any consideration a large group of free coloureds. Those not baptized in the Church of England and those who were manumitted abroad after 1817 were not included, as were those whose manumission had taken place less than one year before the time of testimony. The major beneficiaries were those who had signed the petition of 1811, as baptized members of the church.48 Clearly, slaves had to contend with two contrasting views of the free coloured community. On the one hand, there were those free coloureds who, as slave owners themselves or for other reasons, identified with the white landed elite. On the other hand, there were free coloureds who maintained close connections with slave kin and who were under no illusions about their status in a society driven by notions of white racial superiority. While the following reference is dated after the 1816 rebellion, it is illustrative of the dichotomy which existed. In 1824, 373 freedmen published a signed address in the Globe newspaper. The address was based on a controversy that had erupted between this group and a smaller group of twenty freedmen.49 The group of twenty, led by a prominent coloured planter, Jacob Belgrave, had expressed its loyalty to the local Assembly. This loyalty was expressed at a time when there were growing fears of a missionaryemancipationist threat to the slaveocracy and it expressed the group's opposition to emancipation.50 The address published in the Globe, was a disclaimer to this, and it denied the right of the smaller group to speak for the body of free coloureds.51

Forging a Barbadian Identity

49

Belgrave had been among the group of 172 freedmen who had signed the 1811 petition and it is not clear when the break developed with the larger body of free coloureds. However, there is an indication of a divergence in the political philosophies of those who were more closely identified with the rural plantocracy and those who were urban based. On the publication of the address in the Globe, the Assembly had summoned the leading members of its drafting committee and questioned them on its origins. One of the witnesses, Samuel Collymore, was called in and his evidence offers an insight into the conflict between the two groups. He reported: About three weeks before the Address was presented to the House, I sent to Mr Belgrave . . . when I stated to him that I had been spoken to by some of the free People to Petition for their Rights and Privileges, and I recommended Mr Belgrave not to keep himself aloof on the occasion, if it should be set on foot - Belgrave asked me whether I did not think it an improper time to ask for them, and recommended me to think of it, an that I would find it so;- the following day I saw Mr Montefiore ... and had some conversation on the same subject, when Mr Monten'ore said that he thought any time proper to ask for our Rights and Privileges, as the House did not wait for any particular time when they wished to do any thing against us . . ,52

The interplay between Collymore and Belgrave reveals a split between those who were prepared to extend the boundaries of protest and those who wished to work within the boundaries imposed by the planter Assembly. In presenting his evidence, Collymore showed his mettle and indicated the new mood that was enveloping the majority of freedmen. In answer to a question from the speaker as to whether he approved of the Globe address, Collymore replied that he did. When questioned as to what he understood by "Rights and Privileges", he made it unequivocally clear that he understood it to include the "right to elect and be elected". The speaker attempted to draw Collymore, further, on his political ideology and that of the 373 signatories. In response to the question, "Are you aware of any Rights enjoyed by your forefathers which you do not now enjoy?" He replied, "certainly not". Immediately following this exchange, a Mr Griffith probed further: "Do you mean to say that you have a natural and reasonable claim to those Rights and Privileges?"53 Collymore refused to be drawn further but the question reveals that the forthright tenor and political implications of his responses were not lost on the questioners.

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The Empowering Impulse

Collymore's responses were fully in harmony with the sentiments expressed in the Globe address. In that document, the signatories made it clear that "as British subjects", they had an incontrovertible claim to "certain privileges" that had been denied them by the local Assembly. In addition, they stressed their "dutiful and loyal attachment to His Majesty".54 This line of attack was designed to widen the parameters of the struggle. Clearly, the Assembly could not be trusted to ameliorate their condition. Moreover, the actions of the Belgrave group threatened to undermine the solidarity of the free coloured community, and its alliance with a reactionary Assembly had to be countered by an appeal to those agencies whose authority exceeded that of the local Assembly. Indeed, one of the things that aroused the ire of the Assembly was the fact that the counter-address was addressed to the governor. The leaders of the counterattack on Belgrave and his cohorts were unmistakably urban based. Samuel Collymore was a merchant who owned a vessel trading to Martinique, St Lucia and Tobago. Renn Jordan, John Durant, William Jordan, Caesar Jordan, Renn Collymore and John Edward Shafe, who were identified as members of the steering committee that drafted the address in the Globe, were all property owners and merchants in the Bridgetown community.55 It is not surprising that they might perceive their interests as being distinct to that of a rural-based Belgrave faction If slaves had to factor into their world view the issue of white-free coloured interaction against their interest, as well as that free coloured element which could be co-opted into their struggle, they also had to bear in mind the possibility of fifth-columnist activity. For example, after the 1816 rebellion, an affidavit was issued by two justices of the peace, Revd Thomas Harrison Orderson and Renn Hampden stating that Personally came and appeared before Nathaniel Roach and of the parish of Saint Philip in the Island, Planter, and George James Ganes of the parish of Saint Philip in the Island above said Planter being two credible white men and Persons well known to us and worthy of good credit and made oath... that they the Deponents perfectly know and are well acquainted with Robert, a mulatto slave, the property of Cholmley Roach . . . the said Robert on Easter Monday the fifteenth of April last the time of the Rebellion and Insurrection of the slaves on the island of Barbados and that the said Robert did join a party of the Christ Church Battalion of Militia of this Island who attacked a Body of the Insurgents at Lowthers

Forging a Barbadian Identity

51

Plantation . . . and that the said Robert did engage and courageously behave himself at the time of Battle and did actually kill one of the enemy.56

The affidavit ends by declaring Robert to be a free man under the terms of an act of 1807 that offered freedom to any slave who behaved "courageously against the Enemy in time of Invasion". That the circumstances of the 'Bussa' rebellion hardly constituted an invasion by an enemy appears to be immaterial to the aims of the two justices. It was enough that Robert had sided with his white masters.

Postscript The 1816 rebellion offers important views into the issues that slaves factored into their own creolization. Perhaps the greatest testimony to the 'Barbadianization' of the slaves experience comes in the perceptions of some of those who suffered the consequences of their freedom attempt. After the rebellion ended with a bloodbath of revenge (over a hundred were executed according to some sources), 124 of the rebels were transported to Honduras. Later, in 1819, many of these were exiled to Sierra Leone. From there, in 1841, some of the survivors sent a memorandum to Queen Victoria, begging to be returned to Barbados, "the place of our nativity".57 It seems that their Barbadian nationality had been borne as a badge of cultural identity. The governor of Sierra Leone was disposed to their return on the grounds that they were an orderly and well-conducted body of individuals and, moreover, seemed "to have no desire to emigrate to any other Colony".58

Conc lusions Barbadian slaves operated within a system that sought to deny them individuality and to subject their thought to the dictates of white authority. However, the events of 1816 permit us, within limits, to unravel a world in which the slaves had taken the initiative in constructing a world view of their own making. In the privileges grudgingly granted by whites to their skilled slaves; in their interaction with free coloureds and free

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The Empowering Impulse

blacks; in their reading of the nature of white male authority as a key factor in their suppression, a factor that needed to be neutralized if success was to be attained; in their understanding of the relationship between their own struggle and that of emancipationists in Europe, their local battle and that of the revolutionaries in St Domingue, Barbadian slaves had demonstrated a mature, sophisticated grasp of their own self-importance and hence, their 'identity'.

Notes 1.

2.

3.

See, for details on the early history of Barbados, Neville Connell, A Short History of Barbados (Bridgetown: The Barbados Museum and Historical Society, 1959); Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves (London: W.W. Norton, 1973); F.C. Innes, 'Th Pre-Sugar Era of European Settlement in Barbados", Journal of Caribbean History \ (1970): 1-22; JohnPoyer, The History of Barbados (1808; reprint, London: Frank Cass, 1971), 1-21; Richard Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery (London: Caribbean Universities Press, 1974), 124-47. See Hilary McD. Beckles, "Plantation Production and White Proto-Slavery: White Indentured Servants and the Colonization of the English West Indies 16241645", The Americas 41, no. 3 (1985): 34-35. For discussion on the changes taking place in the structure of the Barbados labour market in this period, see ibid., 21^15; Hilary McD. Beckles, "Black Men in White Skins: The Formation of a White Proletariat in West Indian Slave Society", Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 15, no. 1 (October 1986): 5-21; Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, 67-71; Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery, 131-33.

4. Hilary McD. Beckles, Afro-Caribbean Women and Resistance to Slavery in Barbados (London: Karnak House, 1988), 6-8. 5.

See, for example, Karl Watson, The Civilised Island, Barbados: A Social History, 1750-1816 (Barbados: Caribbean Graphics, 1979). This work supports a view of free coloured leadership and downplays the leadership contribution of the slaves. On the other hand, for a view that places slaves in the forefront of leadership, see Hilary McD. Beckles, Bussa: The 1816 Barbados Revolution (Cave Hill and Bridgetown, Barbados: Department of History, University of the West Indies, and the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, 1998). See also Hilary McD. Beckles, Black Rebellion in Barbados: The Struggle Against Slavery, 1627-1838 (Bridgetown: Antilles Publications, 1984).

Forging a Barbadian Identity

53

6.

The Report from a Select Committee of the House Assembly, Appointed to Inquire into the Origin, Causes, and Progress of the Late Insurrection (Barbados: House of Assembly, 1816). 7. Ibid., 28. 8. Ibid., 34. 9. Communication of Colonel Codd, Commander of the St Ann's Garrison to Governor fames Leith, 25 April 1816, Colonial Office (CO) 28/84. See also Michael Craton, Empire Enslavement and Freedom in the Caribbean (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Handle Publishers; London: James Currey; New York: Marcus Wiener, 1997), 286. A similar observation is made by Lieutenant Colonel Conrade Adams Howell in his examination by the Select Committee of the House of Assembly established to investigate the rebellion. See Report from a Select Committee, 57. 10. George Pinckard, Notes on the West Indies, quoted in Pedro L.V. Welch, "In Search of a Barbadian Identity", Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 11 (1992): 39. 11. Ibid. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

Trelawney Wentworth, The West India Sketch Book, 2 vols. (London 1834). Ibid., 280. Ibid. See Jack P. Greene, "Changing Identity in the British Caribbean: Barbados as a Case Study", in Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, edited by Nicholas Canny and Anthony Pagden (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 213-67. Ibid., 258. Report from a Select Committee, 37. Ibid. Paul D. Lack, "An Urban Slave Community: Little Rock, 1831-1862", Arkansas Historical Quarterly 4, no. 3 (1982): 263. Ibid., 263-64. BarryW. Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean 1807-1834 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 232-35. Barbados Mercury, 21 May 1788. Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Gazette, 17 January 1809. Richard Hall, Acts Passed in the Island of Barbados (London 1764), 185. Ibid., 186.

26. A.F. Webb, ed., The Fate of the Fenwicks (London: Methuen, 1927), 163. 27. Ibid., 168. 28. Ibid., 175.

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The Empowering Impulse

29. 30.

Hall, Acts Passed, 355. William Dickson, Letters on Slavery (1789; reprint, Westport, Conn.: Negro Universities Press, 1970), 16.

31. 32.

Ibid., 17. Frederick Bayley, Four Years Residence in the West Indies (London: William Kidd, 1833), 25. Ibid., 26. Hilary McD. Beckles, "An Economic Life of Their Own: Slaves as Commodity Producers and Distributors in Barbados", Slavery and Abolition 12, no. 1 (1991): 31. David Barry Caspar, Bondmen and Rebels (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 107. Ibid., 107. Ibid., 230. Ibid., 233-34. Letter book of Governor Pinfold, 10 August 1764. John A. Waller, A Voyage in the West Indies (London: Sir Richard Phillips, 1820), 96. Examination of Conrade Adams Howell, Lieutenant Colonel of the St Michael's or Royal Regiment of Militia, in Report from a Select Committee, 57. Minutes of the Barbados Assembly, 27 February 1811. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. See Hall, Acts Passed, 252-69. See HA3/25/81 (Barbados Archives) (transcript of the minutes of the Assembly, 7 January 1817). A letter from the free coloured representatives expressing thanks is found in HA3/25/87-88. Minutes of the Barbados Assembly, 27 February 1811. Minutes of the Barbados Assembly, 3 and 4 February 1824. See also Jerome Handler, The Unappropriated People: Freedmen in the Slave Society of Barbados (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 90-92. Handler, The Unappropriated People, 92. This disclaimer is issued in Minutes of the Barbados Assembly, 3 and 4 February 1824. The disclaimer is in the form of an address sent to the governor, Sir Henry Warde. Minutes of the Barbados Assembly, 3 and 4 February 1824. Minutes (see note 51).

33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

48. 49.

50. 51.

52. 53.

Forging a Barbadian Identity

55

54. 55.

Ibid. The urban origins of the leaders of the 1824 counterattack are established by noting the evidence of their professional and occupational background in statements before the Assembly, and by cross-referencing the names of the petitioners with the names of free coloureds whose properly holdings appear in the St Michael's Vestry Levy Books 1811-30.

56.

Affidavit of Thomas Orderson and Renn Hampden, Deeds Register, Barbados Archives.

57.

I am indebted to Hilary Beckles for bringing my attention to this evidence. Extracts from the memorial are quoted in Beckles, Bussa: The 1816 Rebellion in Barbados, 43-45. Affidavit of Thomas Orderson and Renn Hampden.

58.

3 Samuel Jackman Prescod

GEORGE A.V.

BELLE

Introduction This study is based on work originally done to identify the early postemancipation political economy and political development of Barbados. In addition, I am making use here of much of the data collected then, to initiate the delineation and assessment of the political thought of major political actors in Barbados. In early postemancipation society, Samuel Jackman Prescod is, without dispute, the dominant political personality. Prescod was a coloured Barbadian, the illegitimate son of a free coloured woman and a white planter. He was born in 1806 and was at the time of emancipation, and for years after, the editor of the militant and radical newspaper the Liberal. He and his paper were regarded at the spokesmen of the coloured and black underclasses in their struggles against plantocracy. He was the first black man to be elected for the Barbados House of Assembly on 6 June 1843. Prescod died on 26 September 1871. Prescod was engaged in a number of campaigns to defend the civil rights of the recently emancipated black population. I have used these campaigns to identify and outline, the foundation and essential character of his political ideas, programmes, ideology, philosophy and world view. 56

Samuel Jackman Prescod

57

In my research in the 1970s on the political economy and political development of Barbados, one aspect of the method I applied for purposes of analysis was to select nodal points of heightened political activity across the span of time from the abolition of slavery to the early postindependence period.1 The first of such nodal points selected was the period 1834-43. Samuel Jackman Prescod (1806-71) was a major political actor in the period 1834-43. The data collected on the activities of Prescod for the purpose of that study led me to a view that, at some point in the future, this data could provide a basis for the delineation of his political thought. I felt then, as I feel now, that political scientists in the Caribbean should see the construction and publication of works on the political thought of important political actors in the Caribbean as one of their tasks. The optimal way in which comprehensive and definitive studies in this field could arise or could be initiated in a context of regional studies would be by the appearance of studies conducted at a micro or at least territorial level. At the territorial level the foundation could best be built upon assessments of the contributions to political thought of individual actors within the territory. Out of these studies could emerge a detailed West Indian political thought. There are, of course, political luminaries out of the Caribbean who have made an impact and have been recognized internationally for their contributions. Marcus Garvey, Jose Marti, Frantz Fanon, Aime Cesaire, C.L.R. James, Walter Rodney, for example, indicate clearly that there is already an entity recognizable as West Indian political thought. Work such as that done by G.K. Lewis and Denis Benn bears this out.2 Lewis essentially spoke to the Latin tradition of Caribbean political thought, the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, and Benn essentially addresses the Englishspeaking Caribbean. Both would easily concede that their work could be extended, but this must await more extensive microstudies. G.K. Lewi was often a path breaker for political studies in the region and his work in this field stands as a model for what needs to be completed.3 It is with the intention of contributing to Caribbean political studies that I justify an interest in laying a basis for the definition of the political thought of Prescod. I expect this work to provide a start for a fuller and more definitive treatment of Prescod's ideals, sufficient to lead to studies on other Barbadian political thinkers. Methodologically, however, in regard to my expectations, this study is experimental and a beginning,

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laying the foundation for more expansive work, and this particular paper is the base element of that initiative. To search for Prescod's contribution, it was necessary to analyse the character of the attempt by the Barbadian plantocracy to maintain a condition of slave relations even with the passage of the Abolition Act. On the other hand, it was also necessary to illustrate the struggle conducted by the former slave class to assert their rights as free men. The pivotal role of SJ. Prescod in the exchange is assessed here. His initiation and leadership of campaigns in defence of democratic and civil rights is identified, notably the campaign against the Masters and Servants Act, his campaign for emigration rights, and his campaign for the widening of the franchise. The significant part played by the colonial power Britain - in these activities is also assessed. In discussing these events, the study also provides a picture of the political, social and economic relations in the early postemancipation Barbadian society. Further, the study contributes to an understanding of the character of the struggle for political development in Barbados, in the earliest years of postslavery society. The study concludes, inter alia, that from the earliest point in the development of a free society in Barbados, important aspects in embryonic form of what the character of the politics of development was likely to be were becoming manifest. I suggest that an equivocal and opportunist position relative to the way in which development should proceed can be identified in the relationship of the Colonial Office to the planter government. I argue that the policy of the British government indicates the application of a long-term imperialist strategy concerned with the survival of the empire and the dominance of British economic interests. On the other hand, the study concludes that the relationship of the planters to the British government revealed the confidence of that class in themselves as a ruling class. The planters showed an independent attitude relative to the British government and a confidence in their ability to handle the local situation without the interference of the British. This perspective by the Barbadian plantocracy was not in the least bit undermined by the Act of Emancipation and was rooted in their contempt of the political capacity of the Barbadian underclasses. From a somewhat different perspective, this contempt for the political capacity of the masses was shared by the British ruling class.

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In contradistinction, the study reveals, that the non-white sector of Barbadian society demonstrated in this postemancipation period, at least in its leading spokesman, remarkable political maturity and astuteness. I argue that the masses were conscious of what liberty must mean. I note the presence of consciousness of the importance of class unity, political association, defence of basic human rights and a regional identity with similar struggles in the other British Caribbean colonies. The identification of these features gives us a character base of the conditions informing Prescod's outlook. The study argues that the political leadership of the underclasses showed remarkable confidence in the face of the balance of political power, which is not in their favour. They established a political press and were prepared to formulate a programme for societal change. They conducted critical analysis of the ideology of the plantocracy; they opposed sophistry and despotism and demanded political democracy. In my view, out of this we can indeed start to capture also the political typology of the ideas of Prescod, his ideology, philosophy and world view.

The Initial Political Implications of Emancipation We start our task in this study by identifying the earliest mechanisms and stratagems devised by the ruling classes to foster the retention of the old order, and the earliest forms of resistance practised by the underclasses to achieve for themselves a limited freedom after emancipation. The object here is to identify early aspects of a politics of development in Barbados and, through this, the contribution of Prescod to this politics of development and its definition. The abolition of slavery in Barbados represented, undoubtedly, a victory over the plantocracy. However, the extent of that victory was qualified by the role of the British ruling class in the abolition. That class, in order to preempt the probability of abolition from below, legislated slavery out of existence from above. They therefore abolished slavery mainly on their terms and to serve their long-term interests. The enslaved class never had the opportunity to abolish the slave order on its terms. Not surprisingly, then, the character of abolition had immediate consequences for the character of the immediate postemancipation struggles

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against the ruling classes by the ex-slaves. Those struggles, in general terms, were in defence of the limited victory won and to prevent the subtle, and sometimes unsubtle, reimposition and retention by the planters of relations in postemancipation Barbados that facilitated the persistence of slave relations, even though the slave order had been declared legally abolished. It is evident that the character of the freedom of 1 August 1834 did not elude the coloured and black underclasses. S.J. Prescod, the most articulate, politically astute and active member of that sector of the society, and the editor of the Liberal newspaper, speaking to his black compatriots on Emancipation Day, was crystal clear: "Fellow men and Friends! I have lived to see you declared free men and I hope . . . to live to see you made free."4 A little over a week later, addressing himself to the ruling class, he reiterated the point: "Gentlemen, you cannot require me to inform you, that it is not by declaring people free, that they are made free in reality but that it is by conferring on them such privileges as put some proportion of the power which you now exclusively enjoy into their hands."5 Even though most of the former slave-owning class had bitterly opposed the abolition of slavery, the apprenticeship period had given them time to internalize the strategy of the imperial ruling class. The essential features of this strategy could be summarized as saying that rather than have another Haiti, legislate and thus contain and control a precise transformation of change without changing the advantage of local and imperial capital. In the Thome and Kimball report of 1836 many formerly antiabolition planters were noted to be quite pleased with the working of the apprenticeship system and were apparently no longer apprehensive about granting freedom to all the apprentices as soon as possible.6 The problem arose between the local and imperial ruling classes in determining the degree of control over the transformation and in their common arrogance in assuming that the underclasses would play no significant part in that determination. The Barbadian plantocracy was intent on being most precise. Two months before the apprenticeship system came to an end, the secretary of state for the colonies was sent the following four acts from the Barbadian House of Assembly for his authorization:7 (1) an act to authorize the appointment of rural constables;

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(2) an act to regulate the hiring of servants and the more expeditious recovery of wages by them; (3) a vagrancy act; (4) an act for prevention of tumults and riotous assembly. The Barbados solicitor general, R. Bowcher Clarke in explaining the first act stated: This is a very necessary law and its effects will be most beneficial... it will tend to encourage and elevate the emancipated apprentice by investing him with authority . . . it will be the means of preserving peace in the negro villages . . . . . . and materially tend to check the spirit of litigation with which the negro character is strongly imbued... it will at all times afford a small body of constables ready to act in case of any riot or combination for unlawful purposes, who being taken from among the labourers themselves will be the most effective and least objectionable force to bring against them . . .

Clause 1 of the act authorized justices of the peace to appoint two constables for every plantation of one hundred persons and one if the number of persons amounted to more than twenty-five but less than two hundred.8 With respect to the second act, the Hiring of Servants Act, later to be notoriously known as the Contract Act, Solicitor General Bowcher Clark was of the opinion that "[t]his Act is one of great importance to the well-working of free labour in this colony ". Clause 1 of the act stated that every general hiring was to be considered a hiring for one year, unless a contract is made to the contrary; that is, provided that "there be no credible witness to prove this contract or written agreement on the subject, one week's continuance in service shall constitute a hiring for one year".9 What the plantocracy was endeavouring to achieve here was a rapid passage of acts that would ensure expansion of the instruments of repression and control of the planter state and the building in of legal guarantees, by means of the Contract Act, to ensure the survival of the plantation system before the Emancipation Act ending apprenticeship had come into force on 1 August 1838. Under slavery the problem was different: the slave being the chattel of the planter, his life or death was his master's pleasure. That relationship had its dangers for slave and master alike, and was an important factor in the removal of slavery. The objective now for the

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planter was to retain as many benefits and advantages of slavery, while declaring to the slave that he was legally free. The planter thus wanted strong legal powers of state repression to keep the former slave in his place socially and politically, and he needed the former slave to remain on the plantation and provide labour. Otherwise, the collapse of the plantation economy and the economic power of the planter was inevitable. Thus, these four acts two months before emancipation had particular importance to the planter class. Since an important aspect of the transformation was legal - let us say, the law replacing the whip - it was important to increase the confidence of the underclasses in the judiciary. The Thome and Kimball report certainly illustrated there was little confidence in the police magistrates and the special juries by the underclasses, since the police magistrates were mostly planters themselves and there were high property requirements to qualify for the juries. For the underclasses the law was planter law, the magistrates were planter magistrates, and the jury box was filled with planters. On 21 July 1838 the Assistant Court of Appeal Act was sent to the Colonial Office for authorization and to supposedly impress the masses that there would be redress for the imbalances in the judiciary. Indication of the Colonial Office's annoyance at the vulgarity of the methods of planter government comes out in the earliest of responses to the social transformation taking place in Barbados. This aspect of the relationship between the Barbadian and the British ruling circles was to be a persistent feature through the postslavery experience of Barbadian politics until the end of planter government in 1946. This annoyance, it can be said, was rooted in the threat such vulgarity of method represented for an overall long-term strategy of imperial control. With respect to the Hiring of Servants Act, Lord Glenelg, secretary of state for the colonies responded: These rules are not drawn up with the brevity and clearness which are peculiarly desirable in law regulating the rights and duties of one of these relations in life in which the great mass of society will be placed toward each other . . . Her Majesty's Government are of the opinion that for the present at least the emancipated population of the West Indies should not be permitted to bind themselves by such contracts for more than one year and that every such contract when made to endure beyond one month should be reduced in writing and signed by the parties in the presence, if possible of a stipendiary magistrate who should

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be required to subscribe it in attestation to the fact that the servant correctly understood the meaning and effect of the agreement. The continuance in service without objection for a week, cannot reasonably be construed in to an implied contract to serve for a year.10

In the first place the offences for which the servant could be punished were defined, in his opinion, by language of "far too great latitude and vagueness". In the second place, because the jurisdiction was vested in any two justices of the parish, he felt that it was natural to expect the emancipated population not to consider such parochial justices as impartial administrators of such a law. Then again, the justices had no power to commit an employer for any fault or misconduct of the employer toward his servant, except for the nonpayment of wages. Further still, the faults of servants could be punished by imprisonment, stoppage of wages or dismissal; but whatever the infringement of the master the servant could not break the contract. Finally, with respect to the right of appeal to the governor in council, Lord Glenelg felt that this was "a remedy only in name". For it could only be used in the case of commitment, where the want of remedy would be most severely felt and in other instances the formalities involved would be "impossible for an ignorant servant to observe without legal assistance, which assistance he will not have the power of producing".11 With respect to the Vagrancy Act, the colonial secretary was again not impressed. The large powers which in this country are confided to the magistracy for the punishment of vagrants, are kept in check by many circumstances which have no existence in the West Indies. If however, this Act were confided to stipendiary Magistrates, they would perhaps be open to no conclusive objection. But the case is different when such powers are entrusted to Justices of the Peace who are personally engaged in the agriculture and manufacture of the colony, and who have so recently stood in a relation to the labouring class, which must for a time tend to produce in the mind of that class some degree of mistrust and suspicion.12

On the Court of Appeal Act, the Colonial Office was not satisfied that it would achieve the object for which it was said to be intended, that is, an "effective protection to the emancipated class". For the secretary of state, the act was "at most ineffectual and therefore innoxious" and a bad precedent for the West Indies, which might, in fact, "form an inseparable

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bar to the introduction of a different system better calculated for the protection of the emancipated labouring class".13 On these grounds, the Colonial Office disallowed these three acts. The Act for Rural Constables and the Act for the Prevention of Tumults and Riotous Assemblies were apparently not as inconvenient. But even had plantocracy got its way fully, it would not have been satisfied with regard to its physical security; it intended to make assurance doubly sure. It enacted a militia bill, with the intent of restricting its membership to the white propertied sector of the society -with debarment of others, but with a tax on those others to pay for being excused duty in this planter militia. The purpose of this tax being to finance a police force that would become necessary because of the small size of the militia.14 This was planter sophistry par excellence. Solicitor General Bowcher Clarke, rationalizing planter interest to the Colonial Office, argued that the good order of the society and the prosperity of the colony would be placed at the mercy of a population, composed of recently emancipated slaves, who although they now are well disposed towards their employers and loyal to Her Majesty might soon cease to be so and become the prey of the disaffected . . . in consequence of the non-existence of a Militia they might infringe with impunity and attack with success the right and properties of their peaceable and more wealthy fellow subjects.15

Apparently the planter interests were aware that there was some equivocation over this question in the Colonial Office, and to remind them of it they got Governor MacGregor, in his comment on the bill, to refer to the fact that a former British solicitor general, Lord Stanley, had commented in 1833 on the usefulness of a reformed Militia Act, giving full credit to the legislature of Barbados for having no other object in view, than the prevention of the inconvenience and danger which might arise from the indiscriminate admission of the whole population to the right of carrying arms I shall be prepared to advise His Majesty to consider favourably any Act which may be presented for this sanction .. .16

The planter assessment of the Colonial Office seemed to be right. The British fumbled, did not immediately authorize the bill, claiming legal technicalities arising in who should appoint and dismiss the adjutant of the militia.

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Important and significant for Barbados at this early stage of its political development was the fact that the leading political activist and spokesmen of the black underclasses, as featured in contributions to the Liberal newspaper and personified in Samuel lackman Prescod, were unequivocal in their understanding and grasp of what the planter class was up to. For them, this was the abolition of slavery with one hand and its reimposition with the other, and this before the legality of abolition had even started to become reality. In the cane fields, the masses equally declared their unequivocalness. With the passage of Emancipation Day, the labourers had been confronted by their new planter employers with the condition of the Hiring of Servants Act. The labourers, making quick use of new rights and new weapons, refused to sign any contract and strike action spread through the plantations. The Barbadian, a newspaper representing planter interest, was hysterical: The bad feeling we noticed in our last paper is spreading through those very estates where there is least reason to expect it. Striking work is spreading like wild fire, who would have expected that people accustomed to the kindest, most humane liberal treatment, are refusing to work, absolutely refusing to enter into any contract for wages, which may subject them if they violate it to be taken before a magistrate, and yet claiming to hold possession of their houses and land! . . . There is not only passive resistance, but it has come to our knowledge that there is an insolent bearing on the part of some of the labourers - a sort of defiance in their manners - which calls for some prompt and energetic measures on the part of the magistracy of the island.17

The persisting slave master mentality of the editor of the Barbadian was just making its natural response. It could not understand what liberty must mean to an emancipated class. The labourers did, and Prescod, writing in the Liberal, exhorted them to work, but not under any contract that could lead to the withholding of their liberty, such as one "compelling you to work when you would rather no [sic]".18 Further, an important initial reaction to the stratagems of the plantocracy by politically active sections of the underclasses was summarized in the memorial sent to the secretary of state for the colonies by Prescod on behalf of the "Central Negro Emancipation Committee" - a memorial that demonstrated remarkable political astuteness and maturity by the

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early leaders of the Barbadian working people. Prescod wrote to Lord Glenelg that Constituted as society is at the present moment in the colonies with a large body of labouring classes who have been long and cruelly oppressed, and who have just emerged into a state of freedom, on the one hand; and with an influential and powerful body of proprietors or their representatives, - full of fears jealousies, and prejudices, and still retaining to a great extent the power to oppress - on the other - the committee feel that they should not discharge the duties which they are solemnly pledged, did they not exercise the utmost vigilance to detect and use every legitimate and constitutional means to prevent any attempt to reduce the liberated slaves, either legally or practically under a new state of bondage, and thus to deprive them of the blessings of that freedom which has been purchased and which has been guaranteed to them by the solemn decisions of the British Legislature.19 In the light of the above, and after analysing the rights declared to be those of the emancipated class after 1 August 1838, Prescod, on behalf of the committee, outlined in four summary points what he understood this must mean for Barbadian society after 1 August 1838: 1.

2.

3.

4.

First, the apprenticeship of the emancipated slaves was to be immediately succeeded by personal freedom in that full and unlimited sense in which it is enjoyed by all other British subjects. That the governors of the colonies were precluded, both by the imperial statute, and the express instructions received from the home government from giving their sanction to any ordinance perpetuating or continuing after the termination of the apprenticeship, any distinction or exclusions arising out of a previous servile condition. That all laws, ordinances or orders in council that contravened the imperial statute, or were repugnant to any part thereof, were ipso facto, null and void, and of no effect. That the British legislature and Her Majesty's Government were most solemnly pledged to carry into full and complete effect the great measure for the entire abolition of slavery throughout the colonies; and to secure to the enfranchised bondsmen all the rights and all the privileges of freedom.

In concluding remarks in the memorial, Prescod spoke as follows to Lord Glenelg: That the majority of the colonies have abolished the apprenticeship system, and thus destroyed the last vestige of legalized slavery is a matter for unfeigned

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thankfulness; that they have clogged the infant liberties of the negroes with unjust and illegal restrictions and thus destroyed the grace of this act, is a matter for deep regret. The committee will not stop to inquire into the motives which induced the local legislature to terminate the existence of slavery - whether they arose from a sense of justice or whether from the manifest in policy and danger of its continuance; but they cannot fail to remark in the legislative acts which preceded it, and which had in view of its termination as well as in those measures which accompanied and succeeded it a fixed determination to coerce labour under the new system and as much as possible to bring the negro freedom under the tyranny of his old master. In a recent publication on 'The Permanent Laws of the Emancipated colonies", understood to be drawn up by a gentleman of great legal ability, of high character, and of unquestionable accuracy it is demonstrated that the laws which were to come into operation immediately on the expiry of the apprenticeship, are of the most objectionable character, and "fully establish the fact, not only of a future intended to infringe the rights of the emancipated classes but of the actual commencement and extensive progress of a colonial system for that purpose". The object of the laws on which he animadverts is to circumscribe the market for free labour to prohibit the possession or sale of ordinary articles of produce of sale, the obvious intention of which to confine the emancipated classes to a course of agriculture servitude - to give the employers a monopoly of labour, and to keep down various modes of apprenticeship for the purpose of prolonging praedial service, together with many evils of coercion, the design of which is to create a perpetual surveillance over the liberated negroes, and to establish a legislative despotism . . . The Committee beg most earnestly to call Your Lordship's immediate attention not only to those laws which have been recently sent home for the allowance of the Crown, but also to those which may have received that high sanction, and which in their operation, may be found restrictive of the liberty of their Negro fellow subjects with a view either to their immediate repeal, or to their careful revision; and they most respectfully entreat, that Your Lordship will steadily refuse to advise the Crown to sanction any law proceeding from the colonies, which in any measure infringes their constitutional rights. The law regulating the elective franchise in most of the colonies as well as those which respect elections generally, claim Your Lordship's most serious attention as affecting the privileges of the emancipated classes. The Militia laws are open to the most serious objections and not only as imposing the most onerous duties and expenses on those least able to bear them, but as respectable and industrious Europeans and as totally unnecessary for the preservation of the public peace.

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The Trespass laws of the colonies are most cruelly constructed and may become great engines of repression under the new system whilst those which respect offences against persons and property are open to the worst description of abuse. Other classes of laws might be specified the combined operation of which in conjunction with those already named, will leave the emancipated classes but the semblance of freedom without its substantial privileges and immunities. The Committee cannot but regard with the greatest suspicion, the attempts of the colonial legislatures, under various colourable pretences to pass the most objectionable laws, in view of the termination of the apprenticeship; and of the insidious manner in which clauses, respecting the liberties of the emancipated classes, and enlarging the powers of the local authorities, are introduced into laws nominally passed for other purposes. Most of these laws are now in full operation in consequence of the termination of the apprenticeship and they cannot fail to inflict innumerable evils on the labouring classes, administered as they will be by the Proprietary Body, or their agents holding commissions until disallowed by the Crown to guard against such legislation in future, to exert a wholesome and constitutional control over the decisions of the Imperial Parliament, to fulfill the repeated pledges of the Government, the Committee humbly conceive that every law passed in the colonies should contain a suspending clause, or, at all events, that the period at which such laws shall be made to take effect, shall be so remote as to afford her Majesty in Council ample time for exercising her Majesty's prerogative of disallowance if that course should be thought necessary; and that the Executive in the colonies should be instructed to consider this an inflexible rule for their future guidance. In making this statement the Committee begs to assure Your Lordship, that they will rely with confidence on Her Majesty's Government, that they will in the legitimate exercise of the high powers with which they are invested, perfect the great work of negro freedom and allow only such measures to become the permanent laws of the colonies as shall secure to the emancipated slaves, in the fullest sense the unrestricted disposal of their labour - the complete security of person and property - and the full employment of the right of conscience.20

It would seem to be the case, then, that from this earliest point in the development of a free society in Barbados that, in embryonic form, important aspects were becoming manifest of what would likely be the character of the politics of development. An equivocal and opportunist position relative to the way in which development should proceed in Barbados can be identified in the relationship of the Colonial Office to the planter government. This policy of

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the British government indicates an early application of long-term imperialist strategy concerned with the survival of empire and the dominance of British economic interests. The corollary to this is indicated in the nature of the relationship of the planter class to the imperial government, which was based on a confidence in themselves as a class and in their competence to handle the local situation, and their independent attitude relative to the British ruling class. The abolition of slavery steeled the view of the planter class more rather than undermining it, as might be expected. Identifiable as well is the planter class' own local strategy of avoiding initially an indication of outright opposition to the imperial strategy while making sure of the minimum possible change outside repeal of the Abolition Act. An arrogant contempt rooted in an ignorance relative to an appreciation of the political capacity of the underclasses was common to both the local and imperial ruling classes. With respect to the Barbadian underclasses, for the most part, the maturity and political astuteness of its leading political spokesman, Prescod, is remarkable. There is a clear demonstration that an acute consciousness of what liberty must mean had penetrated deep in the masses. Already a consciousness of the importance of class unity, political association, defence of basic human rights and a regional identity with similar struggles in the other British Caribbean colonies seemed to be present. The political leadership of the class shows remarkable confidence in the light of the balance of political forces against them. Already established was a political press and there was preparedness to formulate a programme for societal change with an unabashed call for political and economic democracy and a relentless exposure of planter sophistry and despotism. It is evident that greater difficulty in identifying these features would be the case had we not had the formulations of these positions and their articulation by Prescod. Many other struggles were to take place in this early postemancipation period, admirably led by Samuel Jackman Prescod, clearly a patriot of Barbados and fighter for liberty and democracy. His newspaper was organized as a powerful and effective political instrument and its editorials, penned by Prescod, were, and indeed still are, lessons in political struggle for working people fighting oppression. The main struggles of the period by the black and coloured working people of Barbados can be isolated as follows: first, the struggle to contain

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the attempt by plantocracy to turn back the limited victory and the limited rights won by the former slave class as a result of the Abolition Act. Second the struggle to protect the right of the ex-slaves to escape the plantation system. This struggle manifested itself in the protracted fight against the Hiring of Servants Act and the mass campaign that became a political movement to defend emigration from Barbados to Guiana and Trinidad. Third, the struggle to expand the franchise, and fourth, the struggle to defend Prescod, the undisputed political leader of the working people, from abuse, vilification and victimization. Significant mechanisms set up at the time to carry forward the activities were, besides the Liberal newspaper, Prescod's proposals for the establishment of the first political party in the English-speaking Caribbean, labelled the "Colonial Union of the Coloured Classes"; his unofficial labour organizations, which defended the labouring class against the Contract Act and facilitated numerous strikes by the canefield workers during the period; and the political mass meetings held in St Mary's School, from which emanated numerous petitions and resolutions in defence of the rights of working people and against the conditions prevailing in the postemancipation social order. These will be examined further in the body of this work. Significant characteristics of the nature of class struggle at the time can also be isolated. First, there was the conflict between the imperial ruling class and the local planter class on how postemancipation Barbadian society should be governed. The conflict was reflected in the British, through the Colonial Office, urging the local ruling class to defer crudity of governing methods for short-term gain, for more subtle policy in order to secure insurance for long-term interests. The local ruling interests were long in learning this lesson and, indeed, resented and resisted learning. The conflict further, unintentionally but objectively, assisted the capacity of the working people to struggle against the established order. The second characteristic was the extent of unity of the working people (both the upper coloured and black strata and the broad masses) against the plantocracy and colonialism, a unity that had broken down by the end of the nineteenth century, by which time class differences interests and identity had matured in greater complexity throughout the society. Third, there was the outstanding political capacity of Samuel Jackman Prescod. He possessed a capacity and talent that neither the British nor the local

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ruling classes could ignore; a capacity that made a significant qualitative impact on the character of the political struggle of the postemancipation years. These are all issues we need to analyse further.

The Political Resistance of the Underclasses in the Early Postemancipation Years The underclasses in 1838 consisted of largely and mainly the non-white section of the society; those of mixed parentage, some of whom had been born as a result into freedom; those who had bought their freedom; and those who had been emancipated over the period 1 August 1834 to 1 August 1838. There were also some less well-off whites who, despite their status, were often to the greater extent appendages of the plantocracy through their ideological political and social orientation. One further group of whites was one of the aberrations of the society, a closed community largely cut off from all other social groups. These were the poor white or 'red legs' who lived mainly in the eastern coastal regions of the island. Descendants of white indentured labourers, they lived by cultivation of small plots and fishing. The underclasses of 1838 can be seen as the more or less united political, economic and social class base out of which the present petit bourgeois and working class sections of Barbadian society grew. They were basically united because of the racial structure and nature of postslavery Barbadian society. This socioeconomic grouping was mainly composed of a semiproletarian labouring class who cultivated the canefields and reaped the crop. The elements of this class nearest to a modern proletariat would have been those closely associated with the production of sugar in the mills and the boiling houses. The upper section of the underclasses was composed of artisans, merchants and some who had begun the struggle to be some kind of professional, such as Prescod. Prescod himself had been partly educated in England and practised journalism. In Barbados, because of the widespread and intensive cultivation of the available soil, the possibility for development of an independent peasantry was not very real, consequently the society has always had a very weak peasant class and, in a very real sense, no genuine peasant class at all. Those occupied in

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such activity were seldom solely dependent on it as a means of livelihood. Also representing a significant portion of the underclass were persons wholly, temporarily or partially engaged as hucksters selling ground provisions in the markets, general tradesmen and domestic servants. A picture of the plantations on which many of the underclasses worked can be ascertained from the Thome and Kimball report of 1836.21 The most viable and standard estates at the time of the Thome and Kimball tour in 1836 were generally 300 to 500 acres; the largest was Drax Hall, at that time having some 800 acres. One planter interviewed by Thome and Kimball, Fr. Crichlow, ran a plantation of some 600 acres which was worked by some 300 field hands and produced on average about 2,000 hogsheads of a ton of sugar. Colleton Estate, with 600 acres of "superior land", was worked by 200 field hands and yielded an average crop of 180 hogsheads. A Colonel Ashby's estate had an average crop of 80 hogsheads, was worked by 230 field hands and was in size about 350 acres. A Mr Pegeot's estate, "one of the finest in the island", was some 500 acres in size and was worked by 234 field hands. The description of a plantation works by Thome and Kimball was on the following lines: gangs of about seventy labourers, supervised by white overseers, would be cutting the cane which would then be carted off to the mill for grinding. Besides the mill there would be a boiling house, a curing house and store house. To attend the running of works there were mechanics to do repair jobs, and coopers and blacksmiths. It seems useful to make a further comment to increase the understanding of how the plantation economy was run, prior to emancipation. C.L.R. James, in The Making of the Caribbean Peoples, spoke to the question of who ran the plantations.22 Basing his position on the work of Richard Pares, his answer was adamant. The slaves ran the plantation: those tremendous plantations, the great source of wealth of so many British aristocrats and merchants, the merchant princes who cut such a figure in English society . . . These plantations were run by slaves . . . slave labour was not an advanced stage of labour, but those plantations created millions and from top to bottom slaves ran them.23

The work of Pares that led James to this position was the analysis of categories of slave labour. Pares said that "when we examine specifications for the negroes, we find so many boilers, masons, carters, boatswains

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of the mill, etc., that we cannot feel much confidence in our categories especially when we find individuals described as 'excellent boiler and field negro' ",24 James, in bringing out the point, then argues that slaves on the plantation could not be placed easily on one or the other side of an occupational line. A field Negro could also be an excellent boiler, people who worked in the fields also did the technical jobs. Moreover, James reveals that the complication was made even greater by the instances of specialist jobs being awarded to the sick and ruptured, so that there would have been a significant spread of technical skill in the slave populations. James concludes, "I have found other evidence elsewhere and it seems to me that they, the slaves, ran that society; they were the persons responsible. If they had been removed the society would have collapsed."25 It can be quite reasonably argued that from the beginnings of West Indian society, and, in this particular perspective, Barbadian society, the underclass, or the major proportion of it, was also a functionally indispensable class. Marxist theory suggests the functional indispensability of a class in the economic system leads to its political supremacy in the society as a whole. While no doubt supreme at the time, the functional indispensability of the planter class and its appendages could not be so easily perceived. The Thome and Kimball report remarked, for instance: Indolence and inefficiency among the whites was another prominent feature in slave-holding Barbados. Enterprise, public or personal has long been a stranger to the island. Internal improvements such as the laying and repairing of roads, the erection of bridges, building wharves, piers etc., were wholly neglected or were conducted in such a listless manner as to be burlesque on the name of business, we were creditably informed that there were merchants in Bridgetown who had never been off the island in their lives, nor more than five or six miles into the country. The sum total of their locomotion might be said to be turning softly to one side of their chairs and then softly to the other. Having no personal cares to harass them and no political questions to agitate them, having no extended speculation to push and no public enterprises to persecute (save occasionally where a wreck on the southern point throws time into a ferment), the lives of the higher class seems a perfect blank as it regards everything manly. Their thoughts are chiefly occupied with sensual pleasure, anticipated or enjoyed. The centre of existence to them is the dinner table - "they eat and drink, and sleep and then eat and drink and sleep again".26

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Such persons then could hardly be indispensable. They were, however, supreme: supremely imposed and buttressed by colonialism and all its works James and Pares argue that the "blacks" are the indispensable class but oppressed and suppressed by the plantocracy, colonialism and all its works. The initial struggles of that functionally indispensable class at the beginning of its progression to political supremacy are now the concern. In fact, were it not that the underclasses were so indispensable, most of their postemancipation political resistance to the plantocracy would not have developed. The plantocracy would not have had to ensure its own survival by desperate machinations against this critical sector of the society. Prescod, however, was able to understand that the progression to political supremacy by the underclasses was an inevitability rooted in the social dynamic of the political economy of Barbados. He did not demand supremacy, but he could see that if equality could not be conceded by plantocracy then the logic of societal relations would ensure that "the struggle, if left to time and the force of population to settle will be one for ascendancy, not for mere equality".27 Prescod returned to the point when the editor of the Barbadian newspaper attacked the appointment of a coloured man, Charles Phipps, as secretary for the island and clerk of Council. In a Liberal newspaper editorial, Prescod said: It is gall and wormwood, we know to Mr Clinkett and the coterie of old women of whom he is the accredited organ, to witness any advance on the part of the coloured people. But did they think we were always to be what they would have us to be - hewers of wood and drawers of water? Did they think that we were never to share with them the high seats and the good things therewith provided? They are maddened at the bare rumor of a poor but honest coloured man's being appointed secretary for the Island and Clerk of Council: is that the extent think they of our ambition? The punishment of the wicked frequently, it is said, commences in this world, and may it not be in the decree of Providence that Mr Abel Clinkett old as he is and some of his equally old friends and patrons may live to be damned with the sight of coloured and black councilors - not merely Clerks of Council. This is our destiny - for this God permitted the founders of our race to be stolen and brought through much suffering and tribulation, from their native country and placed here. This is to be our reward and the punishment for the unutterable crimes of our kidnappers!! !28

At this point, it is useful to emphasize further the presence of unity between the black sections of the underclasses. This unity is empirically

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indicated, and, analytically, it is useful to be able to represent their interests versus the plantocracy in this light. Also, it is important, as stated formerly, because in terms of the political development of Barbados this unity would not be present again to any comparable degree at any other juncture. This is said not to dismiss real, identifiable differences and embryonic distinctions, and least of all because of a desire to argue a case of one class (oppressed) against another class (oppressor). Rather, what one is identifying here is a politics of alliance based on a programme. One is therefore identifying a significant, relatively mature, political practice. Through this, one is further able to locate the sophistication of Prescod as analyst, ideologue and agitator, in his noting of this "unity". For in noting the unity, he advocates it, mobilizes on the basis of it and sustains it. In 1838 the words of a coloured Barbadian Joseph Kennedy were recorded by the Liberal Qt a dinner hosted by Kennedy to celebrate Emancipation Day. Kennedy said: free people of colour . . . our newly emancipated brethren look to us gentlemen, for countenance and protection from the wrongs they may yet be subjected to; and I trust gentlemen, that there is no gentleman of our body who will so far forget that his interests and theirs are now one and the same, as to refuse them that protection.29

A year later the Liberal reported that several respectable coloured merchants, shop keepers and tradesmen of this town here . . . have come to a resolution to close their stores and shops and do no business on that day. We trust that all our brethren will follow their example. We cannot compel a Law nor a Proclamation to keep the day sacred, but it surely becomes us descendants of Africa to show by our act that we duly appreciate the blessing which has been bestowed upon us in common with our brethren late in bondage, and that we need not a law nor a proclamation to urge us to the respectful observance of the day that saw that blessing bestowed. We shall thus put the secret enemy, whoever he be to shame, and turn his enmity to our honour.30

As I have laboured to illustrate, such words, while advocating unity, cannot lead to a view that some members of the coloured community in postemancipation society did not harbour deep hostility and even, paradoxically, racial prejudice against the black labouring populace. Similarly,

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members of the black labouring class were not all too clear where their class interest lay either. It is only necessary to refer to the puerile and treacherous delegates of the St George labourers' demonstration of November 1839 and the existence of a black rural constabulary who took part in ejectments of their brethren from their households. Further aspects of this unity and the quality of this unity in the underclasses, however, as well as their political philosophy and the political methods and organization they were able to develop, can be followed by examining the conduct of their resistance to the plantocracy up to 1843, when Prescod won his parliamentary seat. The resistance manifested itself in offensive and defensive activities. There was the offensive for political democracy. This was demonstrated particularly through the editorial columns of the Liberal and was directed at amendments to the franchise acts aimed at lowering of property qualifications for candidates and voters. The offensive was further manifested in the public meetings that were called in this context and which provided the platform for the launching of petitions both to the local and imperial political powers towards the same end. The same methods were used to further the defensive campaign for civil rights and the preservation of freedoms already gained. This campaign was aimed at the judiciary and laws restricting economic freedom, such as the Contract and Emigration Acts and planter harassment with regard to the labourers' provision grounds. In fact, the campaign against the Emigration Act reached heights that could only be seen as offensive in tactical character. The campaign featured significant political action when a quite substantial mass emigration of the labouring population took place, with labourers escaping their Barbadian situation mainly by trying their luck in British Guiana. The most significant features of this period, which were strong indicators of the level of political sophistication among the underclasses, must be seen in the character and quality of their political press, the amount of influence that they won in certain sections of the Colonial Office, and the proposals for a colonial union of the coloured peoples. Such a union would have been the first modern political organization in Barbados, and indeed the West Indies, had it materialized. The proposals for the organization of labour unions would have been the first trade unions in Barbados some one hundred years before the Trade Union Act was eventually passed in 1941. All of these activities

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revolved around the personality of Prescod who was very much responsible for the articulation, advocacy and impact of these developments. When, in early 1839, there was some indication that electoral reform might take place, an Elective Franchise committee was formed to campaign for increased personal property, political and civil rights and facilities for social improvement.31 A memorial from this committee was presented to the governor and a petition to the local legislature.32 In the memorial to the governor, revision of the election laws was requested, and an extension of the suffrage "to an equitable proportion of the general population". The memorial made note that the coloured inhabitants had by petition on previous occasions asked for electoral reforms as had the present governor's predecessor Sir Lionel Smith, and the British government through despatches to Sir Lionel. But the local legislature had never complied and had "expressed their determination to make no alteration in the laws of Election, which they have declared are well suited to the circumstance of the Country". The memorialists argued that since the recent significant changes in the society where all the populace had now been granted "all the rights and privileges and immunities of free British subjects", it should now be the concern of the legislature to review the question of the suffrage, that restricted as this variable and important right now is, the far greater number of those who for a long period have enjoyed the title of freemen, and the whole classes aforesaid who have recently been made free, are without any proper constitutional security against the enactment of laws and the imposition of taxes directly opposed to their interests.33

Although there was no doubt that Prescod and his followers in the coloured section of the population were the main activists in this campaign for the extension of the suffrage, it is nonetheless the case that representatives of all sections excluded from the franchise were interested and to some extent involved in supporting the campaign. In answering an imputation by the editor of the Barbadian that the campaign was by the "coloured portion of our society", Prescod, through the Liberal, stated that the meeting which forwarded the memorials was not a coloured one, although principally composed of coloured persons. 'The requisition was general; and we were most happy to observe at the meeting several respectable and intelligent whites, who feel no less than the coloured

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people the dangerous insecurity of the law and are as anxious as we are to have it remedied."34 Prescod argued that scattered over the country were a large body of whites "principally of the poor and middle class who are ready to cooperate with the coloured people in any constitutional measure to effect a revision of the Election laws and the extension of the suffrage".35 The Election Bill eventually brought before the House of Assembly in early 1839 was still found to be unacceptable by the franchise reformers, property qualifications still being prohibitive and indeed petitions which made objections to that Bill were sent to Britain. The Liberal of 8 May, however, made the objections in a more specifically local context. The Liberal editorial acknowledged that the property qualification of members of Parliament had not yet been removed even in Britain but wondered why progressive policies suggested by the British Parliament were always objected to, and antiquated statutes of Britain could always be quoted to perpetuate stagnation of progress. The Liberal then stated the main point on which it found the bill objectionable. First, it was not requiring that property should not be the test of fitness for a member of the Assembly, but rather, they felt the existing qualifications should not be increased.36 Second, it demanded the £10 freehold qualification, and a £30 household qualification in towns and an equivalent in the country. It argued that "short of this concession it will be impossible to increase the constituency to any healthy and safe extent". Third, clause 6 of the bill should be altered to give parties claiming to be registered as voters an appeal from the arbitrary rate of the vestry. Fourth, that clause 15 should be altered in respect to requirement for deeds or copies of deeds from the secretary's office in proof of title to property, and that a certificate from the office of the secretary at a price that every class of claimant could afford should be available, rather than necessitate "ruinously expensive copies". Fifth, Bridgetown and Speightstown should be separately represented in the Assembly. It was in the light of the inadequate proposals by the House of Assembly with respect to franchise reform that a call was made to organize a combination of the coloured people to agitate for reform if the final Franchise Bill should be inadequate. This was the origin of the proposals for the Colonial Union of the Coloured Peoples. As things stood, the Franchise Bill was not passed by the local Assembly until May 1840 and

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it was not until then that the issue became a major political concern again. Since the manner in which that issue was tackled in mid 1840 was conditioned by other aspects of underclass resistance which had developed in the meantime, it seems useful to first examine these. One of the conditioning features that affected the character of the struggles for reform of the franchise in mid 1840 was the influence that the spokesmen of the underclasses were by that time able to bring to bear in the Colonial Office. Consequently, it seems useful, from as early as possible in the postemancipation underclass resistance to plantocracy, to ascertain some of the attitudes of these spokesmen of the underclasses to the imperial government. The reversals and disallowances of the early planter legislation which was earlier analysed and the protests of the planter government against interference in local affairs by the British government, facilitated observation of the attitude of the underclasses to the role of the British government at the time. Their underlying assumption is already apparent from the analysis already covered. There is clear recognition of a more liberal philosophy on the part of the imperial government toward the underclasses of the colonies, aimed at some amelioration of the social conditions of these classes, even if only for reasons of appeasement and containment. This philosophy of dominant sections of the imperial ruling class was appreciated by the leading activists of the Barbadian underclasses as a viewpoint that should be used by them at every possible opportunity for their purposes and to their advantage in order to reverse the recalcitrance of the more rigid local ruling class. When the planters' protest against Colonial Office interference in local affairs was at its height in late 1838, Prescod wrote in the Liberal as follows: Some of our contemporaries here and in the neighbouring colonies, have been amazingly lugubrious on the subject of this Imperial Act to place the regulations of our Prison discipline in the hands of the executive. They see in it another proof that no less than the destruction of the colonies is contemplated by the anti-colonial party in Great Britain; and they call upon the government to take entirely to itself, the responsibility of legislating for us. Would that government would take them at their word: . . . Away with foolish claim of independence set up for these men: Away with the stupid folly that demands for a colony total exception, under every possible change of circumstance from legislative interference by the parent state: . . .

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But until quite prepared to throw off our allegiance to the parent government and set up for ourselves, let us hear no more talk about our independence and the indignity and insults and what not, offered to our legislature, in this interfering with their peculiar function. They have and can have no functions that could render such interference improper were it even a thousand times more frequent than it has yet been.37

In mid 1839 he made the point as firmly when recommending imperial fiat to ensure judicial reform and also indicated recognition of the equivocation of the Colonial Office on the question of interference as well. In Prescod's opinion, the British government ought not to expect reform to be carried out by the local assemblies or it would never come. "The cunning which has coaxed when a wiser policy should have commanded, has entirely spoiled the colonial legislatures .. . They must be dealt with now in other fashion."38

In Defence of Civil Rights What I describe as the civil rights campaign was aimed mainly at exposure of the repressive use of the judiciary and of particular legislation such as the Contract Act and Emigration Act. As was noted before, there was a strong perception among the underclasses that the judiciary was the agency of planter law despotism, with planter judges and magistrates and planter juries; there was, moreover, a wide awareness of the inhuman penal system and the mercenary thuggery of even the rural black constabulary. When in late 1838 the appeal court was being processed through the legislature, with the intent of appeasing the underclasses' view of the judiciary, the Liberal had pointed out that such an act "will diminish but not remove those difficulties"; the difficulties being rooted in wider features and "a defective constitution - a constitution framed for the state of slavery".39 Later, in 1839, it stated more pointedly that the Court of Appeal was, at best, "a clever attempt to compromise between right and wrong, between justice and injustice and every such attempt however clever, must in the end fail".40 Elaborating on the argument in 1838, with the implication that a remedy of the problem would take far more than the presence of a higher court, the Liberal had touched on the end product of it all, the dungeons of Her Majesty's prisons.41

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The extent of degradation in these over the years and persisting even after emancipation had been well documented by the Scoble reports, which had come in for great abuse from plantocracy, because of their daring revelations.42 The Liberal said: The ruling notions of some of our worthies, as regards punishment are lamentably preposterous . . . With us the level of over punishment is from the peculiar construction of our society far greater than with, perhaps, any other people under the sun. The only case that could be considered nearly analogous, would be that of a conquered people, distinguishable in language, in religion and in national peculiarities from their conquerors living among them.43 The case of a labouring woman, Molly, that eventually reached the Appeal Court, and the character of which was by no means exceptional, brought out a number of abuses with respect to the conduct of justice in Barbadian society and the treatment of the underclasses by the law enforcement agencies of the planter state.44 The Liberal, in introducing its comments on those abuses, made a specific reference to the rural constabulary force: we stated that the institution was perverted from its original purpose, to the vilest 'planter uses' - that the rural constable was made a tool, an instrument of grossest oppression in the hands of the Proprietor or Manager whose creature he is, on whose recommendation he was appointed to the office and at whose will and pleasure he holds office.45 In the case of Molly, she was accused by her plantation management of giving her sister and mother residence and provision when they were not employed by the plantation. This was a breach in the eyes of the planters, since they used a practice of eviction of labourers who worked on more than one plantation. If a labourer lived on one plantation but worked on another, or only worked his or her provision grounds for subsistence, he or she was considered an idler. In this case, Molly would have been seen as harbouring two idlers. Consequently, the bookkeeper of the plantation accompanied by rural constables had, on more than one occasion, harassed Molly; "her bedroom ransacked, her bed turned up, her dirty linen handed about and exposed to her shame".46 Very often, in fact, in carrying out an ejection, the labourer's household was emptied of the contents, those being left on the public highway and the house made uninhabitable by severe damaging.

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In this case, however, Molly repulsed the attack when on one occasion she was held by a rural constable. She physically gave the constable a beating and took up "a pot of human excretement in a high state of fermentation" and threatened to paint her harassers with it.47 For these actions she was carried before the magistrate's courts, where she was convicted of assaulting the constable and obstructing him in the legal performance of his duty. The magistrate did, however, advise her to appeal against his conviction to the Court of Appeal, because he thought the law on which he convicted her a bit harsh. The Appeal Court reversed the conviction on the grounds that the constable had no right to enter the house on the Sabbath except in the case of a felony, treason or the like. But, in addition, the appeal court judge told Molly that she had no right to harbour her sister as an idler on the estate which she had quitted and, further, that the method Molly had used to get rid of the intruders on her privacy was a very nasty one. Another such case of ejectment, which only became wide public knowledge because it was brought before the courts on the instruction of the governor, concerned a pregnant woman who had cut her canes grown on land rented by her from Neil's Plantation but had then had them ground at the mill of a neighbouring estate. For this she was "dispossessed of the land, ejected from the estate and her household furniture and goods thrown into the public road". The roof of her house was also untrashed. The attorney of Neil's Plantation justified the action by stating: "How ... are we to govern these people?"48 A more specifically economic harassment of the labouring classes by the plantocracy brought out in response from the Liberal newspaper a manifestation of the important political role this paper played and was prepared to play to defend the interest and civil and human rights of the underclasses. An editorial of July 1839 put in perspective this aspect of the resistance of the underclasses to the plantocracy: The subject on which our correspondent 'Terret" writes is of some importance. We too have heard dark whisperings of contemplated combination among the planters to refuse wages; but although we can very well believe that some of these worthies are foolish enough and vile enough for anything that promises to diminish the already small comforts of the negro labourers, we doubted, that, with the experience of the last year before them, they would be found mad enough to throw the country again into a state of ferment. It appears however that this

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combination to lower wages is the proper finale to the famine scheme of last year. The avowed subject of the planters in refusing to plant provisions . . . was to produce such a scarcity of food as would render its acquisition very difficult to the labourers and make them glad to take such reduced wages as the planters might choose to offer them . . . The planters have effected the desired scarcity. They have made provisions dearer than they were ever known to be in this island. They have more than quintupled the expense of living to the poor of all classes; but they will now be allowed to use this as a means of riveting again upon their necks the heavy yoke of which they have just been relieved by British Philanthropy:... We here pledge ourselves before the country to meet combination among the planters, with counter combination among the labourers. We'll have no turbulence, no riot amongst these people - nothing that the harpies of the law can fasten on us as a misdemeanour; but in every parish we'll have a Labour Union for the protection of the people - The Planter we know places much reliance on the weak tenure of his labourers and his power to eject them from house and ground at a minute's warning. But last year's experience on the infernal Contract Law should have brought him fully acquainted with the working value of this power, as it affects his cultivation. The labourers however will not be quite so destitute as he imagines. Trinidad is a fine healthy country within a few days sail of Barbados and will readily afford thousands of them comfortable houses, and good wages, under honest treatment, without even the expense of a passage . . . The moment then that we find it necessary as a safeguard of the labouring population against the vile machinations of the planters, we shall do for the love of Right what, as our correspondent has noticed we have refused to do for money. That moment we shall open an active correspondence with the proper persons in Trinidad, and throw open the Liberal Office as an Emigration Agency office for Trinidad . . , 49 The personal and economic harassment of the underclasses by plantocracy heralded the high point of resistance by the underclasses in the first quarter of 1840. This high point of resistance, however, was specifically in response to the re-emergence of the Contract Act at the beginning of 1840 and the awareness that an emigration act was being prepared. This resistance took the form of general labour unrest on the estate, continual refusal to sign contracts with the estates, withdrawal of labour, burning of the cane fields, demonstrations by labourers into Bridgetown, and the increasing emigration of the more able labourers to British Guiana. What can only be identified as a period of intense political

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struggle then continued throughout 1840, culminating with the imprisonment of Prescod in December of that year. Critical to an understanding of why developments proceeded in the way that they did at this time is the grasping of the characters of the political mobilization carried out by the leading political activists of the underclasses. The widespread and sustained manner of the labour unrest suggests that the threat to organize labour unions, proffered in the Liberal's editorial of 10 July 1839 was being put into practice; although necessarily unofficially and nonpublicly, since the laws of the land would have made such combinations illegal. Further, with respect to setting up of the Liberal office as an emigration agency, there is no doubt that this was also being done; public advertisements in the Liberal indicate this activity.50 After the Emigration Act was passed in the House of Assembly, this emigration agency had to go underground and was only publicly functioning again after the amendments to the act. Public notices reappeared in January 1841.51 These public notices also indicated coverage of emigration to Trinidad as well. To take the struggle overseas to British authority, public meetings were organized that mandated the presentation of resolutions and petitions to the British government, raised grave misgivings in the Colonial Office about the manner in which Barbadian planter government policy was proceeding, and, as will later be indicated, even discredited Governor MacGregor in the eyes of the Colonial Office. In addition to this, columns of the Liberal were used prolifically to refute planter rationalizations and to propagandize the local mobilization of the underclasses. The Liberal editorials of 8 and 11 April 1840, for instance, effectively refuted the reports of the commissioners appointed by the governor to investigate the labour disturbances, bringing out the widespread nature of the disturbances and the clarity of the perception by the labouring classes on the intent of the Contract Act and their deep determination to resist it no matter how well rationalized by the commissioners. In the Liberal of 4 April, Prescod, in an open letter titled 'To the Free Men of Barbados", presented the case against the Emigration Act and inherent dangers in that act if freedom and liberty of the mass of the people was to be upheld. In one part he stated:

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I tell you that this law would make us all slaves: - all except the planters, and those who have with them, an interest in keeping the labour market full and wages low. It takes from every other person in the island, - from every man, woman and child who have not an interest in keeping the labourer here against his will; - ... the right of freely advising and assisting on any occasion, a fellow subject to do that which may be for his benefit, and which the law says he has the right to do and it is just he should be allowed to do: It takes from every labourer and tradesman the right of asking and receiving advice and assistance from his relations and friends and of hiring himself to any person or to go out of this island to any other colony or place. By this law it will be scarcely possible even to give an opinion on the subject of emigration, without criminating oneself; for that opinion may be at times fairly construed into indirect advice.

In the Liberal of 8 April, a police report was published that illustrated the case of a widow, Mrs Jane Dayrell, who had been charged with breach of the act because a comment she had made to a labourer had implied that he might do better for himself if he emigrated. Persons who attended a public meeting at St Mary's Boys School on Friday 10 April, S.J. Prescod being chairman, passed some seven resolutions and authorized an address to Queen Victoria and petitions to the two houses of the imperial Parliament as their further contribution to the campaign against the Emigration Act.52 1.

2.

They resolved that it was essentially a part of the liberty of every free man, and therefore of every member of the community of the island without exception to carry himself, his capital and his labour to whatever country or place he pleased, and to take such counsel and enter into such arrangements with other parties for this purpose as he pleased. And that while it was the duty of the Government of Barbados and every country to protect by proper laws, properly administered, all classes of the inhabitants against practices of fraud and deception being to injure them either in their persons or their properties, no estimate or opinion of the advantages or disadvantages to result to individuals from their voluntary act of leaving the country could be a valid and sufficient reason for interfering otherwise than by advice to restrain them in the exercise of their right to do so. They resolved that the third clause of the act interfered unnecessarily and oppressively with the said right of the people of the island and

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in the opinion of the meeting was a wanton and mischievous infraction of their liberties as free British subjects. 3. They resolved that whether emigration be injurious or not and how great soever the amount of injury to those who voluntarily emigrated; and whether the parties engaged in directing such emigration be interested or disinterested and guilty or not of evil practices to seduce persons into this voluntary act of emigration were questions entirely distinct from and not necessarily connected with the subject before the meeting. For were such evil practices and their injurious consequences to persons emigrating proved to demonstration, such proof would furnish no just or reasonable ground for a law to punish parties guilty of such practices and to prevent such emigration at the sacrifice of the liberty and rights of the people. 4. Their fourth resolution was a most important one since it implicated the governor as a partisan in the local political struggle; a position that later will be seen to have been accepted by the Colonial Office. The resolution stated that the meeting deeply regretted that His Excellency Evan MacGregor, by giving his ready assent to an act so unconstitutional in its principles, so iniquitous in its tendency and having obviously only the partial object of maintaining a full supply of labour and a low price for the planting proprietors of this island, should himself have furnished to the great mass of the people indubitable evidence that whatever of confidence his daily professions of liberality and respect for their liberty and rights had disposed them to repose in his government was misplaced. In other branches of the legislature the people cannot have been deceived nor could any measure, however unjust and oppressive, emanating from those bodies as at present constituted give them the least surprise. But, for his own credit sake, they could scarcely have expected that a British officer representing Her Majesty's government in this island would have lent himself and his authority to the enactment of a law such as the Emigration Act. 5. They resolved that the people of the island could not hope that liberty and their rights would be respected and their zeal promoted so long as the legislative and administrative powers of the government were exclusively in the keeping and direction of the little distinct party who held them during the existence of slavery in the island and who

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continued still to hold them. The passage of such a law as that referred to in the second of these resolutions affords clear and indisputable proof of the existence of a disposition on the part of the said dominant party, which could not with safety to the interests and peace of the country be longer trusted with the exclusive and for the most part irresponsible power. The sixth resolution called for an address to be sent to the queen and petitions to the two Houses of the imperial Parliament -to convey to them the existing state of affairs in Barbados with particular reference being made to the burning political issues affecting the underclasses. The seventh resolution commended the Committee of the Barbados Auxiliary British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society for earlier publicly raising the matters dealt with at the meeting.

The speeches delivered at their public meeting, notably by Samuel Prescod, by Mr H. Dayrell, by a Mr Goodridge and by Mr Nunes, brought out sharply the intensity and depth of the political conflict in question and the meeting, reported to be the most numerous up to that time in the island, demonstrated in collective action the popularity of the political direction in which the political leadership of the underclasses was directing the struggle against plantocracy. The information derived from these campaigns for civil rights suggests, in my view important ideological indicators. Gathered here is an illustration of the concrete links between the political outlook of Prescod and the interests of the labouring masses. Not only did Prescod take a public stand on behalf of the labouring poor; he also established the mechanisms and institutional means to advance their interests, to defend their rights and, if necessary, to facilitate escape from the system. S.J. Prescod's ideological and programmatic position was definitely identified with the cause of the black masses through the evidence of these campaigns.

Franchise and Victory Debate on the issue of the franchise reform is clearly critical for an assessment of the politics of the time and the perspective of Prescod.

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Samuel Jackman Prescod became the first elected black representative in the Barbadian Parliament. He exemplified in his person the early postslavery struggles for political democracy. In the 1840s, this struggle for democracy involved the interests of black and all deprived, and even some not so deprived, classes in Barbados. The struggle did not win gains for the black or the poor alone. Indeed, it would have been middle strata whites and better-off blacks who would gain most from the extent of franchise reform probable. The majority of blacks would, in fact, have to wait for over a hundred years before reforms that allowed Prescod to enter Parliament could facilitate their enfranchisement by 1951. The controversy that surrounded this earliest breach of the Barbadian oligarchy by a non-white is self-evidently important. Additionally and specifically, it also furthers illustration of Prescod's growing influence with the Colonial Office and demonstrates a recognition by the Colonial Office that when Prescod spoke, his was the voice of the people, the disenfranchised and the black. On the publication of the new franchise bill in mid 1840, the Liberal newspaper denounced it as inadequate. The local legislature, its editorial argued, had taken so long deliberating on the bill and yet had made no significant extension of the franchise.53 The paper doubted whether there had been any serious intent to do so; for if there had been, then why had the details of the bill not been opened to public comment and scrutiny? The Liberal now perceived that it was the aim of the planters to "throw dust" in the eyes of the British government; but that, fortunately, the Whig government in England was "not very easily imposed on" and this caused the planters some disenchantment. For instance, the police and militia bills had not been confirmed and it doubted whether this franchise bill would be either. The Liberal argued it would not be surprised if before long "we do not doubt. . . see a few 'Acts to amend Acts' unwillingly brought forth to be a reproach to our legislatures". The editorial then attacked the role of the governor in this legislation, further developing the case against his partisan activity in local politics: The credit of the character of the legislature of this colony would be considerably improved if Sir Evan MacGregor was not so much of a planter governor; if he suffered the claims of the bulk of the population - if those who have no voice, wherewith to speak for him to hear were to occupy a little more of his attention. If he paid attention to these matters, he would never have given his assent to the Gagging Bill... to the Franchise Bill. . ,54

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In the Liberal editorials of the latter part of July 1840, mention was made of the intention of the coloured people to organize a combination among themselves to campaign for the extension of the franchise in the light of the inadequacies of the proposed Franchise Act. There was an immediate panic response by the plantocracy. Prescod's proposal for a "Colonial Union of the Coloured Classes", which had been suggested and written up back in December 1839, was now exposed in the House of Assembly and seen as the origin of a plot now to be implemented that was designed as an attack on the institutions of the society and a treasonable conspiracy which could only lead to bloodshed.55 A hasty despatch alerting the Colonial Office to this "sedition" was sent off. The response of the secretary of state to the proposed "Colonial Union of the Coloured Classes" enclosed in the despatch was as follows: "I have read the papers on this subject and I trust that there is not much occasion for alarm".56 Some of the planter press however felt differently. The Barbadian stated: Every man, of every class, of sober sense and reflection must read with most righteous indignation, the arrogant, insolent, lying and mischievous document called, "Proposals for a Colonial Union of the Coloured Classes" -Samuel Jackman Prescod, that most mischievous demagogue - is supposed to be the chief instigator of this wonder working association. The object of Prescod - can be no other than that of shutting out from the pale of society, every man who has no African blood in his veins, and in fact of extirpating if they can the whole race of purely white people. The attempt, therefore, now to kindle a discontented, a rebellious spirit in the coloured population is so unjustifiable.57

The West Indian stated: A "Colonial Union of the Coloured Classes": What a farce. It is a compendium of the worst concocted system of revolutionary principles ever got up in the palmiest days of civil anarchy and bloodshed. Even France saw no such man as a Prescod in her Robespierre, her Barras, or her Demouriere. They dealt not in cowardly conspiracies, they sought not to immolate the one half of their citizens at the alters which the other had raised to ambition and the lust of power.58

The Globe stated: The character of the Great Agitator is fortunately for us, as well known at the Colonial Office as in Barbados; and the respectable persons whom he would endeavour to ruin by his mischievous "proposals" have nothing to fear from either

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his malice or his power. We trust the day is not far distant when even that society (Anti-Slavery) -will discover that they have had to deal with one of those political knaves, who like Bonaparte of old, would set up to the favourite maxim that "a lie is always worth telling if it can be believed for a certain time". In politics, this we take to be Prescod's creed - in religion we think we have heard he has no creed.59 Support for Prescod, for the colonial union and for the struggle for the franchise was apparently as strong among the underclasses, and the incense against the plantocracy for its attacks on the "Great Agitator" as intense, as was the planter press's hatred of this heroic Barbadian. Letters were written to the Liberal denouncing the attacks on Prescod particularly at a time when he was absent from the island. A public dinner commemorating Emancipation Day was used as an opportunity to publicly defend Prescod and his proposals. The speeches given at this event, both by their content and by the support from the audience for them, were an additional indication of the feelings among the underclasses on this matter. One letter in the Liberal addressed to the planter editor of the Barbadian newspaper, in particular, stands out: To Abel Clinkett, Editor of the Barbadian,

Sir, Once again inane dotard, have you gratuitously exposed your withered hide to the lash of those towards whom your venomous shafts have been directed. Your scurrilous remarks in Wednesday's Barbadian on the document entitled, "A proposed union of the Coloured Classes &o." have elicited these from me. Were you a man in the full vigour of life, I might express astonishment at your rashness, but the thought of your impaired intellect, and decay'd body, I confess almost disarms me of my resentment, and calls forth feelings more akin to sorrow than to anger at the weakness of poor mortality. I should not even at this juncture, have condescended to notice the scribbling of a man whose vacillating principles have won for him the distinguished sobriquet of "The Political Weathercock", but for the circumstances of my being one of those at whom your slanders have been directed. Let me ask what could have been your motive (for even fools and madmen have motives for their actions) in thus offering yourself a voluntary victim to the just vengeance of the coloured community, when you must have been conscious that as years steal vigour from the mind, as youth from the body, you were consequently unable to repel their attacks. Do you suppose that because the guardian arm of our great champion of liberty, Samuel J. Prescod is for a time

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withdrawn from his country, that we, the objects of his solicitude, are altogether exposed to the virulent attacks, of such as you whose very grey hairs should make you hide your ignoble head when you reflected that they had been nourished by the wages of political prostitution. I assure you hypocritical parasite, that there are yet among us, many equal to the task of exposing the last miserable attempt of your expiring faculties. Your gallant attacks on Mr Prescod and Mr Roach in their absence, is in strict keeping with the general tenor of your creed. Truly you remind me strongly of many of the Feline Tribe which you resemble as much in disposition as in person; you durst not boldly attack your prey, but steal stealthily on it when in a defenceless condition. You say that coloured men only moderately qualified by education and ability have been advanced to high official situations. Let me enquire whether one of them is not more than a match in native intellect for any of his colleagues. What because a man's complexion is not according to the conventional standard of the dominant party altho' his inner man may be fair as an angel of light and he be possessed of a soul overflowing with the most valuable treasures, is he to be down-trodden by a whited sepulchre, all rottenness within? You have long since preached to us the theory of your religion and the world has always suspected your sincerity. You have now reduced it to practice and you stand exposed before the world in your natural deformity. It is a truth that will be continually crying in your ear, and one which you will have the satisfaction of carrying to your grave that it is not in the power of grey hairs to obtain a palliation of the turpitude of the heart. I remain yours &o, &o. One of the Coloured Body. Augusts, 1840.60

The hysterical reactions of the planter class in mid 1840 to Prescod's democrat initiatives heralded the reversal of the tide, in the sense that the resistance of the underclass started to return dividends. The victories of the underclasses and reversals of the plantocracy were limited, however. Nonetheless, underclass successes were significant and most important for future developments. This fact needs to be grasped if the politics of development practised by the underclasses in the postemancipation years is to be appreciated and placed in a correct perspective. We should note in this context that the comment of the Colonial Office on Despatch no. 55 of 6 June 1840 from Governor MacGregor demonstrated such dissatisfaction with the Government of Barbados that the

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planter government decided to at least appear to make more concessions to the strategy of the imperial government. Amendments to the Emigration Act acceptable to the Colonial Office were sent up in Despatch no. 86 of 22 September 1840 and Solicitor General Bowcher Clarke was constrained to relinquish the office of speaker of the House of Assembly. The character of these concessions, however, has to be noted because t he were skilfully chosen. Prescod, in a memorial, was to expose that despite the amendments to the Emigration Act, its application in practice in Barbados was still offensive and Bowcher Clarke obviously chose to retain the more critical office of the two he had held. Moreover, he immediately applied for the office of chief justice of Barbados. But there was no doubt that the pressure against planter policy was continuing to grow in effective influence. The libel case successfully brought against Prescod in December 1840 by the planter and police magistrate Frederick Watts was paradoxically an illustration of this influence. Prescod was found guilty of the libel and sentenced to three months' imprisonment and ordered to pay in addition a fine of £50 and to give security for keeping the peace for 12 months, himself in bonds of £100 and two securities of £50 each. However, after a week in jail Prescod's three months imprisonment was remitted by the governor.61 The governor's rationale for this action was on the grounds that it was Prescod's first conviction and, secondly, there was the possibility of his health being affected by imprisonment.62 However, it should not be too much to perceive the remittance was more likely to have been a quick tactical manoeuvre by the governor, since the imprisonment of Prescod was likely to be seen as political victimization both by the masses and the Colonial Office. The gain from Prescod's imprisonment must have been seen even by this 'planter' governor as negative, and only useful for the short-sighted petty satisfaction of vindictive planters. That such were around there can be no doubt. In fact, the planter newspaper the Globe, while disagreeing with the governor's remittance of Prescod's sentence, nonetheless had to condemn the rest of the planter press, the Barbadian and the Mercury newspapers, for the extent of abuse they directed at the governor because of his action: The editor of the Mercury particularly had perpetuated an attack upon His Excellency under the heading 'The White Feather at Headquarters" than which

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scarcely anything more offensive towards the Executive has ever appeared in the columns of the editor of the Liberal - against the partial remission of whose punishment, his Mercurial Adversary violently protests, while himself adopting the very same line of conduct, of which, it would appear he disapproves only when it happens to be pursued by Mr Prescod. The editor of the Barbadian is, if possible, more libellous in the tones of his strictures than is his contemporary. We ask them both, "is this consistent?" Is it not a denouncing of the mote in their neighbour's eye when they cannot discern the beam in their own?63

The consequent activities of the resistance after the conviction of Prescod also illustrate that no question of retreat set in, and members appeared more steeled than ever to push their campaign forward. A public meeting held at St Mary's Boys' School to celebrate the release of Prescod again demonstrated the personal popularity of Prescod and the mass support behind his activities and political views. In fact, there had been a spontaneous mass demonstration from the prison to his home at the time of his release. As the Liberal described it, an "immense number of the inhabitants of the town", accompanying him. With respect to the public meeting, its convening was described as follows: The public meeting convened by requisition at the St Mary's Boys' School room on Monday was very numerously attended... From an early hour in the morning, parties of the labouring population were coming into town; and long before 12 o'clock . . . the room was most inconveniently crowded. Many of the more respectable townsfolk and others unable to endure the great heat and pressure left the room before the business of the meeting had commenced and a great many went away unable to gain admission at any sacrifice of comfort, whilst others were contented to linger about the building and obtain standing room at the doors and windows. When the chair was taken there could not have been less than 1,500 people in the room and the little yard aback... of the persons present, nearly two-thirds were of the "Hoe-stick clan" . . ,64

Some seven resolutions were proposed and adopted at that meeting, which further illustrated the political mood of the underclasses. The meeting resolved, first, that the friends of liberty in the island, having felt a deep sense of regret at the incarceration of their zealous advocate Samuel Jackman Prescod, consequent on his attempt to refute a calumny gratuitously propagated against him at the expense of the labouring population, were happy to observe that without any compromise of

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principle on his or their part, and contrary to their anticipation, he was early restored to the society of his friends and family. The second resolution thanked Prescod for his advocacy of the poor and oppressed and particularly the descendants of Africa; his advocacy "of their just rights as British subjects". The meeting resolved thirdly and accorded to Prescod its unshaken confidence in his principles and integrity and its entire approbation of his conduct, disdainfully repudiated and marked with its unqualified reprobation the slanderous and malicious insinuations of those who would attribute that conduct to any other and less virtuous motive than the public good. It resolved, fourthly, that the statements with respect to the St George Deputation to the Governor, which led to the conviction and incarceration of Prescod for libel, "are a fit and proper subject for official investigation". The fifth resolution asserted that until an impartial investigation takes place, it was the opinion of the meeting that the public was warranted in receiving those statements put forth on the authority of some of the parties concerned as well founded and true and as sufficient justification of Prescod's conduct in relation to them. The sixth resolution called for a memorial to be drawn up to be sent to the governor to effect the fourth resolution; and resolution seven appointed a committee to prepare the memorial and transact the other business of the meeting.65 Further evidence of the effectiveness of the campaigns against plantocracy by the underclasses arises in despatches to and from the Colonial Office in March and April of 1841. A despatch of March 17 from Governor MacGregor enclosed a mass of correspondence and documents with reference to the controversy between the executive and practising emigration agents, particularly Thomas Day, a Guianese emigration agent, and S.J. Prescod. The despatch and its contents were designed to present a case refuting the arguments of Prescod that had been sent in the form of a memorial to the Colonial Office condemning the Emigration Act and demonstrating that, despite amendments, its practice was still offensive to the interest and rights of the mass of the Barbadian people. The assessment of this evidence by the Colonial Office can be perceived in the notes made on the contents of Governor MacGregor's despatch by Colonial Office officials.66 It becomes clear from these notes that the officials agreed with the case put by Prescod in his memorial; in fact, at one point they hinted that Governor MacGregor had now became a

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partisan and not a judge in the dispute and this was not desirable. It was not the case that the Colonial Office was comfortable with Prescod. The same notes by the officials indicate that they had accepted many of the criticisms brought against Prescod by the governor over the months as being a dangerous agitator and ambitious journalist; but there was apparently no way that they could get around the valid and strongly argued expose sent to them by Prescod. It would appear that the Colonial Office increasingly was aware and took into account the political forces Prescod represented and the implications of that reality.67 In a despatch of 2 April, the franchise issue was again raised and this was to elicit even stronger criticism against the governor personally and the planter government in Barbados, by the Colonial Office.68 Moreover, the despatch demonstrated, in a most singular way, the fact that Prescod's influence was making a serious impact on the Colonial Office. The despatch had given notice to the secretary of state, of the passing of an act amending the Representation of the People's Act and referred to the fact that the Colonial Office sought to disallow the act, because explanations about it were not seen to be complete and, further, because objections to the act had been raised in a memorial to the secretary of state by Prescod. Prescod's objection had been noted in a despatch to Governor MacGregor from the Colonial Office on 2 February 1841; the objection of Prescod was stated in that despatch as being that the proposed reform will be "reform in name only". Governor MacGregor asserted that the Barbados solicitor general Bowcher Clarke had given an opinion on the law and he wondered why Prescod's objection should be given more weight by the Colonial Office. The governor considered that he had turned to Bowcher Clarke for advice because "the Solicitor General of this colony, whose time is devoted to legal pursuits and whose professional acquirements qualify him - infinitely better than an unlearned person involved in a multiplicity of other duties - for satisfying your Lordship's mind upon the important matters in discussion". In responding despatches the Colonial Office disagreed with the governor, making its continuing objection to the role of Bowcher Clarke most explicit; and implicitly censured the governor with respect to his manner of government in Barbados. The Colonial Office said of Solicitor General Bowcher Clarke that, "he was not to be relied on as an impartial reporter in this particular case" and that it saw him more as "a political than as -

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legal advisor". The Colonial Office felt that it was the duty of the Governor to report on political questions and that Crown lawyers of Barbados should hereafter in their official reports confine themselves exclusively to the solution of doubtful questions of law on which you may consult them, and you should reserve exclusively to yourself the political questions which it may be necessary to discuss in your correspondence with The Secretary of State.

In a despatch dated 5 August 1841, the secretary of state gave notice that he would not give assent to the act: This Act considerably narrows the number of eligible candidates for the franchise of members of Assembly, of vestryment and of jurors. Secondly, it does not enlarge but will probably diminish the number of the voters at elections both for Members of Assembly and vestryment and thirdly, those results will be brought about by an Act which is passed with the avowed and proposed object of enlarging the number of persons in the enjoyment of these franchises. Under such circumstances, the Queen will not be advised to assent to the Act. HM confidential advisors are opposed to any retrenchment of the number of persons now qualified for the enjoyment of these franchises . . ,69

It was not until over a year later, in December 1842, that amendments were made to the Franchise Act on the instruction of the Colonial Office and the act was then passed. The amendment facilitated Prescod being in a position to qualify for candidacy in election to the House of Assembly. Here then, was the culmination of Prescod's struggle. This was a victory and represented substantial success for the underclasses in their resistance to plantocracy, particularly in the light of the forces weighted against them. But, even then, there was no appeasement because of the passage of the bill. The Liberal raised questions, still, about the adequacy of the bill despite the limited extensions that had been granted. It argued that had it not been for the passing of the Whig government in Britain and the retirement of Lord John Russell as secretary of state for the colonies, the bill would not have been approved as it now stood but that the Tories and Lord Stanley had allowed the bill to pass, although they had stated that the measure was not final.70 Prescod's candidacy for one of the two seats in the city of Bridgetown constituency was sponsored by what appears to be a grouping of middle merchants, the upper section of the coloured and black petit bourgeois;

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the franchise still did not facilitate mass participation in the election. However, the mass euphoria in the city of Bridgetown after Prescod's victory at the polls nonetheless suggests that the masses saw his victory as theirs as well.

Conclusion I have sought here to establish a basis on which work can be done to definitively delineate the world view, philosophy and ideology of Samuel Jackman Prescod. It is a beginning and addresses the first half of Prescod's political career. In my view, however, it is the period of his political activity that gives the best insight into the essence of his political outlook and ideas. This was the period of his greatest militancy. Even if it were established that there was more than one Prescod and this period was merely his most radical, the quality of his contribution at this juncture in his career would justify assessment of it as an important representation of West Indian political thought. The period also gives us an important opportunity to look into the mind of an astute political activist who had seen slavery, had addressed it, and sought to analyse and act against a political order that although legally abolishing slavery sought to retain it in most other respects. There cannot be too many opportunities to analyse political thought in the context of such a unique social condition. In the Barbadian political culture, Prescod is made acceptable on the interpretation of his contribution as being a liberal one. He is accepted as a liberal reformer, a militant reformer at most, and entirely within the accommodation of contemporary conservative versions of the political history of Barbados. Indeed, the perspective is that even if he was a militant in his early career, the latter period of his life confirms that he was nothing more than a reformer. I disagree. The basis of this conclusion largely rests on the requirements of an ideology that would want it no other way. Second, the conclusion derives from a point where there is a simplistic assumption about the nature, content and practice of revolutionary politics. The first requires that Prescod be a conservative, the second disqualifies him as a revolutionary. In this preliminary assessment of Prescod in the first half of his political career, in my view there is already enough to indicate that, in the context

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of his times and, critically, in the context of Barbados, Prescod's liberalism was revolutionary. The comparable contexts of liberal politics in which Prescod must fairly be placed are those of Locke in the seventeenth century and the revolutionary thought of the Enlightenment, the embryonic nationalism of Rousseau and of the Black Jacobins of Haiti. I make no apology for saying that Prescod was Barbados' Toussaint, Simon Bolivar, or Marti. The full exploration of this must wait; for now we can only assert what must be a tentative predilection of an ideological typology of Prescod. At a further stage in this work, we will be able to venture more explicitly and more precisely into the broader influences on Prescod. We should then be able to more closely fix his brand of early nineteenth century radical liberalism and black nationalism. It will be critical to relate this to and assess the special influence of the conditioning of his political ideas within the crucible of the racist oligarchy and early postslavery political economy of Barbados. We know already that Prescod in the early nineteenth century was a democrat. We know that he was a black nationalist, an advocate of political and economic democracy and an advocate of Caribbean nationalism. He was politically mature enough to be an outstanding organizer, agitator and polemicist. He was the ideologue of the classes excluded from the political and economic oligarchy of nineteenth century Barbados and, especially so, an advocate of the interests of the black masses. We know that his political ideas and activity were perceived to be so hostile to the interests of plantocracy that he was incarcerated for political reasons. The planters called him the scourge of Barbados, "that most mischievous demagogue", "a political knave". But this very same hostility of the planters to Prescod's political postures was a reaction to political positions that created a mass base for him. The "hoe-stick clan" in their thousands cleaved to his cause. The labouring masses supported Prescod, even though some of the main beneficiaries of his efforts were petit-bourgeois whites and blacks. But could this be otherwise for most of the nineteenth century? Certainly this could not be isolated and translated into fitting a late nineteenth century or early twentieth century liberal reformist ideological typology for Prescod. To do so would be to obliterate the importance of political context. These issues will not be settled here, but when and where they

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are determined, a far better understanding of the developmental process of the Barbadian polity will have been established.

Notes 1.

See, for example, George Belle, 'The Politics of Development: A Study in the Political Economy of Barbados" (PhD diss., University of Manchester, 1977).

2.

Cf. G.K. Lewis, Main Currents in Caribbean Thought (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983); D. Benn, Ideology and Political Development (Mona, Jamaica: Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies, 1987). Cf. G. Belle, "Rich Source of Our Social History", review of Main Currents in Caribbean Thought by G.K. Lewis, Caribbean Contact (October 1983).

3. 4. 5.

Liberal, editorial, 1 August 1838. Liberal, editorial, 11 August 1838.

6.

J.A. Thome and J.H. Kimball, Emancipation in the West Indies: A Six Months' Tour in Antigua, Barbados and Jamaica (New York: The American Anti-Slavery Society, 1836; reprinted 1838). In Governor Sir E.J.M. MacGregor to Lord Glenelg, 8 July 1838, Colonial Office (CO) 28/123, despatch no. 165. Ibid. Ibid. Despatch of Lord Glenelg to Governor MacGregor, 31 August 1838, CO 28/123. Ibid. Ibid. Lord Glenelg to Governor MacGregor, 15 October 1838, CO 28/124, despatch no. 16. Governor MacGregor to Lord Glenelg, comments of Solicitor General Bowcher Clarke re the Militia Bill, 1839, CO 28/127, despatch no. 2.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Ibid.

16. 17.

Ibid. In Governor MacGregor's comments regarding the Militia Bill. Barbadian, 10 August 1838.

18. Liberal, editorial, 8 September 1838. 19. Memorial from the Central Negro Emancipation Committee to Rt Hon Lord Glenelg, Secretary of State for the Colonies, Liberal, 27 October 1838.

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20. Ibid. 21. Thome and Kimball, Emancipation in the West Indies. 22. 23.

C.L.R. fames, The Making of the Caribbean Peoples (London: L'Ouverture Publications, 1968). Richard Pares, Merchants and Planters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the Economic History Society, 1960), quoted in James, The Making of the Caribbean Peoples, 8.

24.

Ibid., 7.

25.

Ibid., 8.

26. 27.

Thome and Kimball, Emancipation in the West Indies. Liberal, 17 April 1839.

28. Liberal, editorial, 11 May 1839. 29. Liberal, editorial, 4 August 1838. 30. Liberal, editorial, 27 July 1839. 31. Reported in Liberal, 13 February 1839. 32.

Ibid.

33. Ibid. 34. Liberal, editorial, 16 February 1839. 35. Ibid. 36. Liberal, 8 May 1839. This seems more like a defensive response with regard to the fact that the democratic demands were greater than those allowed even in Britain, rather than the position that the Liberal had indeed been putting, which implied a general call for political democracy, unlikely as its attainment might have been. 37. From the Liberal, editorial, 13 October 1838. 38. Liberal, editorial, 30 July 1839. 39. Liberal, 22 September 1838. 40. Liberal, 9 March 1839. 41.

Liberal, editorial, 13 October 1838.

42.

Cf. Liberal, editorial, 21 September 1839.

43. 44.

Liberal, editorial, 13 October 1838. Case published in the Liberal, 13 March 1839.

45. Ibid. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid. 48. 49.

Case cited in the Liberal, editorial, 29 June 1839. Liberal editorial, 10 July 1839.

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50.

See, for example, the advertisement in the Liberal, 1 April 1840, which stated: 'The subscriber having found it necessary as a means of asserting and protecting the rights for facilitating the removal from this Island of all persons who desire to emigrate, hereby notifies, that he will be accessible to such persons every day (Sunday excepted) at the Liberal Newspaper Office in Lower Broad Street, Samuel Jackman Prescod (March 25, 1840)." 51. Liberal, 16 January 1841.

52.

Resolutions published in the Liberal, 11 April 1840.

53.

Liberal, editorial, 18 July 1840.

54. Ibid. 55. Liberal, editorials, 25 July and 29 July 1840. 56. 57.

Lord Russell to Governor MacGregor, 24 June 1840, CO 28/134, despatch no. 60. Barbadian, 29 July 1840.

58.

West Indian, 30 July 1840.

59.

Globe, 30 July 1840.

60.

Liberal letter from "One of the Coloured Body", 5 August 1840.

61. 62.

In Governor MacGregor to Lord Russell, 26 December 1840, CO 28/135, despatch no. 119. Ibid.

63. 64.

Globe, editorial, 31 December 1840. Liberal, 30 December 1840.

65. Ibid. 66.

In Governor MacGregor to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 17 March 1841, CO 28/139, despatch no. 25. See the comments by Colonial Office officials on this despatch.

67.

Despatch no. 26 of 18 March 1841, in Governor MacGregor to the Colonial Office, CO 28/139, provides some useful information about the close supporters of Prescod. In building his case against Prescod, the governor sent this despatch to the Colonial Office to provide them with the names and occupations of Prescod's "habitual supporters". He listed the following: Anthony Barclay Henry Hawhesworth W. Reed

A small Tailor A Baker

I. Messiah

Retail Liquor Shop A Small Tailor

S. Watts

A baker

Samuel Knight Joshua G. Knight

No ostensible calling A huckster

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Cato Roach William B. Jones W.J. Thomas W.F. Lynch

A joiner A small shopkeeper A retailer liquor shop A small tailor

W. Morris

A small cabinet maker

68.

In Governor MacGregor to the Colonial Office, 2April 1841, CO 28/139, despatch no. 29.

69.

Secretary of State to Governor MacGregor, despatch of 5 August 1841.

70. Liberal, editorial, 25 January 1843.

4 De(Re) Constructing Identities World War I and the Growth of Barbadian/West Indian Nationalism

GLENFORD

D.

HOWE

In times of crisis, it is usually the case that people construct and display collective identities and group solidarity on the basis of, among other things, class, race, gender, sexual orientation and nationalism. This paper illustrates the relevance and accuracy of this assertion by exploring the ways in which World War I stimulated the development or construction of intersecting national, regional and racial identities among the approximately 15,204 Barbadians and other West Indians who served in the war as labourers and soldiers in the British West Indies Regiment (BWIR). It illustrates the argument that identities are social constructions and therefore may also be deconstructed and reconstructed anew,1 and shows that the events of the war helped to lay the foundation for more clearly conceptualized and articulated national, regional and racial identities among West Indians. As such, it argues for an understanding and interpretation of Barbadian nationalism and history in the broader context of West Indian history, more so than has hitherto been the case. When the war began in Europe, following the expiry of the British ultimatum to Germany in August 1914, the West Indian colonies, like the rest of the empire, became embroiled in the conflict. As colonies, the West 103

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Indian territories had no right of neutrality but their display of loyalty had more to do with the informal than the formal ties they had with Britain. Even though informal influence was primarily and essentially a result of constitutional and political arrangements born of imperial conquest, it was the informal ties which mainly determined the responses of the cosmopolitan West Indian population at the outbreak of the war. The inhabitants of the British West Indies had been conditioned as faithful patriots, and social progress was, in part, measured locally by the extent to which the subjects of each colony exhibited British ideals and aistoms. Centuries of alienation and the suppression of the remnants of African cultural practices, and the proliferation of British institutions, culture and language, had by the outbreak of the war created staunchly loyal black Britishers in Barbados and the other colonies. The expressions of support for Britain from the West Indian population were therefore, not surprisingly, quite overwhelming. At the outbreak of war, gifts to the value of several thousand pounds were contributed by the colonies to the war effort. These included sugar, rum, oil, lime, cotton, rice, items of clothing, logwood, and nine aeroplanes to the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force. A total of eleven ambulances and adequate funds for their maintenance were donated to the British Red Cross Society. The people in various colonies donated thousands of pounds in cash by voluntary subscriptions and contributions to various charities. The cash contributions to the British government and the various charities amounted to approximately £2 million.2 These donations were made in spite of severe hardships caused by major increases in the cost of living throughout the region which occurred with the proclamation of war.3 The generosity of the colonies was, however, not uncontested locally. Against the background of the social and economic bludgeoning effect of the war on the population and the perception that the elites were making super profits from the war, some liberal newspapers, though fully sympathetic to the cause of the Allies, had serious reservations about what they regarded as extravagance on the part of the local legislatures. Their commitment to the cause of the lower classes they claimed to represent had to be seen by the public as being no less significant than their loyalty to the British government. This was critical to their credibility locally. Thus in a series of three fierce articles, the Barbados Weekly Illustrated, described

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by the liberal Grenadian newspaper, the West Indian, as a paper "always violently at war against wrong doing", castigated the Barbados officials for what it regarded as an excessive and unjustifiable war donation of £20,000: Our legislators have absolutely no right to do anything more to make this colony the laughing stock of its neighbours or of the entire empire. The Home government does not expect impossibilities, and since our finances are in such a desperately unsound condition it would be impolitic for those responsible for the government of the country to make promises on behalf of the population which they well know it is beyond the power of the inhabitants to perform. We condemn this method of advertising the loyalty and patriotism of Barbadians for it cannot stand the test of a searching analysis.4 In view of the Barbadians' longstanding and indefatigable self-perception as being the most 'British' (or most culturally advanced) in the region, it is unlikely that the majority of the population would have subscribed to the paper's position. To allow the other colonies to contribute more than Barbados would probably have seemed a disgrace to many of the inhabitants. However, the paper's alternative opinion was that instead of Barbados playing the 'poor great', the "Barbadian Rajahs", as the planters were sarcastically described, should donate the money from the profits they were rapidly accumulating.5 Objections were equally evident in the Bahamas which, like most West Indian colonies, experienced economic stagnation before the war. The Tribune, founded in 1903 on the proclaimed principles of impartiality, liberalism and commitment to the upliftment and defence of blacks, was foremost in condemning the legislature's gift of £10,000: We cannot see how in view of the economic conditions that obtain at present that our representatives can shut their eyes to the fact that dark days are before us. With our sponge industry, practically the backbone of the country, suspended; our sisal industry, the next in importance, down to unprofitable production; with the certainty of our custom receipts falling far below average owing to decrease importation; with the Government finding it necessary to stop government work; the consequent lack of employment, reduction of money in circulation and diminished spending power of the people, it seems madness to vote away so much which we are more than likely to need for our increasing army of unemployed and dependents.6

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While it is also likely that the position of the Tribune would not have met with general approval, there probably would have been more public sympathy with its views than in Barbados because unlike the other West Indian colonies, whose industries (sugar, cotton, oil, wood and the like) stood to benefit from the war, this was not the case in the Bahamas. Nevertheless, because Barbados and the Bahamas functioned under the old representative system of government and hence enjoyed greater political autonomy, their liberal newspapers were not encumbered to the same degree, as those in the Crown Colonies, by the need to adopt a sycophantic attitude towards the British government or modify their views too frequently to impress the imperial authorities.7 This is not to suggest that the liberal papers in the Crown Colonies did not come face to face with the conflict between their self-appointed responsibility to the lower and middle classes and their need to engage in the politics of appeasement with the British officials. The case of the West Indian in Grenada, one of the few colonies that had enjoyed prewar prosperity, illustrates the point. Early in 1915, Grenada and the Windward Islands received a new governor in the person of George Basil Haddon-Smith. In his inaugural speech, the governor warned the people of Grenada that during the war they would be required to make greater sacrifices than ever before.8 In reply, the West Indian assured him that as Grenadians were a loyal people they would endure the sacrifices even to breaking point.9 In fact, the paper regarded regular contributions by the children to the war effort as an ideal method of instilling in them greater patriotism and appreciation for the empire.10 Yet, in accord with its promise to protect the interests of the middle and lower classes, the paper also protested vigorously when the Id. war tax stamp was imposed in aid of the war effort on the grounds that it was too much for the majority of the people to bear. It argued that while there were some persons in the colonies to whom the additional tax was nothing, since they could pay "ten times the amount ten times a day", the tax would bring misery to those already suffering from the war.11 Taxes, the paper protested, could be instituted for the war effort but had to be done "more under the principle of an equalization of sacrifice, according to one's ability".12 The other liberal paper in the colony, the Federalist, though sympathetic to the cause of the Red Cross, was critical of the manner in which the poor

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were being fleeced by such organizations. The Red Cross fetes, the paper argued, only served to extract more money from the desperate poor while the rich simply organized the functions, did all the talking, and swaggered about without really contributing any funds.13 In fact, as early as September 1914 the paper had launched a fierce attack on the government and elites, and bitterly questioned: Are the Government going to give the people work? This is the most important question of the day here. It is not to be asked for a moment and then put aside. It is to be dinned in the ears of those in authority until they understand and appreciate its serious significance. It is all nonsense to shout loyalty to Great Britain when British citizens here are being forced into disloyalty through starvation. If those who form the Government of Grenada were not sure of drawing their salaries every month and thus feeding and providing for their families, what would become of their loyalty? It pays them to be loyal, to shout "Rule Britannia", to rail against the Kaiser and all that sort of thing, but stop their allowances from the Public Treasury and where will their loyalty be?14

Opposition to the material and financial contributions made to the war effort was, however, rare throughout the war years. Centuries of indoctrination reinforced by the barrage of war propaganda effectively created an atmosphere of overwhelming patriotism which tended to cut across and transcend ethnic, class and race affiliations. The West Indian colonies quickly launched a verbal and physical offensive against those locals who were perceived to be potential enemies of Britain. For their part, the West Indian press systematically reproduced the propaganda of their British counterparts. This included a barrage of emotive and derogatory descriptions of the Germans, including 'Huns', murderers, thieves and barbarians. Martial law was declared, giving the governors wide-ranging powers to mobilize the local forces, impose strict censorship and adopt other measures deemed necessary for the general defence of the colonies. Inevitably, it was impossible for Germans and Austrians living in the West Indies to escape the wrath of nervous authorities and an overwhelmingly patriotic public. Throughout the region they were ruthlessly rounded up, seized aboard ships and placed under arrest or had their movement within each colony severely restricted. Some had their businesses confiscated and summarily auctioned off to support the local war effort.

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It was in Trinidad, however, that there were the most serious manifestations of hostility against resident Germans. There, local German businessman Paul Scherer and his family became the focus of a vicious anti-German campaign led by the Mirror newspaper.15 Demonstrations were held in front of the Scherer buildings and his property was stoned. The agitation against Scherer was also supported by the Trinidad Chamber of Commerce, which argued that he was an undesirable alien and probably dangerous.16 The campaign was so relentless that the Government of Trinidad, acting on instruction from the Colonial Office, issued a caution to the paper's editor warning of possible action if the inflammatory and libelous articles continued.17 The Colonial Office was of the opinion that the agitation could not be tolerated since Scherer also had American citizenship and America was a friendly nation.18 Nevertheless, Scherer was advised by the Colonial Office to leave Trinidad while the question of his citizenship was being settled.19 On the other hand, the Trinidad government did bring a case against Carl Boos, a German, on a charge of espionage but the lengthy case ended in an acquittal due the lack of incriminating evidence.20 Urgent calls were also made in Barbados for the government to adopt strict measures to prevent the "spy peril".21 One American woman living in Barbados who was alleged to have a German grandfather was forced to make a desperate denial in order to avoid arrest. The fact that she was not incarcerated infuriated the Globe, which insisted: There should be no other room but the barbed wire enclosure for any German seen in Barbados or any other of His Majesty's dominions during the present crisis; there should be no quarter given on the score of class or sex... We have no desire to be hard upon any peaceful citizen who may be an alien, but events have proved the necessity for firm action, however unpleasant it might be, and it is the duty of this government to see that such firm action is taken.22

Unlike in the United States and England, the relatively small size of the colonies and the fact that the vast majority of the population were non-European made it extremely difficult for persons of German or Austrian parentage to disguise or change their identity as a means of protecting themselves. Aliens who had the unfortunate experience of being interned in local jails often suffered severely at the hands of the authorities. Numerous complaints were received by the international

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committee of the Red Cross from the more than seven hundred prisoners of war in Jamaica who claimed among other things that they were improperly fed, ill treated, robbed and housed in appalling conditions.23 These prisoners were mainly German and Austrian seamen taken off ships throughout the region, but a small number were Germans living in the West Indies. Although British hegemony was pervasive throughout the region, there was constantly the realization that it was prone to be challenged by certain elements within the society. Evidence of a subculture of resistance was symbolically highlighted by the fact that when the war began the question of participation by blacks quickly became the focus of an often antagonistic debate. In several colonies including Trinidad, Grenada, Jamaica and British Honduras, a number of blacks adopted the position that it was a war among Europeans (a white man's war) and therefore that black people should not get involved. As a warning to the potentially disloyal in Barbados, the Globe published the case of a Norwegian seaman who was a naturalized British subject and had been heavily fined for saying "to hell with England".24 Such warnings were deemed necessary because in Barbados men had been discouraged from volunteering by the argument that the West Indians would be used to provide domestic service for other regiments.25 The Gleaner also chose to warn dissenters of the consequences of disloyalty by publishing the case of a Jamaican working in Canada who was jailed for six months for asserting that it was only alright for fellows to enlist if they had no brighter future.26 Not surprisingly, the support in the colonies for the Allies resulted in a profound scolding for these dissenters. The West Indian press, regardless of ideological persuasion, unanimously condemned such arguments. One newspaper, for example, adamantly insisted that persons responsible for spreading such malignant and treasonable lies should receive no mercy under martial law.27 Various other reasons were offered to justify why blacks should assist in the war effort. One argument was that black people had of necessity, firmly and rationally, to claim the right to shoulder their responsibilities as subjects of the king and members of the empire if they desired to win the confidence of other races. It was only in this way, it was argued, that the objectionable tradition of "the white man's burden" could be broken down. A significant feature of the arguments put forward to justify black support of and participation in the war was the manner in which the black

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middle classes attempted to manipulate the war situation to fulfil their political ambitions. Black and coloured reformers who were attacking Crown Colony government in the West Indies regarded the war as an important blessing for the movement for representative government, which was gaining great momentum in the region by 1914. In Grenada, the forces agitating for the abolition of Crown Colony government crystallized in 1917 with the formation of the Representative Government Association, and similar organizations were soon established in other colonies. But even before that, in January 1915, the West Indian had been established in the capital by local journalist T.A. Marryshow and a lawyer, C.F.P. Renwick, as the official voice of the reform movement in Grenada.28 The West Indian was at the forefront of the agitation to send a black contingent overseas to fight in the war. Black middle class support for the war effort was, however, not purely disinterested; it represented calculated practical patriotism. It was not likely, as G.K. Lewis has noted of the Jamaican group, that these "Negro gentlemen" with radical ideas who looked to the liberal imperialists in British politics for their fulfilment would have had any criticisms of the role of Britain in the war.29 Like their compatriots in South Africa, West Indian middle class blacks were aware of the relevance of the war in their struggle for political and constitutional change. Couched beneath their protestations of patriotism was a clear linkage between their support for the war effort and the grant of the reforms they desired. The clamour and intensity with which the arguments for participation of blacks in the war were articulated by the local press and population provided the basis for official representations to be made by the various governors to the British government. However, the British government and, in particular, the War Office were for racial reasons adamantly opposed to having blacks serve overseas, especially on the western front. Thus began a protracted and bitter war of words between the colonies and the British government over the issue of West Indian participation in the war.30 Although the British officials were not keen on having blacks serve on the western front, the extent of the West Indian agitation, and devastating losses suffered by the Allies, eventually forced the British government to approve the formation of West Indian contingents and their service overseas.31 By the beginning of October 1915, negotiations relating to the financing of a West Indian contingent and its pay were

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completed and recruiting began in earnest. With a few minor exceptions it was agreed that the West Indians would be recruited on the same terms and conditions as British recruits. This represented a major triumph for West Indian blacks and a significant about-turn by the British. Crucially, however, this 'victory' for the West Indians was not intended by the War Office to represent the beginning of large-scale use of blacks in Europe; not until 1916 would the manpower shortage force the British to employ large numbers of black and other colonial troops in Europe. Nevertheless, there is much justification for claiming that the West Indian breakthrough in respect to the colour bar opened the door for Africans and other non-white groups to be allowed to serve on the western front as soldiers and labourers. In the West Indies as throughout most of the empire, with the exception of some areas of West Africa where coercion was used, the local officials and other recruiting bodies tended to employ moral suasion in order to get volunteers. Local recruiting agencies, such as the established churches, press and government agencies, for the most part adopted those strategies developed and disseminated by British organizations such as Wellington House and the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee. Posters were plastered throughout the various towns and villages calling on men to do their duty for king and country. Films distributed as part of the official British propaganda were shown in the colonies to stimulate patriotism and encourage men to volunteer. These films portrayed an 'illusion of reality' since most people were oblivious to the fact that the scenes were often carefully staged. Pamphlets received from Wellington House were freely distributed. A number of 'carrot and stick' measures were also adopted to induce men to come forward. They were repeatedly told by recruiters of the "very distinct" advantages of enlisting. Among these were the prospect of gaining medals, glory, discipline, exercise and free land at the cessation of hostilities, and those regarded as loafers and vagabonds were informed that military service would make them better men and citizens. The economic advantages of enlisting also constituted a central theme used by recruiters in virtually every territory. In the prevailing conditions of high unemployment, spiralling cost of living and depressed wages, the groups most susceptible to the economic incentives included plantation workers, artisans and the many unemployed of the working class in the towns. Among these groups, issues of loyalty, duty and patriotism were

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of less immediate importance, and migration was generally regarded as a more viable alternative to economic deprivation and starvation. Although the evidence is too fragmented to establish a clear correlation between economic deprivation and enlistment, it seems that recruiters had greater problems in areas where wages were higher due to prosperity in industries that supplied goods for the war. Local women also played an active role in the recruitment activities and even organized their own recruiting meetings. Significantly, the recruitment process dramatically accentuated and revealed the colour and class divisions in West Indian society. Once the War Office had reluctantly decided to allow black West Indians to participate in the war, the contradictions inherent in the plan to have contingents composed of the multiplicity of classes and ethnic groups in the region surfaced. The social divisions between whites, coloureds and blacks immediately became a major issue. Conflict was most acute in Trinidad and Barbados but was also evident in the other colonies. Given the option of enlisting in the BWIR or the public contingent, as it was called, in most colonies the whites and mulattoes, usually referred to by the press as the "better" or "intelligent" classes, refused to volunteer, despite the lamentations and condemnations of the recruiters.32 Whenever these young men of the "better" classes did agree to enlist in the public contingents they insisted as a precondition that they be made officers. C.L.R. James remembered that when the white boys from his school joined the public contingents as officers they would come back to the college to be seen "with chests out and smart uniforms and shining buttons".33 Generally, however, these "better" class men refused to enlist. Their refusal to enlist conveniently allowed the merchants and planters to demonstrate their loyalty in view of allegations of disloyalty and greed from the public and the radical sections of the press. Before blacks were accepted for service, the merchants had contributed to sending individuals to the front, but by this time, they also desired to match the public effort by raising a contingent of their own. They were thus very much in sympathy with the view that blacks, whites and mulattoes should not be in the same contingents. Those in Trinidad and Barbados therefore decided to raise their own contingents of whites and "lightly coloured" men and even got Colonial Office approval for their enterprise.34

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The formation of the white contingents in Trinidad and Barbados did not go unnoticed in the other colonies. The West Indian angrily denounced both white contingents as the result of prejudice, deceit and snobbery, and the blacks of a "yellower hue" in the contingents were accused of trying to "play white".35 With regard to the name of the Barbados group, the paper queried with contempt and disbelief: "Citizen's Contingent! What a name! What splitting of hairs. If there is a Citizen's Contingent, what condition does the Barbados Public Contingent represent? Those who are not citizens?"36 The quality and fitness of the men being recruited into these contingents simply on the basis of class and colour were also seriously questioned by the Grenada paper; and not surprisingly so! The selection process for these contingents was crude and irrational and, as C.L.R. James discovered, the merchants carefully ensured that all members were of the right class and shade of colour: The rumour was, and the facts seemed to show, that the merchants selected only white or brown people. But though I was dark, I was widely known as a coming cricketer and I kept goal for the college team in the first-class football league. I was tall and very fit. So on the morning when I should have been at school I went down to the office where one of the big merchants, perhaps the biggest of all, examined the would-be warriors. Young man after young man went in, and I was not obviously inferior to any of them in anything. The merchant talked to each, asked for references and arranged for further examination as the case might be. When my turn came I walked to his desk. He took one look at me, saw my dark face and, shaking his head vigorously, motioned me violently away.37

This incident highlighted the extent to which colour often took precedence in defining West Indian social relations. Even the usually conservative Port of Spain Gazette was forced to report on the allegedly high rate of rejection among these whites on arrival in England or soon after having started training.38 Despite the hostility and allegations of snobbery the merchants and planters proceeded with their recruiting.39 Approximately 260 men were enlisted in Trinidad and 79 in Barbados. Meanwhile, the controversies over racism were intensified by the cases of coloured doctors who volunteered to serve in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) but who were categorically rejected or refused commissions because of their colour. West Indian doctors residing in England were perhaps the first to experience this situation. In 1914, for example, Dr

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James Jackson Brown, a Jamaican graduate of the London Hospital, offered his services to the RAMC but was only offered the rank of warrant officer. Brown declined on the basis that white doctors received commissions.40 However, it was the rejection of doctors actually residing in the West Indies that generated the most controversy.41 Among the most publicized and hotly debated was that of Dr W.S. Mitchell, the acting resident surgeon of Grenada. He was only "slightly coloured" but had "the African wooly hair".42 Having read in the papers that medical men were required by the army, Dr Mitchell applied to work with the RAMC in 1915 but did not specifically seek a commission as he merely wanted to serve with the medical corps. The War Office bluntly informed Mitchell that as commissions in the RAMC could only be granted to persons of "pure European blood", he was not eligible for such an appointment.43 The reply created quite a stir in Grenada, but much to the relief of the governor, the press did not indulge in the inflammatory agitation that he had expected.44 Nevertheless, the governor immediately warned the Colonial Office to suggest that the army use greater tact when dealing with the "colour question" in future.45 The Colonial Office agreed that the affair had been rather poorly handled and that an effort should have been made to conceal the real reason for the rejection.46 This response was in tune with the position of the Colonial Office with regard to public debates of race issues in the colonies. Their view had been expressed by a senior clerk, R.A. Wiseman, who minuted, in reference to black participation in the war, "On the whole I think it is our policy if possible to prevent any public discussion of the colour question in the West Indies."47 The local elites would probably have fully endorsed Wiseman's statement because they too had a policy of avoiding or suppressing debates on issues of colour and race.48 Mitchell subsequently enlisted in the BWIR and was given the rank of surgeon lieutenant.49 For a relieved Colonial Office official, this was "a happy solution to a difficult problem".50 This intensification of the debate on race prejudice served to increase the apathy and resistance to recruitment which had been slowly developing. By the middle of 1916, men rejected in England as unfit or as invalids had begun to return to the West Indies. The exaggerations in the promises that recruiters had made and were still making would have become apparent to these men and the public because, without exception, the local governments had made little preparation for the invalids. Moreover,

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those men discharged as unfit or undesirable were not entitled to any benefits or pensions, while those who were entitled to benefits experienced excessively long delays before they received assistance.51 In Jamaica, the men were usually given a few shillings, a cheap suit of clothes and free railway transport to their home, but because of transportation problems some had to remain in Kingston for several days. This exhausted their money even before they actually left for home.52 The situation created major dissatisfaction because many of these men had no other form of support. Having relinquished their jobs to fight for king and country, they were left to experience destitution and poverty. The spectacle of returning invalids had a sobering effect on potential recruits. The sight of men hobbling on sticks and crutches was evident in Grenada, and there were in Trinidad "many pathetic scenes to be witnessed".53 In Jamaica, however, it was the catastrophic journey of their third contingent that dramatically brought home the possible dangers that awaited potential recruits. On 6 March 1916 the third Jamaica contingent, comprising 25 officers and 1,115 other ranks, departed for England on board the Verdala. Due to enemy submarine activity in the region the Admiralty ordered the ship to make a diversion to Halifax but before it could reach its destination it encountered a blizzard. Since the Verdala was not adequately heated and the black soldiers had not been properly equipped with warm clothing, substantial casualties resulted. Approximately six hundred men suffered from exposure and frostbite and there were five immediate deaths. The Halifax incident seriously damaged the recruitment campaign, which had to be temporarily suspended as a result.54 The recruiters subsequently adopted a more vigorous strategy of house-to-house visits.55 Greater effort was also made, particularly after America's entry into the war in 1917, to obtain more volunteers from Panama, and it was to a large extent the recruiting of these Jamaican and other migrants in Panama that allowed further Jamaican contingents to be formed.56 Conscription measures were eventually passed in Jamaica and other colonies in order to get more men, especially those of quality, to enlist but these measures were never enforced. The men who arrived overseas from the region to serve in the BWIR were therefore all volunteers even though, as elsewhere in the empire, some joined because of economic, legal and private pressures.

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Like other soldiers and noncombatants who served in the war, the BWIR battalions experienced conditions that were arduous and often very dangerous. They were subjected to enemy artillery bombardment, sniper fire, exploding ammunition dumps and aerial attacks. In France life was also made uncomfortable by the prevalence of fleas, lice and rats, while in Egypt there were problems with scorpions, lizards, snakes and especially flies. Nevertheless, in every theatre the West Indians consistently displayed courage and discipline, and as a result many won decorations. Their invaluable service and the bravery with which they performed under dangerous conditions were highly commended by senior commanding officers.57 However, the West Indian soldiers suffered severely from a combination of poor and irregular diet, insanitary and overcrowded conditions, neglect and inadequate medical care, warfare, and the harsh climatic conditions which led to a high incidence of diseases such as measles, scabies, diarrhoea, pneumonia, dysentery, influenza, and even malaria and typhoid. The devastating impact of disease on the 15,204 men who served in the BWIR is revealed by the fact that of total casualties, 185 or 1.22 percent were killed or died from wounds, 697 or 4.58 percent were wounded while 1,071 or 7.04 percent died from disease.58 The fate of the BWIR in this regard was by no means unique, for similar statistics exist for the black labour corps and carriers from West Africa and South Africa, but the incompleteness of these figures precludes systematic comparison.59 Additionally, even though there was a high degree of standardization and regularization in the disciplinary code structure of the army, inequalities in attitudes towards and treatment of the different races, classes and ethnic groups did exist.60 Major problems of discrimination were to be found in the practical application of army regulations in an environment in which stereotypes of race and class were prevalent. Even though the army structure and system of accountability did, in many instances, eventually vindicate the rights of all soldiers, adjustment into army life was usually more difficult and precarious for the black soldier than for his white counterpart because of racism. One veteran wrote of the "consciousness of discrimination" against "native troops" that they felt in the army.61 Although the West Indians considered themselves on a higher social scale than the West African, Indian and Chinese labour units, the abuse

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of these groups was a constant reminder that their own social position was also always under threat. Verbal and physical attacks on the black soldiers brought this home in a most powerful manner. On one occasion in Mesopotamia, four BWIR tally clerks bathing in an enclosed area reserved for British troops were driven out by a British officer who told them that "no niggers" were allowed to bathe in that section.62 Similarly, a major incident took place in August 1916 when a group of tired and hungry BWIR men marched into 'A' camp at Garbbary. When they arrived at the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) singing "Rule Britannia", they were confronted by a number of British soldiers and rudely asked: "Who gave you niggers authority to sing that? Clear out of this building; only British soldiers admitted here."63 This resulted in a fight involving twenty of the soldiers. When the matter was reported to the officer in charge, the only consolation the BWIR soldiers received was his assurance that steps would be taken to avoid similar disturbances. These confrontations were by no means isolated incidents, for blacks in Egypt and Mesopotamia were frequently tormented and taunted by British troops attempting to make them lose their temper. Common racial slurs included "nigger, nigger, what you've come here for" and "Bloke, see a monkey in Khaki".64 Such insults were particularly hard for middle class black soldiers who had taught many of these same British soldiers to read and write, and who were then ridiculed by them.65 The experiences of blacks who served in the military of other countries, such as the USA and Canada, were strikingly similar. For example, Private A.W. Stoute, a Barbadian, who complained that he was in "a horrible state of hell" because of racial harassment in the Twelfth Reserve Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in England, was granted a transfer to the BWIR.66 The military authorities also made efforts to enforce segregation in the various areas where blacks served. In one instance in Mesopotamia, a BWIR sergeant and thirty men were refused entry into a tent where church services were being conducted and had to take seats outside.67 Similarly, in France attempts were made to exclude the BWIR soldiers from the YMCA tents. Army officials there tried to impose segregation regulations that had been specifically designed for the South Africans and other black corps on the West Indians. On this occasion, the white noncommissioned officers (NCOs) of the BWIR refused to enter the YMCA tents until the

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blacks were also permitted entrance.68 This objective was only achieved when the West Indian Contingent Committee intervened, arguing that the West Indian soldier "though generally of colour" was of "a very different educational and social status from the West African and some other soldiers from the Crown Colonies".69 The argument of the committee reflected the manner in which the officials at times had to incorporate class distinctions into their discourse on race in order to resolve the paradoxes that occasionally surfaced in the discourse and practice of racism. One response adopted by the black soldiers was to write to local newspapers urging for "something hot" to be written against race prejudice,70 Their intention was to mobilize West Indian public opinion in the hope of getting proper representation and possibly relief from the daily harassment. In fact, soldiers sometimes accused the papers and the local public of getting them into these difficulties by having urged them to enlist. Some soldiers sought a form of quiet accommodation within the system. One Barbadian soldier, when questioned about racism, denied ever having experienced any racial insults; in his view, "anything you looked for is the same thing you got".71 Quiescence may have been the product of centuries of colonialism and the feelings of inferiority that it engendered because legal emancipation had not brought about a corresponding psychological liberation. A more immediate and perhaps more realistic explanation, suggests that it was simply a way of avoiding trouble, particularly as the system of discipline was not often enforced in their favour and was often fairly arbitrary. Relations in Egypt within the BWIR battalions that were most representative of the West Indian colonies were normally friendly, but this was not automatic or immediate. Amicable relations developed over time through interaction and communication, induced by their common experiences. On arrival at Seaford, where they were sent on arrival in England, and later in Egypt, the inter-island rivalry, distrust, and notions of inferiority and superiority based on island origin that characterized West Indian societies after centuries of colonialism did not disappear immediately. At Seaford, a nascent West Indian identity began to emerge and was alluded to by one English journalist, who claimed: "All local jealousies have vanished, and the men no longer say I am a Jamaican, Barbadian, Trinidadian, or Honduran, but always, I am a West Indian."72 The

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journalist's observation reflected the extent to which a West Indian consciousness had emerged at this early stage in terms of how blacks viewed themselves in relation to Europeans, and how the Europeans regarded them. Although it seems that the actual development of a similar consciousness and identity in relation to each other was a more difficult and protracted process, the eventual development of this West Indian unity was to have a profound impact on the local societies when the soldiers returned home. By the end of 1917 there was a marked decline in morale among the soldiers of the BWIR. This discontent was further intensified by a pay dispute that, although eventually settled in favour of the soldiers, served to generate even greater animosity among the men. More importantly, during the pay dispute, the BWIR soldiers from the various islands displayed an unprecedented level of solidarity, which was reflective of an intensification and development of their West Indian conciousness and identity. This solidarity was again demonstrated during a mutiny at Taranto, Italy, where the various battalions had been brought together in preparation for demobilzation. After Armistice Day, the eight BWIR battalions in France and Italy were concentrated at Taranto, Italy, to prepare for demobilization.73 They were subsequently joined by the three battalions from Egypt and the men from Mesopotamia. As a result of severe labour shortages at Taranto, the West Indians had to assist with loading and unloading ships and do labour fatigues. This led to much resentment, and on 6 December 1918 the men of the Ninth Battalion revolted and attacked their officers. On the same day 180 sergeants forwarded a petition to the secretary of state complaining about the pay issue, the failure to increase their separation allowance and the fact that they had been discriminated against in the area of promotions.74 The discontent of the soldiers was made known in letters of protest to West Indian governments and to the secretary of state signed by hundreds of men. In one such letter, the sergeants of the Third Battalion BWIR objected that the circumstances encountered by the soldiers serving in France and Italy did not "tend to engender the most cordial feelings for the empire in West Indians".75 Another group angrily concluded: "We have been deceived. We like to think the deception was not intentional. The fact remains conditions are not as we expect".76 In response to this

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letter Governor O'Brien of Barbados pleaded with the Colonial Office to consider the complaints, because the signatories were all men of good character and standing in the colony and their petition was respectfully worded and "differed considerably in tone" from other such letters received by members of the public.77 The churches, too, came under serious questioning from the disgruntled soldiers. Chaplains were accused of failing to put into practice the "simple teachings of Christ" and not rectifying the situation whereby the blacks were "treated neither as Christians nor British citizens, but as West Indian niggers".78 During the mutiny, which lasted about four days, a black NCO shot and killed one of the mutineers in self-defence and there was also a bombing. Disaffection spread quickly among the other soldiers and on 9 December the "increasingly truculent" Tenth Battalion refused to work.79 A senior commander, Lieutenant Colonel Willis, who had ordered some BWIR men to clean the latrines of the Italian Labour Corps was also subsequently assaulted.80 In response to calls for help from the commanders at Taranto, a machine-gun company and a battalion of the Worcestershire Regiment were despatched to restore order. The Ninth BWIR was disbanded and the men distributed to the other battalions, which were all subsequently disarmed. Approximately sixty soldiers were later tried for mutiny and those convicted received sentences ranging from three to five years but one man got twenty years, while another was executed by a firing squad from the Worcestershire Regiment.81 Although the mutiny was crushed, the bitterness persisted. On 17 December, about 60 NCOs held a meeting to discuss the question of black rights, self-determination and closer union in the West Indies. An organization called the Caribbean League was formed at the gathering to further these objectives. At another meeting on 20 December, under the chairmanship of one Sergeant Baxter, who had just previously been superseded by a white NCO, a sergeant of the Third BWIR, argued that the black man should have freedom and govern himself in the West Indies and that, if necessary, force and bloodshed should be used to attain these aims.82 His sentiments were loudly applauded by the majority of those present. The discussion eventually drifted from matters concerning the West Indies to one of grievances of the black man against the white.83 The question of white officers being appointed in place of blacks who were not inferior was also discussed and subtle threats were made against those white

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officers who were to be sent back with them. The soldiers decided to hold a general strike for higher wages on their return to the West Indies. The headquarters for the Caribbean League was to be in Kingston, Jamaica, with suboffices in the other colonies. Meanwhile, the cessation of hostilities quickly led to a profound change in white attitudes to the presence of blacks in the UK. As white seamen and soldiers were demobilized and the competition for jobs intensified, so too did the level of race and class antagonism, especially in London and the port cities. It was difficult, perhaps impossible, for blacks in England not to feel unwanted. Norman Manley, for instance, recalled the great increase in race prejudice on his return to civilian life in England. In London, according to him, he was a "constant and almost continuous" user of Gray's Inn and its common room for nearly three years but "never came to know a single white man there or to speak to any except to say 'Good Morning' or 'Good Day' ", and he felt "race hostility or suspicions" as he moved around in lodging houses and shops.84 The more serious aspect of this intensification of race and class conflict was the numerous riots that erupted and the assaults on blacks in the UK. The riots were extensive and involved thousands of whites who unleashed a series of brutal attacks on non-white groups in many cities including Cardiff, Glasgow, Hull, Liverpool, London and Newport.85 Because of the large-scale onslaughts on blacks, and in an attempt to appease the British public, the government decided to repatriate as many blacks as they could, and by the middle of September 1919 about six hundred had been repatriated. However, in Cardiff and elsewhere some blacks, described as the "militant section" by David Williams, Cardiff's chief constable, "would not entertain the question of repatriation" and "were insistent in claiming as British subjects their right to equality of treatment and freedom to remain" in England.86 Other militants agreed to be repatriated, but they openly stated that it would only be for the "object of creating racial feelings against members of the white race domiciled in their country".87 Black seamen in Hull sent a delegation consisting of two West Africans and several West Indians, including one G. Steede, to see George Morley, the chief constable. According to Morley, they complained bitterly that they did not receive the same treatment as whites and that they were victimized even by the officials; they threatened that similar treatment would be given to the white men in their home

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colonies.88 Steede made a "particularly virulent speech" and indicated that the repatriated West Indians "would become centres of disaffection" and that if England was to be "a white man's country, the West Indies should be a coloured man's country".89 He also talked extensively about the rights of man. Even more alarming to the authorities, especially those in the West Indies, was the fact that between 1916 and 1919 a number of colonies, including St Lucia, Grenada, Barbados, Antigua, Trinidad, Jamaica and British Guiana, experienced a series of strikes in which, in the case of Antigua, Jamaica and Trinidad, several strikers were shot and killed.90 In the light of these developments in the region, the Globe, in characteristic alarmist fashion, called for drastic measures against agitators in Barbados, and warned the authorities: 'These are days of strikes, burglaries, midnight maraudings and general unrest; our masses, directed by any silvery tongued leader in whom they might trust, are like kerosine, easily inflamed."91 In Barbados and other colonies, there were frequent clashes between police and large groups of the urban poor whose numbers had increased significantly in many of the colonies during the late nineteenth century partly as a result of the crisis in the sugar industry.92 In fact, in British Honduras a determined effort was made in August 1918 to destroy the entire town with a fire which did extensive damage to the property of the elites and government.93 According to the acting governor, R. Walter, the general attitude of the public to the fire was "let it burn".94 It was into this turmoil that the disgruntled seamen and ex-servicemen were about to return. Many people in the region were hoping or anticipating, and, in the case of the authorities, fearing, that their arrival would bring the conflict to head. In Barbados, for instance, according to Governor O'Brien, there was a "considerable amount of local excitement" over the disbanding of the soldiers, some of whom had sent threatening letters to various people in the community.95 Although the strikes in Barbados had been settled, the labourers were sullen and there were hints that trouble would arise with the return of the ex-servicemen. Moreover, there were, he warned, agitators on the island who were desirous of "stirring up strife and raising the racial question".96 He requested naval support should trouble arise. When the disgruntled BWIR soldiers began arriving back in the West Indies they quickly joined a wave of worker protest

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resulting from a severe economic crisis produced by the war, and the influence of black nationalist ideology espoused by Marcus Garvey and others. Disenchanted soldiers and angry workers unleashed a series of protest actions and riots in a number of territories including Jamaica, Grenada and especially in British Honduras. The first large group of ex-servicemen arrived in British Honduras on 8 July 1919 and received a grand welcome, but by the night of 22 July they were involved in major disturbance in the capital, Belize. The disturbance was started and initially led by contingent men who, armed with sticks and acting under the orders of a leader, marched through the streets breaking shop windows. They were quickly joined by other comrades and thousands of civilian men, women and children. Shops of the most prominent merchants were systematically looted by the crowds, which had quickly increased to between three thousand and four thousand or between a quarter and a third of the town's population. Looting lasted throughout the night and continued until the morning of 23 July. Women played an active part and carried away tremendous loads of loot in their dresses and returned for more.97 During the riot, threats were openly made against whites and persons acting in support of the law. Many of them, including P.E. Matthews, the captain and adjutant of the Territorial Force, Robert Wyatt, the superintendent of police, Percy George, editor of the Clarion, W.H. Hoar, the keeper of prisons, and several of clerks from the leading stores, were ruthlessly beaten with sticks. The story each told of his ordeal emphasized the determination of the contingent men and civilians to devastate the local white population. Robert Wyatt, for example, related his experience with one group of rioters: They were carrying sticks and shouting . . . My intention was to prevail on the contingent men. I went right amongst them and appealed to them to stop, something like this: "For God's sake men do not do this, you will get a bad name". No sooner were these words out of my mouth than Tony Hamilton (a contingent man) struck me with a stick right on the left shoulder or upper part of the breast, and somebody, I am almost prepared to say it was Hamilton, shouted out: "Beat it, you white bastard, to the station; beat it to the station". A number of contingent men then set about me with sticks immediately . . . During the time I was being beaten by the contingent men, the civilians standing by jeered and laughed and danced.98

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E.A. Baber, the acting chief clerk in the Office of the Colonial Secretary, was convinced that the rioters were determined to destroy anything and everything white." It is not difficult to see how he arrived at this conclusion because the contingent men were shouting comments such as, "We are going to give them hell tonight"; 'This is not Mesopotamia, this is not Egypt, this is Belize"; "We are with the civilians and the civilians are with us"; "We are going to kill the white sons of bitches tonight"; and, 'This is the black man's night."100 Moreover, as J.A. Gardiner, a barber, observed, the civilians were just as involved in the beatings as the contingent men.101 In fact, J. Blades, the acting assistant superintendent of police, claimed that he heard many civilians yelling, "this is our country and we want to get the white man out".102 In Barbados, however, the Barbadian authorities quickly moved to ensure that the ex-servicemen from that island did not get the opportunity to initiate or participate in any sociopolitical unrest. Against the background of their experiences overseas it was not surprising that the journey of the main body of ex-servicemen back to the West Indies was marked at times by intense acrimony and some violence. The situation was often exacerbated by the presence of seamen who were being repatriated after the disturbances in England. On 12 September 1919 the Orca departed England with about 120 black ex-servicemen, 75 military prisoners of the BWIR, mainly from the Toronto mutiny, and 200 seamen and other civilians.103 From the time the ship left Cardiff there was trouble and insubordination. Five of the prisoners were in a state of open mutiny throughout the voyage and repeated attempts were made to rescue the prisoners from their cells. The seamen also continually threatened violence to all whites on board and tried to incite the soldiers and convicts to mutiny. Believing that direct disciplinary action against the seamen would probably result in serious rioting, the master of the ship and Major H.W. Hemsley, who was in charge of the troops, tried to adopt a conciliatory attitude but the bitter feelings persisted. On 15 September the prisoners prevented the military police from carrying out their duties, but after the excitement had died down, the ringleaders were confined to their cells. Since the prisoners persisted in wrecking the cells and tearing out the iron bars and planking, they were handcuffed. Because they broke the handcuffs, however, their hands were manacled behind their backs. This generated further discontent among

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the civilians and the other soldiers. The manacles were removed on 19 September, but on the morning of 20 September the convicts had again become violent and the guards had to shoot one in the wrist before he could be subdued. When the convict was being manacled again he became violent, and Private C. Lashley of Barbados, who tried to interfere on his behalf, was shot dead. As the ship approached Barbados on 22 September, the captain sent a telegram to the authorities informing them of the mutiny and requested an armed guard when the ship arrived.104 When the ship docked on 23 September the captain wanted the five mutineers removed. Governor O'Brien refused to accept the prisoners, however, as Barbados had no military prison, and claimed that he had been advised that the chief justice would be compelled to release the prisoners on habeas corpus proceedings. These arguments were largely a camouflage for the more deep-rooted fears of the ruling classes at having "dangerous" military prisoners in the colony. Fortunately, the captain of the Yarmouth, which was then in port, agreed to take the prisoners. O'Brien's fearful attitude had already been shown during a previous incident involving over 80 repatriated seamen from the Santille who had sojourned in Barbados on the their way to Jamaica, British Guiana and other colonies. Throughout the voyage the men had been unruly and had freely expressed their resentment towards the white passengers on board.105 Although the ship's master was convinced the seamen were armed he made no attempt to search them because he feared there would be serious bloodshed. Before they disembarked at Barbados the men wrecked all the electric light fittings and destroyed the stores on board. When they landed on 15 July 1919, they immediately besieged the treasury building and demanded their advances in a truculent manner. Although their request was promptly granted in order to avoid further disturbance, much delay and trouble was experienced before the last phase of the journey, and the crew refused to sail with the seamen unless they were given an armed guard to maintain order. This was not done, and so the Santille left without the prisoners who had to be taken to Jamaica on another ship. Given the nervous state of the officials in Barbados, the situation was regarded by O'Brien with deep concern and he was adamant that it should not be repeated. He warned the Colonial Office: "I need not labour the point that the presence of men in the frame of mind of the late arrivals, with no work to do, is a source of possible

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mischief, particularly in the present day when there is a great deal of latent unrest throughout the world from which we are not free in Barbados."106 In the light of this experience, O'Brien mustered up every objection to prevent the military prisoners from the Orca from landing in Barbados, although a Colonial Office official thought that he was merely pettifogging as the prisoners could easily have been kept in the prison there.107 The Barbados officials were determined not to have prisoners from the BWIR, however. As a result, early the following year a serious row developed with the Trinidadian officials over the keeping of military prisoners. Of greater concern to the Barbadian authorities was the question of resettling the ex-servicemen. To deal with this problem the Returned Soldiers' Committee was established and given the task of finding jobs for the ex-servicemen but it was discovered that many desired to emigrate, especially to Canada.108 The Canadian government promptly indicated that since it had to deal with its own ex-servicemen their emigration should be discouraged.109 The decision was probably influenced by the determination of the Canadian government at the time to prevent more blacks from entering the country.110 Many Barbadian ex-servicemen therefore went to Cuba instead to work in the sugar industry. By Octobe 1920, no less than 422 had left for Cuba and many more went subsequently.111 Their departure was greatly facilitated by the desire of the authorities to get rid of them, so the committee contributed generously to their passage and ensured that they got first preference in the scheme to recruit labourers for Cuba. Also, although most of the men received between £25 and £60 on being demobilized they invested little and spent the money extravagantly in the belief that they were entitled to more. Some of those who remained in Barbados found employment in the police force, fire brigade, civil service, and many once again became labourers. Others became involved in organizations such as the Universal Ne gr Improvement Association (UNIA) and the Workingmen's Association but this form of activity was not countenanced by the authorities. For example, when ex-serviceman Joseph Garner became involved in these two organizations, he received no further consideration from the Returned Soldiers' Committee because of his activities.112 The most outstanding Barbadian ex-serviceman was Clennell Wilsden Wickham. As writer and later editor of the radical newspaper the Herald, Wickham engaged in a

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relentless assault on the barriers that protected the privileges of the narrow and selfish minority in that colony.113 In 1930, however, the Herald was forced to close down as a result of a libel case brought against it, and although Wickham started a periodical called the Outlook he was doomed for several years to a life of frustration and great hardship.114 Fortunately in 1934 Marryshow recruited him to work in Grenada, first as leaderwriter and later as editor of the West Indian. He died a few years later in Gre nada.

Conclusion Clearly, West Indian participation in World War I was a significant event in the still ongoing processes of deconstruction and reconstruction of nationalists identities in the postemancipation era of Barbadian and West Indian history. The war stimulated profound socioeconomic, political and psychological change and greatly facilitated protest against the oppressive conditions in the colonies and against colonial rule by giving a fillip to the adoption of the nationalist ideologies of Marcus Garvey and others throughout the region. By establishing the conditions for the contestation of imperial ideologies and definitions of the 'other' -the West Indian black - the war also laid the foundation for the nationalist upheavals of the 1930s in which World War I veterans were to play a significant role.

Notes 1.

See Jill Krause and Neil Renwick, introduction to Identities in International Relations, edited by J. Krause and N. Renwick (Basingstoke: Macmillan; New York: St Martin's Press, 1996), x-xv.

2. See Charles Lucas, ed., The Empire at War, vol. 2 (London: Oxford University Press, 1923), 325-137. 3.

Glenford D. Howe, "West Indians and World War One: A Social History of the British West Indies Regiment" (PhD diss., University of London, 1994), 39-15.

4.

Quoted in the West Indian, 29 July 1916, 2. See also West Indian, 12 October 1917, 7.

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5. Weekly Illustrated (Barbados), 3 August 1916. Extract reprinted in West Indian, 18 August 1916, 2. 6. Tribune, 3 October 1914, cited in Gail Sounders, et al., Sources of Bahamian History (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), 161. 7.

8.

Under the old representative system of government, the full number of elected members could always command a majority in the legislature. Under pure Crown Colony government, however, there was an official majority in the legislature. Colonies with nominated unofficial majorities in the legislature were also regarded by the Colonial Office as Crown Colonies. The main feature of Crown Colony government was that power was concentrated in the hands of the governor, subject to close scrutiny from London. The movement for representative government in Grenada and other colonies was, to a large extent, a plea by the middle classes that because of their cultural, educational and economic achievements they be allowed active participation in government through the imperial conferment of political rights. West Indian, 2 January 1915, 2.

9. 10.

Ibid. West Indian, 20 June 1916, 2.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

West Indian, 22 November 1916,2. Ibid. Federalist, 4 October 1916, 2. Federalist, 26 September 1914, 3. Mirror, 2 May 1916, 6; Mirror, 4 May and 6 May 1916. "Letter from Chamber of Commerce to W.M. Gordon, Acting Colonial Secretary", in W. Knaggs to Bonar Law, 13 May 1916, Colonial Office (CO) 295/505/26564, enclosure no. 3. 17. Port of Spain Gazette, 7 May 1916, 6; Mirror, 12 May 1916, enclosed in W. Knaggs to Bonar Law, 13 May 1916, CO 295/505/26564, enclosure no. 5. 18. Bonar Law to officer administering Trinidad government, 10 May 1916, CO 295/505/21727. 19. Minute of George Grindle dated 10 May 1916, CO 295/505/21727. 20. West Indian, 14 March 1919, 2. 21. "Germanizing Somewhere", Globe, 27 November 1914, 3; Globe, 30 November 1914, 3. 22. 23. 24.

"Germanizing Somewhere", 3. Extract of letter by German prisoner in Jamaica to the Red Cross, enclosed in War Office to Colonial Office, 29 April 1915, CO 137/712/19661. "Fined for Disloyalty", Globe, 24 November 1915, 3.

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25. 'The West Indian Contingent", Globe, 17 September 1915, 3. 26. "Disloyal Talk", Gleaner, 18 April 1918, 10. 27. Jamaica Times, 20 November 1915, 15. 28. See Howe, "West Indians and World War One", 64-66. 29. G.K. Lewis, The Growth of the Modern West Indies (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1968), 170. 30. See Glenford D. Howe, "West Indian Blacks and the Struggle for Participation in the First World War", Journal of Caribbean History 28, no. 1 (1994): 27-62. 31. Howe, "West Indians and World War One", 77-96. 32. Mirror, 16 August 1915, 8; Mirror, 17 September 1916, 4; Tribune, 2 November 1915, 3; Gleaner, 12 January 1916, 8. 33. C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary (London: Hutchinson, 1963), 40. 34. Minute of G. Grindle, 15 November 1915, on Hugginsto Law, 4 November 1915, C0295/503. 35. 'Trinidad's 'White' Private Contingent", West Indian, 23 November 1915, 2. 36. 37. 38. 39.

41. 42. 43. 44.

West Indian, 25 November 1915, 2. James, Beyond a Boundary, 40. "A Matter for Serious Inquiry", Port of Spain Gazette, 17 May 1918, 11. See Captain H. Dow, Record Service of Members of the Trinidad Merchants' and Planters' Contingent 1915-1918 (Trinidad: Government Printery, 1925). There were 204 subscribers to the fund for the contingent and a total amount of $61,433.38 was raised. Jeffrey Green, "West Indian Doctors in London: John Alcindor (1873-1924) and James Jackson Brown (1882-1953)", Journal of Caribbean History 20, no. 1 (1986): 54. War Office to W.S. Mitchell, 8 July 1915, CO 321/282/40055. Governor Haddon-Smith to Bonar Law, 7 August 1915, CO 321/282/40055. War Office to W.S. Mitchell, 8 July 1915. Governor Haddon-Smith to Bonar Law, 7 August 1915.

45. 46.

Ibid. Ibid., minute of Darnley, 2 September 1915.

47.

Minute of R.A. Wiseman on telegram by officer administering the Government of the Leeward Islands, 31 August 1914, CO 152/342. See, for example, Patrick Bryan, The Jamaican People, 1880-1902 (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), 250.

40.

48. 49. 50.

War Office to Colonial Office, 16 October 1915, CO 321/286/47950. Ibid., minute of G. Grindle, 19 October 1915.

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51.

"Case of Discharged Men", Jamaica Times, 16 September 1916, 12.

52.

Gleaner, 3 August 1916, 8.

53.

West Indian, 26 August 1916, 2; West Indian, 21 June 1918, 2.

54.

"With White Hearts", Gleaner, 14 April 1916, 8.

55.

'The Situation Today", Gleaner, 27 May 1916, 8.

56.

Herbert G. DeLisser, Jamaica and the Great War (Kingston, Jamaica: The Gleaner Co., 1917), 135. For further details on recruitment in Panama see West Indian, 20 July 1917, 3; West Indian, 12 October 1917, 8; also Stephen Hill, comp., Who's Who in Jamaica, 1919-1920 (Kingston, Jamaica: The Gleaner Co., 1920), 242-43.

57.

See, for example, W.J. Murray to War Office, 24 June 1917, CO 318/344/35242; West India Committee Circular, 6 March 1919.

58.

Report of the West Indian Contingent Committee, 30 September 1919, 4.

59 See Albert Grundlingh, Fighting Their Own War: South African Blacks and the First World War (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1978), 88-89; David Killingray and James Matthews, "Beasts of Burden: British West African Carriers in the First World War", Canadian Journal of African Studies 13, no. 1 (1979): 10. 60.

See, for example, Douglas Haig, Extracts From General Routine Orders [issued to the British armies in France] (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1918), 80.

61.

Sir Etienne Dupuch, A Salute to Friend and Foe (Nassau, Bahamas: Tribune, 1982), 54.

62.

Report of the Commission appointed by the Governor to Enquire into the origin of the Riot in the town of Belize which began on the night of the 22nd July 1919, evidence of Sergeant Tennyson, CO 123/296.

63.

.Report of the Commission, evidence of S.A. Haynes, CO 123/296.

64.

West Indian, 28 February 1919, 1.

65.

West Indian, 2 9 February 1919, 1.

66.

A.W. Stoute to W.H. Stoker, 31 July 1918, CO 28/294; A.W. Stoute to W.H. Stoker, 1 August 1918, CO 28/294; W.H. Stoker to Darnley, 5 August 1918, CO 28/294.

67.

Report of the Commission, evidence of G.W. Hulse, CO 123/296.

68.

A.E. Horner, From the Islands of the Sea: Glimpses of a West Indian Battalion in France (Nassau, Bahamas: Guardian, 1919), 48.

69.

The West Indian Contingent Committee Report, 30 June 1918, 2. This committee was set up in England to look after the welfare of all West Indian soldiers.

70.

West Indian, 28 February 1919, 1.

71.

Personal interview with Charles Rice, 15 July 1991.

72.

Clarion, 9 March 1916, 260.

73.

The armistice was on 11 November 1918, but formal peace was marked by the Treaty of Versailles which was concluded on 28 June 1919.

De(Re) Constructing Identities

74. 75.

131

CO 28/294/56561. M. Murphy to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 6 December 1918, CO 28/294.

76. J.C. Lynch, 2 August 1918, CO 28/294/56561. 77. O'Brien to Long, 14 October 1918, CO 28/294/56561. 78. Roland Green, 25 October 1918, enclosing letter from Sergeant British West India Regiment, Egypt, 27 July 1918, CO 318/347/51686. 79. Base Commandant, Toronto, to War Office, 9 December 1918, CO 318/347. 80. 81.

A.A. Cipriani, Twenty-five Years After (London: Karia Press, 1993), 65. See W.F. Elkins, "A Source of Black Nationalism in the Caribbean: The Revolt of the British West Indies Regiment at Taranto, Italy", Science and Society 33, no. 2 (Spring 1970): 102. 82. Major Maxwell Smith to General Officer Commanding, Taranto, 27 December 1918, CO 318/350/2590. 83. Ibid. 84.

Norman Manley, 'The Autobiography of Norman Washington Manley", Jamaica Journal 7, no. 1 (March-June 1973): 14. 85. See Jacqueline Jenkinson, 'The 1919 Race Riots in Britain: A Survey", in Under the Imperial Carpet, edited by R. Lotz and I. Pegg (Sussex: Rabbit Press, 1986), 182-309; see also CO 318/352/66887. 86. Chief Constable Williams to Director of Intelligence, Scotland Yard, 9 October 1919, CO 318/352/62494. 87. Ibid. 88. Report of Chief Constable Morley, 25 November 1919, CO 318/352/70187. 89. Ibid. 90. See Peter Fraser, "Some Effects of the First World War on the British West Indies", in Caribbean Societies, vol. 1, Collected Seminar Papers (London: Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, 1982), 29-32. 91. Globe, 26 February 1917. 92. For Barbados, see Globe, 3 January 1919; also Globe, 15 and 22 January 1919. 93. Clarion, 22 August 1918, 209-13. 94. Acting Governor Walter to Long, 29 August 1918, CO 123/292. 95. 96.

Governor O'Brien to Milner, 4 March 1919, CO 318/348/18293. Ibid.

97.

Report of the Commission, evidence of H. Melhado, CO 123/296; Hutson to Milner 31 July 1919, CO 123/295/48750. Report of the Commission, evidence of Robert Wyatt, CO 123/296. Ibid., evidence of E.A. Baber.

98. 99.

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100. Ibid., evidence of W.H. Hoar; see also Appendix P, "Offences Committed". 101. Ibid., evidence of J.A. Gardiner. 102. Ibid., evidence of J. Blades. 103. Acting Governor H. Bryan to Milner, 3 October 1919, CO 318/349/60455; also CO 318/349/59570. 104. Ibid. 105. Bryan to Milner, 21 October 1919, CO 318/349/60449; see also CO 318/349/60450. 106. O'Brien to Milner, 18 July 1919, CO 318/349/46818. 107. Minute of official dated 29 June 1920, CO 318/355/31424. 108. "Report of the Returned Soldiers Committee", enclosed in O'Brien to Milner, 9 December 1920, CO 318/356/2746. 109. Ibid. 110. See Robin W. Winks, The Blacks in Canada: A History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1971), 288-314. 111. CO 318/35 6/2746; also, Basil Maughan, "Some Aspects of Barbadian Emigration to Cuba 1919-1935", Joumalofthe Barbados Museum and Historical Society 37, no. 3 (1985): 239-47. 112. David Browne, "The Era of Working Class Political Organizations in Early Twentieth Century Barbados: UNIA and WMA" (Seminar Paper no. 6, Department of History, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados, 22 June 1989), 18a. 113. F.A. Hoyos, Barbados (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1978), 195-97. See also Keith Hunte, 'The Struggle for Political Democracy: Charles Duncan O'Neal and the Democratic League", in Emancipation HI: Aspects of the Post-Slavery Experience of Barbados, edited by W.K. Marshall (Bridgetown and Cave Hill, Barbados: National Cultural Foundation and Department of History, University of the West Indies, 1988), 20-38. 114. F.A. Hoyos, Builders of Barbados (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1972), 117-25.

5 The Struggle for Political Democracy Charles Duncan O'Neal and the * Democratic League

KEITH

HUNTE

The Barbados to which a steady trickle of migrant workers, World War I veterans and professionals returned in the early 1920s was a colony that was securely in the economic and political grip of a planter-merchant ruling class. The commitment of that class to the preservation of the old representative system of government was total and without qualification. The virtue of defending the constitution of the colony was espoused by generation after generation of local legislators. The Confederation crisis of 1876 had served only to reinforce that tradition. The old representative system of government was a convenient arrangement under which the Barbadian ruling class shared political power with the imperial government and effectively excluded the vast majority of the population from participation in the political process. It was the proud boast of many a defender of the system that this was a superior form of government to the Crown Colony system that had replaced it in * A version of this article first appeared in: Woodville Marshall, ed., Emancipation III: Aspects of the Post-Slavery Experience of Barbados (Bridgetown and Cave Hill, Barbados: National Cultural Foundation and the Department of History, UWI, 1988).

133

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other Caribbean colonies in the postemancipation period. It is evident that it was peculiarly well suited and responsive to the interest of the propertied classes. Accordingly, they remained wedded to Burkean concepts of "virtual representation" and "fitness to govern", conveniently ignoring the mounting tide of democracy that had submerged those theories as Britain proceeded through a succession of measures of franchise reform towards adult manhood suffrage and universal adult suffrage. What was even more significant, however, was the belief of several of those who espoused the cause of the underclasses that the old representative system of government could and should be made responsive to the interests of all classes in the society. Clennel Wickham, Charles Duncan O'Neal, Chrissie Brathwaite, Erskine Ward, Grantley Adams and H.A. Vaughan shared that belief at some time or other between 1919 and 1936. These were some of the more conspicuous names drawn from a much longer list of persons who sought in various ways to commit government to the service of the majority. Their efforts in that regard succeeded in raising the level of political consciousness of the masses and, notwithstanding the early success of the ruling class in retaining control of the instruments of power, those efforts constituted the first phase in an irreversible process of democratization. This postwar movement did have its antecedents. Throughout this country a network of grass roots organizations, the friendly societies, provided workers and their families with the opportunity, and the means to articulate group objectives through cooperation. The friendly society, though seemingly apolitical and dedicated to the attainment of social and personal objectives, was the bedrock of political organization and development. It was concerned with upholding human dignity by using a system of enforced savings to provide a degree of insurance and social security for its members in moments of crisis. There is evidence that many a friendly society provided a forum for discussion and debate on live issues. Other antecedents included the Barbados Labour Union founded by Reggie and Marcus Wilson, and the Ulotrician World Order Union, the local branch of which was established by S. Arlington Newton. In 1919, the same year that Inniss and Wickham launched the Herald newspaper, a branch of the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) was formed in Barbados at the initiation of John Beckles. The

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development of black consciousness was an important element underpinning the democratic movement. Not all black political aspirants associated themselves with the UNIA, but on several occasions in the course of a political campaign natural alliances among these kindred organizations were struck, and they cooperated in order to try to achieve a common goal. The main objectives of UNIA were: 1. to bring about the unity of the Negro; 2. to assist and advise them how to obtain the best wages possible for their labour; 3. to keep them out of the law courts; 4. to raise funds for the Black Star Line; and 5. to establish and operate black business ventures. The strong emphasis on pride and industry was also at the core of the work of Rawle Parkinson, the legendary headteacher of Wesley Hall, who, accompanied by Washington Harper and Elliott Durant, had attended a conference atTuskegee Institute in 1912. Prior to 1924 there was no party or group making a sustained effort to effect political change in Barbados. The Herald, with the encouragement of its founder and proprietor, C.A. Inniss, provided a medium through which its editor, Clennel Wickham, poured trenchant criticism on the political behaviour of the local oligarchy and called attention to social ills that needed to be remedied. Not surprisingly, therefore, soon after O'Neal returned to Barbados from Trinidad in 1924, he made contact with Wickham at the Herald, and through that contact met with kindred spirits who launched the Democratic League shortly thereafter. Contemporaries attest to the importance of O'Neal's role in establishing the league, in formulating its programme and in winning popular support for it across the country. Charles Duncan O'Neal was born in St Lucy in 1879. His father, Joseph O'Neal, had a varied and interesting career. At one time a blacksmith, he became a shopkeeper and, after his marriage to Catherine Prescod of Trinidad, he was able to purchase certain properties in Roebuck Street, Bridgetown, and in St Lucy. When his son placed second in the Barbados Scholarship examination in 1899, he was well able to provide him with a paternal scholarship that took the young O'Neal to Edinburgh University, where he studied medicine. He made good progress at university and performed with distinction in surgery.

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While at university, O'Neal was attracted to the Independent Labour Party of Kier Hardie. He adopted the political philosophy of Kier Hardie and became an active member of the party. After graduation O'Neal moved to Newcastle where he established his practice. There he put his medical skills at the disposal of the coal miners and other workers. In time, O'Neal accepted an invitation to run for local government office and he was elected to the County Council of Sunderland. O'Neal returned to Barbados in 1910. He left shortly after, and, following a brief sojourn in Dominica, moved to Trinidad. There he established a good practice and gained the spotlight from time to time through his incursions into politics and the performance of his racehorses. It was during his sojourn in Trinidad that he became a friend and fellow traveller of Captain A.A. Cipriani. Upon his return to Barbados in 1924, O'Neal evidently missed the excitement that Cipriani and his 'barefoot men' were generating. The decision to launch the Democratic League was an attempt to harness the energies of progressive forces and agitate for representation in government of the interests of the underclasses. In May 1924 O'Neal led a delegation, comprising John Beckles, C.W. Wickham, J.A. Martineau and J.T.C. Ramsay, that called on the governo and requested him to take steps to ensure that the Education Board exercised its powers under the Education Act to ban child labour. Appeals of this sort directed to the governor and to the Legislature were made at regular intervals over the next twelve years, but to little or no avail. The greater part of the year saw the founders of the Democratic League fanning out across the island recruiting members and establishing a communications network for the party. Prior to the establishment of the Democratic League, election campaigns in Barbados were a rather staid ritual. There were relatively few contested elections at constituency level. Mass meetings were rare. Shortly before nomination day each year, candidates established or renewed contact with their constituencies, visiting influential constituents; paid canvassers did much of the necessary legwork and solicited votes on behalf of their candidate. On nomination day, in the Vestry Room candidates were formally nominated and seconded for the twelve double-member constituencies across the island and the opportunity was taken to give account of stewardship, make promises and field questions from electors attending. A vote of thanks to the sheriff would then be

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moved and seconded, and he would be congratulated on the smooth handling of the ceremony. Since quite often not more than two nominations would be received per constituency, the results of several of the twelve constituencies would be declared at that time. On polling day, electors would return to the Vestry Room to cast their ballots in cases where three or more candidates had been nominated. Each constituent had two votes. He was free to vote for two candidates, or to exercise one vote only and 'plump' for his favourite candidate. The latter move gave the preferred candidate a decided advantage. The Democratic League introduced a new style of campaigning. Where candidates normally tended to eschew party affiliation and projected themselves as fit and proper persons to represent the electors, candidates who were members of the league identified themselves as such. Secondly, they raised issues in public meetings and promoted a programme. The organizers of the party appreciated the importance of scoring an early victory at the polls. They seized the opportunity of a by-election in the constituency of St Michael in December 1924 to put up their candidate, Chrissie Brathwaite, who was with C.L. Chenery of the Advocate for the seat. On nomination day the Democratic League candidate espoused populist causes. Speaking in support of compulsory education, Brathwaite said "No amount of money should be considered too much to spend in educating the people." Further, he declared "No amount should be considered too much to make the people happy by giving them cheap water. For many years the people of Bank Hall were crying out for water." He was willing to sacrifice his life for his people. Then, as now, it proved necessary for a popular candidate to deny that racism was any part of his platform. The Advocate reported Brathwaite to this effect: "It was said in some quarters that he hated white people. It was a damnable statement. Had he not - he and Mr Challenor - drunk together? It was only last mont that he knocked glasses with Mr Challenor with a whiskey and soda and it went down very smoothly too." When Charles Chenery addressed the meeting, he had to field a series of well-timed questions directed at him by Martineau, Ramsay and other supporters of the league. Asked to indicate where he stood on the issue of banning child labour, Chenery observed that such a move would have to be preceded or accompanied by compulsory education - indicating that there was a significant cost element that would have to be dealt with. On

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polling day, Brathwaite received 390 votes to Chenery's 291. Shortly before the victorious Brathwaite was lifted shoulder high and carried up Constitution Road by a cheering crowd, he openly thanked the members of the Democratic League, and claimed: "My friends, the fight is o'er; the battle won!" Other similar successes were long in coming, however. In order to understand Brathwaite's victory and the string of failures that awaited other candidates of the league in successive elections, it is important to examine the character and composition of the electorate. Under the Representation of the People Act - 1901, there was an income qualification of $240 per annum and a freehold qualification with respect to land producing profits of not less than $24 per year (or approximately one acre of land). Between 1911 and 1921, when the overall population in the island declined, the size of the electorate increased in four constituencies (significantly in St Michael, and in Bridgetown, St Philip and St Joseph) and declined in all other constituencies. Between 1921 and 1937, however, the electorate grew out of all proportion to the overall population increase. While the total population increased by 22 percent in 1921-37, the electorate grew by 186 percent. The phenomenal growth in the size of the electorate in all constituencies between 1921 and 1937 was substantially a reflection of the increase in the number of property owners coincident with the spread of villages. In the 1920s and early 1930s there was enough of a residential small property owning and artisan class in certain constituencies to give Democratic League candidates some prospect of success at the polls. Candidates were therefore presented in Bridgetown, St Michael, St Thomas, St Lucy, St Philip and Christ Church. The movement of people into the urban area had the effect of making St Michael a relatively safe pair of seats for progressive candidates. The newly enfranchised property owners and wage earners were often constrained in exercising their right to vote by bread and butter considerations. Their sense of economic insecurity as they sought to gain access to jobs, loans and mortgages made them extremely vulnerable to pressures exerted by members of the ruling class. Hence, voting patterns reflect significant blurring of class lines. This phenomenon was a source of considerable frustration to members of the Democratic League. It drove men like Wickham by 1935-36 to write off the middle class as a broken reed and to insist that democratization of

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society would come only as a result of the organization of working class people committed to their own self-emancipation. Brathwaite's victory in St Michael in 1924 clearly benefited from the demographic changes taking place in that parish as well as from the identification of new voters with at least some of the objectives of the league. The following year in St Thomas, Dr Hugh Gordon Cummins also presented himself as a Democratic League candidate. In addition to declaring himself in favour of the abolition of child labour and of free compulsory education, Cummins called for "the reduction of duties on some of the necessities of life in order to give the people cheaper food and . . . clothes". When the polls closed Cummins had been narrowly beaten by the junior representative, S.C. Thome. It seemed that he lost because several of the votes seemingly intended for him were deemed spoilt. In the city, O'Neal allowed himself to be nominated, but he withdrew before polling day. He took the opportunity of his candidature to deny that his politics were in any way racist. In its early days, the Democratic League concentrated on voter registration and on motivating the enfranchised to exercise their vote. O'Neal, openly defiant of charges that the organization was Bolshevist and racist, bared his political soul in a pamphlet which was circulated in 1924, captioned My Brother -An Open Letter to a 'Respectable' Friend. In that tract, he compared the capitalist class to gamblers in the casinos at Monte Carlo "who manage to live without working". He argued that the teaching of "real History and Economics" in this society could not be other than disruptive, for the poor unfortunate students, by asking questions, would be able to "look the past in the face" and understand "the principles governing the distribution of wealth". O'Neal observed that because of the potentially subversive effect of such curricula if offered locally, persons such as his estranged friend and himself had to learn their history and economics abroad. O'Neal advocated a political creed that was based on the "simple, plain, direct principles laid down by Christ, unadulterated by any of the confusing isms"; those principles that emphasize the honouring of social obligations among members of human society, the taking of a holistic view of society in which the interests of the field labourer, mason, carpenter, blacksmith and governor were equal. O'Neal called on the Legislature to make strenuous and sustained efforts to provide the most

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humble member of society with the bare necessities of life: food, clothing, shelter. He called attention to the high incidence of infant mortality, child labour, malnutrition, and noted that children, denied "a good start", were doomed to a life of poverty and degradation. Above all, O'Neal saw it as his mission to awaken the social conscience of the local decision makers. This pamphlet and other statements by O'Neal placed him in the tradition of the Christian socialists and the later Fabian Society socialists who had abiding faith in the efficacy of the parliamentary system and an aroused social conscience as the springboards for ameliorative action aimed at eliminating inequalities in society. In the context of Barbados, he emphasized with equal strength the importance of workers organizing themselves to advance their economic and social interests. Not all of his political colleagues in the league felt as he did about the importance of the Workingmen's Association as the industrial and business arm of the League. The Workingmen's Association indicated that shares would be available to prospective members at a cost of $4.80 each. With offices located at the corner of Baxter's Road and Reed Street, the association attracted membership from several parishes. Membership included a wide cross-section of artisans. The Workingmen's Association was the parent body for two entities: the Barbados Worker's Union Cooperation Company and the Workingmen's Loans and Friendly Investment Society. The former ran a store at the same intersection on Baxter's Road. The Loans and Friendly Investment Society was run along the lines of a friendly society. These ventures seem to have met with good response initially. At one stage, membership of the Workingmen's Asso ciation was estimated to be in the vicinity of seven thousand. It was difficult, however, to sustain a high level of activity in the political, industrial and economic fields, given the serious resource constraints of a membership handicapped by high unemployment and underemployment, low wages, absence of credit and lack of experience in the management of a business. The strike of the dockworkers in April 1927 exposed the critical weakness of the industrial base. In the situation where trade union activity was neither recognized nor protected by law, it was not possible for the striking workers to sustain their protest action in the teeth of hostility from employers and the lack of sympathy from the establishment. Critics, including colleagues, were quick to disassociate themselves from the stand

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taken by O'Neal in accepting the invitation of the dockers to represent their cause, and the collapse of the strike was quickly followed by enactment of the Better Securities Act, which was aimed at punishing all who planned and executed strike action in particular ways. Thereafter, the Workingmen's Association, in concert with UNIA, continued, at least in Bridgetown, to provide a forum for discussion and debate. In 1931, and again in 1932, the Workingmen's Association organized a programme of activity on Emancipation Day. On 7 August 1933, members and friends of both organizations met atthe Workers' Hall at the corner of Baxter's Road and Passage Road at 2:00 p.m. and led a march around the city along Baxter's Road, Broad Street and Constitution Road. They stopped outside the governor's gate on Government Hill, sang "Auld Lang Syne" and "God Save the King", and returned to Baxter's Road via Bridge Road, Bank Hall, Cross Road and Eagle Hall. This was followed later that night by an indoor ceremony which attracted a full house. Since Brathwaite's first electoral victory in 1924, a string of defeats confronted other candidates. Brathwaite, however, gained re-election year after year and was sole standard-bearer of the Democratic League in the House of Assembly until he was joined by Erskine Ward in 1930, representing the city. Brathwaite was unflagging in his efforts to keep certain pressing issues on the agenda of the Legislature. Addressing a meeting of the Workingmen's Association in July 1929, he invited all unemployed persons from the urban area to meet him in Queen's Park and there sign a petition that would be presented to the governor. Peopl responded. By year-end the leader-writer for the Advocate was attesting to evidence of transformation of the political scene especially in relation to electioneering. Under a caption that read 'The Awakening", the article stated: "Such a flood of political oratory has not been let loose upon the constituencies since the turbulent days of 1876, and for the first time in local politics candidates are vying with each other, impressing upon the electors, the excellence of their platform and their own merit." The greatest surprise, however, was caused by the announcement that Mr H.B.G. Austin intended to hold a political meeting, and, as a wag remarked, "Mr Austin was probably the most surprised man of all." Interestingly enough, it was at this time that the special jury upheld the libel suit brought by the Bridgetown merchant W.D. Bayley against Clennel Wickham, which

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resulted in the termination of Wickham's editorship of the Herald and the change of ownership of that newspaper. The battle lines between Conservative and other political camps were now more or less clearly drawn. Sometime previously S.C. Thorne had been critical of the high profile of certain schoolteachers in the electoral politics of St Thomas. The Education Board now issued a circular urging managers of the several schools (Anglican, Methodist and Moravian ministers respectively) to deny leave to teachers on nomination day and polling day. As the Advocate reporter observed, that action was unfortunate because several teachers were seen to be performing an important civic duty by participating in public discussion of the issues. They were perceived as excellent platform speakers who were in great demand and who, on the whole, "exercised a wholesome educational influence on politics". In taking that action, the board was also failing to notice teachers were to be found on platforms from both sides. In St Joseph for several years the two planter candidates, Williams and Yearwood, were nominated by Messrs Walcott and Burnett, headteachers of St Joseph's and St Elizabeth Boys' Schools. Erskine Ward's appointment to a magistracy and his withdrawal from active politics in early 1932 was a loss to the Democratic League. He might have been expected to press the case for lowering the franchise and enacting a Workmen's Compensation Bill, two issues that were currently high on the party's agenda. In the general elections of 1932, there were contests in three constituencies only: the city, St Michael and St George. By this time, Lee Sarjeant was well entrenched in Christ Church and Frank Holder in St Andrew. In St Michael, Chrissie Brathwaite and W.W. Reece were able to stave off a challenge from D.L. Johnson. The progressive forces rallied around O'Neal and went all out to win him a city seat. Notwithstanding a string of electoral defeats and the passage of time, O'Neal had not mellowed. At a meeting in Queen's Park, chaired by Edwy Talma, the latter associated O'Neal with the following causes, promotion of emigration, compulsory education and extension of the franchise. O'Neal was reported to have told the large crowd that his political policy was the same as that which he had expounded for the past thirty years. He still stood by the Labour Party's Policy and he saw no reason through all the years to change one iota of his faith. Some persons changed their creed very rapidly and supported various issues at various occasions, but he stood on the same platform as thirty years ago. He believed that every man, woman,

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and child born into the world had the right to food, shelter and clothing. He was further convinced that it was the duty of every Government to provide those necessities of life for its citizens. The fact that the local government had ignored that responsibility did not detract from the greatness of the principle. He was certain that the House would some day be occupied by a majority of Labour members as the spread of education sounded the death-knell of plutocracy and aristocracy.

The meeting was also addressed by Louis Sebro, H.A. Vaughan, J.A. Martineau and D.F. Blackett. On election day, in an upset victory, O'Neal upset the favourite candidate, H.B.G. Austin, by one vote (346 to 345) and benefited from a large number of 'plump' votes. O'Neal was re-elected in the constituency of Bridgetown and retained his seat until his death in November 1936. His parliamentary career was methodical rather than brilliant. At the end of his first session in the Legislative Assembly, he confessed to having had to take some time to learn his ABCs. He made certain predictions about a legislative programme in the following session, and those predictions proved to be wide off the mark. Still, his maiden speech in the House came during the debate following the governor's address at the start of the session. He prevailed on the House to include a statement of regret that the governor's address contained no measures for alleviating unemployment. Later in the session, he raised the issue of the persistent use of whips by drivers of the third gang and called for legislation banning the practice. He sought to correct the abuse of privilege by those who allowed persons to ride police horses, and those who authorized the engagement of the labour services of prisoners at private residences. Surviving members of the Democratic League experienced a sense of frustration in the early 1930s. They continued to participate in electoral politics, making alliances with liberal-minded groups and associations. Elected members, by tabling questions in the Legislative Assembly, by drafting petitions and submitting them to the governor, by introducing bills in the House and supporting others, tried to advance the cause. But by 1936, the record of achievement -in terms of social legislation, political reform, economic measures - was distressingly low. That this was the period of the Great Depression, when the social and economic conditions of the working class were steadily deteriorating, only served to heighten their sense of disillusionment. The perceptive Wickham, writing in Janu-

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ary 1935, saw the need for mobilization of the workers as the basis for the democratic movement: 'Till the working class is organized to provide the guts for the democratic movement political and social conditions will be what they are." What was the experience of the survivors of the Democratic League? What was their assessment of the prospects for effecting change? How realistic was that assessment? The system of government provided opportunities for the elected representatives of the enfranchised to make representation to the governor-in-executive committee on any issue. The nature and extent of government's response to that representation was certainly beyond the control of a party or group that had a minority of seats in the House of Assembly. What was even more perplexing to the would-be reformers was that, even when such representation attracted majority support in the Assembly, there was no guarantee that the appropriate bills would be enacted, or where financial provision was required, that government would take the necessary action to implement the policy desired by the majority. As a result of this situation, measures that were introduced in the House to effect extension of the franchise, workmen's compensation, compulsory education, abolition of child labour under the age of twelve, and creation of employment were either talked out, or approved by the House and killed by the action or inaction of the Legislative Council and the executive. The experienced and conservative element in the Legislature monopolized key offices in the Assembly, in the Legislative Council and on the Executive Committee. They could decide on the most appropriate tactic out of several options that would frustrate a measure which they deemed to be inimical to their interests. On the issue of the extension of the franchise, the following scenario illustrates the point. In August 1930, a bill was introduced in the Assembly aimed at lowering the income qualification for the franchise from $240 to $144 per annum and the freehold qualification from $24 to $14.40. It passed all stages in the Assembly but was thrown out by the Legislative Council. It was reintroduced in the Assembly in the following session but suffered a similar fate. In every election campaign since then, the promise to renew the attempt to lower the franchise was made by 'progressive' candidates. In 1936 an identical bill was introduced in the House, moved and seconded by Chrissie Brathwaite and D. Lee Sarjeant. It was referred to a select committee which failed to report by the close of the session.

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Wickham argued with much plausibility that in voting against the measure in 1930 and 1931, the Legislative Council probably knew that the majority of the members of the House who had voted for the bill would not have lost any sleep over its rejection. In fact, he suggested that in voting for the measure in the first place the conservative element in the Lower House probably knew that it would be rejected upstairs! In explaining his own resistance to the measure when it was being reintroduced in 1936, D.L. Pile, representing the rotten borough of St John, recalled that in introducing the original bill, the late H.W. Reece (St Lucy) had argued that if the franchise had not been extended by a reduction of the several qualifications, many persons suffering from falling income due to the economic depression would lose the votes which they had formerly enjoyed. Pile went on to demonstrate that the electorate had not contracted but had increased dramatically. As far as he was concerned, there was no case for proceeding with the measure. Wickham's point that there may well have been collusion is well taken. On several occasions in the past when members of the Assembly felt that their own interests had been threatened by the exercise of a negative vote by the Upper House, they had advanced the theory of the supremacy of the representative chamber over the nominated chamber. The question was, Why not on this occasion? Well, their interest was not being threatened by the action of the Legislative Council. Rather, that body was protecting the common interests of the class from which its members were drawn - the planter-merchant class. Similar tactics were employed to frustrate efforts to enact legislation dealing with workmen's compensation, death duties, and compulsory education. Wickham understood that the situation called for continuing and increased agitation and mobilization of the working class. Some indication of the effectiveness of that approach was given when Chrissie Brathwaite, John Beckles et al., noting the failure of government to respond to appeals from members of the Assembly to tackle the problem of unemployment, decided to take the activist approach. They held a mass meeting in Queen's Park, collected signatures from those who were unemployed and submitted a petition bearing eight hundred signatures to the governor. The result was the establishment of a committee chaired by the colonial secretary with a mandate "to examine the causes and extent of unemployment which exist in the parish of St Michael and to

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submit, as early as possible, proposals for the relief of such unemployment". The restriction of the exercise to the parish of St Michael calls for explanation. The standard response that came repeatedly from planters as often as attention was drawn to mounting unemployment was that work was available on the plantations. In fact, in an attempt to counter the public demonstration of the existence of large numbers of unemployed persons, a delegation of planters from plantations in St Joseph and St Andrew, bordering the Scotland District, also called on the governor and held the stage long enough to state that work was available on their estates. The planter interests were always on guard to arrest any action that could lead to a significant depletion of their captive labour force through large-scale emigration or any such measure that the Democratic League had been advocating. If mobilization of the workers, whether employed or unemployed, was being seen as the way forward, the importance of using the forum of the House of Assembly for articulating the case for reform was also appreciated. In this regard, the election of Grantley Herbert Adams to the House in 1934 and his demonstration of a willingness to confront the forces of reaction and conservatism were welcomed by members of the Democratic League. One of his early victories in that chamber came in response to a question he put to the executive with regard to the status of the document members of the police force were required to sign on the occasion of their joining the force which included an undertaking that they would not exercise their franchise. When the reply came, it took the form of a statement to the effect that the provisions in that document would be reviewed so as to remove the offending clause or clauses. Hence, policemen would have their franchise restored. In the debate on the Franchise Bill in 1936, Adams, strongly provoked by the unrepentant conservatism of Pile, spoke at length in support of the measure. He drew attention to the continuing effect of falling income on those whose franchise depended on their level of income: 'Three hundred carpenters, chauffeurs and masons were struck off [the voters' list] on the grounds that their wages were $4.00 and they could no longer earn $5.00 per week." Wickham welcomed Adams to the fold and noted with satisfaction that his political activity and his speeches in and out of Parliament were making waves. Agitation was vital.

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The Democratic League - An Assessment Looked at from a narrow perspective, the founders of the Democratic League would appear to have taken on an impossible mission when they set out to effect the democratization of this colonial society with the tools at their disposal and within the framework of legal, social and political constraints that the Conservative element in the society was determined to keep in place. Had they considered at length the odds against their success they might not have launched the effort aimed at making government responsive to the popular will. The founders understood, at least in the early stages, the importance of involving the people, the enfranchised and the disenfranchised, in the discussion. One of the topics that members of the public were invited to debate at Carnegie Hall in Bridgetown (1924) was the moot, 'This House Regards Political Agitation as Necessary for the Remedying of Social Ills". They understood, and they helped others to understand, that the old representative system of government had been fashioned to serve the interests of the propertied classes. They sought by the power of persuasion to modify that system so as to have it serve the interests of all classes. In setting that objective they underestimated the magnitude of the task. The Conservatives relied on the political doctrine of virtual representation of one class by another, in defence of the status quo. While it was committed to shifting political power to the underclasses, the Democratic League yet pledged that the result would be equally fair to all classes. The debate on this issue continues unresolved. O'Neal and some other leading members of the league understood that the struggle was not simply about political power but that it was equally about the restoration and preservation of human dignity and worth, that the ordinary man, woman and child had a right to make certain demands on the economy. They appreciated that trade unions and cooperatives, ownership of industry and access to the market for loans, credit and exchange of goods were all equally important tools for achieving the desired objectives. Once the Democratic League and Workingmen's Association had been launched, however, ideas that were clearly understood and appreciated tended to be obscured. Wickham recalls that there had been a strong

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commitment to anchoring the political effort on the base of working class organizations. He lamented the fracturing of that commitment. He lamented the marriages of convenience that had been made with middle class professionals who were not genuinely committed to the long-term goals of the movement. In 1936 he looked beyond the current situation to the time when 'organized labour' would constitute the guts of the democratic movement in Barbados.

6 The 1937 Disturbances and Barbadian Nationalism

DAVID V.C. BROWNE

The 1937 'disturbances' in Barbados can be placed in the general context of the prolonged working class struggles and protests that engulfed the British Caribbean from the immediate postemancipation period into the early twentieth century. Wherever exploitation and oppression have occurred, the working class people of the region protested in various forms. The disturbances, so evident in the region, were the highest manifestations of a protracted struggle of oppressed people to achieve civic rights, freedom and justice. Particularly during the 1930s, working class rebellions continued in a familiar fashion in the British Caribbean, beginning in Belize City in 1934 at the instigation of Antonio Soberanis. The unrest continued in St Kitts early in 1935 with a general strike of agricultural labourers. A month later there was a hunger march in Trinidad, followed by a strike in the island's oilfields. Later in the same year, there were strikes in British Guiana and St Lucia, and unrest in St Vincent. The uneasy atmosphere continued in 1937 with strikes and rebellions in Trinidad and Barbados, followed by strikes in British Guiana, St Lucia and Jamaica. The climax of all the unrest was reached in 1938 with a general strike and 'rioting' in Jamaica and, work stoppages in British Guiana. By the end of the suppression, forty-six persons were killed and thousands arrested. 149

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This paper will argue that the July 1937 unrest in Barbados was a rebellion of the most profound form of political protest. In fact, the word 'disturbance' is used here more for convenience than as an accepted part of my vocabulary. 'Disturbances' and 'riots' suggest any unplanned interruption of tranquility by a mindless mass of people with no highly developed political consciousness. I intend to show that the actions of the participants in the Barbadian rebellion were informed by serious political protest. I prefer, therefore, to view the unrest of the 1930s in the British Caribbean, and indeed in Barbados, as more akin to rebellions than to riots. A rebellion is a violent uprising with the intention of effecting some change, with stated objectives by the participants who may be armed, or may confront the armed apparatus of the state during their actions. In as much as there appeared to be 'trigger factors', that is specific incidents or events that stimulated the crowds in the British Caribbean during the 1930s, a closer examination of their actions and behaviour would reveal more method in their madness. I intend to highlight this for the Barbadian rebellion.

Upheavals in Bridgetown The first evidence of disturbances in Barbados occurred on the night of 26 July 1937 when a crowd, expecting to see Clement Payne before his deportation, went on the rampage. They vented their anger by smashing street lights in Nelson Street, Bay Street, Beckwith Street, Probyn Street and Jordan's Lane in the city of Bridgetown. Cars parked outside the Empire Theatre were smashed, and a bus belonging to the General Moto company was damaged.1 A clash between the police and a crowd at Golden Square resulted in a sort of pitch battle reminiscent of the battlefields of Ancient Rome and Greece. The 'rebels', fighting with sticks and stones, kept up a constant bombardment of the police. This sustained effort was possible because of a convoy of women and children who supplied the stones. After about an hour of missile throwing, the greatly outnumbered police were forced to retreat with the crowd in hot pursuit.2 Similar clashes occurred at Suttle Street and Collymore Rock.

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The next day, 27 July, unrest started again when a huge crowd gathered on the wharf. They collected sticks and stones, and, turning onto Broad Street, smashed store windows there, including Whitfields, the City Pharmacy, the Ideal Store, Hope Ross Ltd, Emptage Electrical Co., Collins Ltd, Johnson's Stationery, Hutchinson and Co. and C.F. Harrison. Bridge town was in chaos, especially Broad Street, the hub of commercial activity of the local merchant-planter elite.3 In the two days of working class rebellion in Bridgetown, purposeful acts of destruction were targeted at certain white businesses on Broad Street. But one must stress that other businesses such as Fogarty's Store, Bruce Weatherhead's Drug Store and the Nightengale's Brothers' grocery, all on Broad Street, remained untouched by the crowd. Eyewitness accounts testify that on the morning of 27 July, when one of the rebels took up a stone to smash one of Fogarty's windows, a crowd held him back and exclaimed: "Leave Fogarty! He does give we a break."4 Why did this crowd, described by various colonial officials as "riotous", "unruly", "vicious", "lawless" and "wicked", act in such a fashion? Fogarty's store was well known to the black population as a bargain centre, especially for cheap cloth, therefore affording many poor blacks the opportunity to at least own a 'Sunday best'.5 In addition, it was one of the few stores, if not the only one, in Bridgetown to extend some sort of credit to the black population. The blacks' appreciation of Fogarty's generosity was captured in a popular jingle: "Dat ting in the bar come from Fogarty/God bless William Fogarty".6 By sparing Fogarty and other sympathetic businesses, the crowd was expressing notions of fair play and a deep understanding of who it perceived as oppressors. In essence, the rebels were expressing self-conscious precepts of justice through their selective behaviour and actions. Other business places in Baxter's Road, Tudor Street and Bay Street suffered a similar fate of destruction as those in Broad Street. Eckstein Garage and Service Station on Lower Bay Street was looted, cars pushed into the sea, and the windows of the station smashed. Cole's garage was also smashed, the gasoline service tank destroyed and new cars were also pushed into the sea near the Victoria Bridge. The Vauxhall-Bedford Service Station of Robert Thorn Ltd was attacked next, the gasoline tanks damaged, the day's cash taken and two lorries met a watery grave in the sea nearby.7

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A parcel delivery van of Johnson and Redman was commandeered by a crowd and set on fire at the corner of Westbury and Baxter's Road.8 Four cars parked in the Lower Green, opposite the Barbados Mutual Assurance Society, were overturned and two of them set on fire. Attention was then turned to the Mutual Building itself, where the white employees hid amidst shouts to "kill the blasted sons of white bitches". An attempt to burn the building was routed by armed police and the fire brigade.9 The same crowd also made an attempt to burn the exclusivist Bridgetown Club, bastion of vulgar racial discrimination. Two cars parked nearby were set on fire as well as the Cable Office. The Barbados Advocate described the scuffle between the crowd and the police in front of the Bridgetown Club: Every window was attacked and those within the building were in desperate dread of their lives. A charge by Policemen with batons was easily repelled by an angry mob and the situation looked more dangerous than ever. An armed party replaced the batons and the Police Magistrate read the Riot Act. . . bottles and other missiles dropped in the ranks of the Police and the order was given to fire.10

Some members of the rioting crowd fell dead, a few were wounded, and the majority scattered in all directions. The activities of the crowds continued nevertheless, and many other attempts at incendiarism must be noted. Around 2:30 p.m. on 27 July, a piece of cloth was set alight under the door of V.H.C. Hind's business at the corner of Nelson Street. E.B. Skeete, chairman of the trustees of Goodridge House, Spry Street, reported the presence of a smouldering rag under the garage door. Also on 27 July, over one hundred people, described as an "enraged mob", attempted to burn the Empire Theatre, and, after the "paper will not burn", set the Vauxhall station ablaze.11 The attempts to burn white-owned businesses in the city during the social unrest of 1937 were a most revealing aspect of the behaviour and intentions of the crowd. The use of fire during other disturbances in other parts of the world is well documented. Fire has been used as a symbol of defiance and obliteration of the real, or perceived, oppressor. And the rebels of Bridgetown were no different from others in Europe, Japan12 and Africa, who had expressed a long-suppressed subconscious desire to erase their oppressors through the use of fire. In short, the crowd in Bridgetown was not simply a "mindless multitude", wicked and destructive, but highly

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Table 6.1: List of Some Participants in the City Rebellion Name

Age

Occupation

Irvin Broody Joseph Rollock Clarice Brooks Alexander Collymore

42

Cooper

33 26

Labourer Washer

26

Labourer Labourer Labourer Labourer Cooper

John Bailey Dudley White Seymour Walker Leroy Cumberbatch Mortimer Skeete Henry Goodman Clyde Griffith Ivy Thompson Olliver Phillips Irene Agard Charles Downes Israel Lovell James Barrow George Alleyne Joseph Reece Fitz Weekes

14 28 27 22 43 30 17 25 25 26 23 54 26 36 34 40

Hawker Shopkeeper Apprentice Domestic servant Labourer Domestic servant Boatman Carpenter Porter Labourer Barber Wood seller

Source: Advocate Weekly, 7 August 1937. See also 1937 November Sessions: Grand Indictment for Sedition, Barbados Archives.

conscious as they proceeded to make a political point through their actions. Another feature of the behaviour of the crowd during the 1937 rebellion was their willingness to defy the police and other security forces. Such behaviour was out of character with the widely held notion of the passive black Barbadian. Mention has already been made of the m§lee at the Mutual Building and the Bridgetown Club affair. The police at the Britton Hill post were "marooned" by a large crowd until reinforcements arrived. An Inspector Plunkett was almost torn to pieces as he intervened in the

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activities of a crowd at Eckstein Garage. A similar fate met Police Constable Nathaniel Blackman as he tried to stop "a large crowd" breaking the show window of Harrison and Co. on Broad Street.13 Police Constable Seale received a good beating after he refused to run from a "disorderly crowd" who approached him.14 On 27 July, a large crowd of about two hundred persons, armed with stones, sticks and bottles, kept up a barrage against a number of policemen who had been sent to Suttle Street and its vicinity. Women and young children formed a convoy of "store carriers", while others chose the vantage point of the second floor of a two-storied building to join the fray. Several policemen were injured before order was restored.15 Another even more glaring confrontation took place at Collymore Rock, on the outskirts of Bridgetown. Around 12:30 p.m. on 27 July, as an armed police patrol approached the area, they were greeted by a shower of stones. L.C. Corporal Clarke was struck on his foot and a round of ammunition was fired into the air. The crowd scattered across the Pine Plantation pasture but soon assembled again as the police went on patrol across Flagstaff. On their way back, the police noticed several men coming across a track above Highgate Gardens armed with sticks, bottles and stones. The crowd pelted them and once again Corporal Clarke was struck. He fell. This time his luck ran out as he was captured by the crowd and beaten, while his other colleagues fled to the station for help.16 Police Constable Othneil Murray returned to take charge of the situation. A crowd had assembled behind the African Methodist Episcopal Church at Collymore with a full complement of stones, ready to do battle. According to Murray, the police fired at the crowd near the church until they ran out of ammunition. The crowd then set upon them with sticks and stones. Murray fell, his rifle was seized and he received a fractured skull. For this offence, five rebels received the harsh sentences often years penal servitude and twelve months imprisonment with hard labour, to run concurrently. Justice E.A. Collymore labelled the rebels a "riotous mob" and described the bombardment of police constable "as a very serious affair".17 Such actions by the crowd in Bridgetown not only dispelled the myth of the passive black Barbadian, but revealed a dislike for the police, who were considered as the oppressive stooges of the local oligarchy. One must recall that Clement Payne had always referred to the police, who spied

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Table 6.2: List of Dead and Wounded on 5 August 1937 Parish St Michael Christ Church St Philip St John St George

Dead

Wounded

3 1 1

22 1

1

3

1

4

1

St Joseph

nil

St Thomas St Andrew

nil nil

nil nil nil

St Peter St Lucy St James District not stated

2 nil 1

2 3 1

1

nil

TOTAL

11

3

Source: Plans for Dealing with the Disturbances July-August 1937, GH/113, Barbados Archives

on his meetings, as the "dogs of the capitalists". Perhaps that partly explains the hostility of the crowd towards them. But it goes further, for when one considers the police as the armed apparatus of the state, the attacks on them reveal the extent of the political consciousness generated in Barbados in 1937 by the masses.

Rebel Actions in the Rural Districts Previous accounts of the 1937 social unrest in Barbados had failed to deal in detail with the rural dimensions of the rebellion.18 In fact, the unrest in the rural districts took on some characteristics that were more striking than those of the unrest in urban Bridgetown. For example, the presence of large, organized, bold and defiant crowds, roving in gangs, was very evident. A crowd of four hundred raided sweet potatoes at Golden Grove Estate in St George. Mr Browne, manager of Claremont Estate, St James,

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discharged a shot at a crowd raiding his potato fields. On the evening of 28 July, a crowd of two hundred raided the potato fields of Clifton Hill Estate, St John.19 A crowd had gathered at Walkers Estate, St George, and proceeded to cut the cattle loose. On 28 July, Douglas Pile, planter and assemblyman, reported the presence of a roving crowd of about two hundred who arrived from the estate to the east of his property, raided the potato fields at Brighton, St George, and then proceeded to Carmichael. J.A. Haynes of Newcastle, St John, reported on 29 July that a "crowd" was threatening his cattle.20 It is necessary to narrate further the activities of the rural crowd in order to dispel both the long-held myth of black passivity in Barbados and the idea that the unrest of 1937 was largely an urban phenomenon. On 28 July, a quantity of sweet potatoes was taken from Golden Grove Plantation, St George.21 At Bath Plantation, St John, a crowd described as "formidable", entered the fields and took a number of crops, including sweet potatoes.22 A quantity of potatoes, valued at £160, was taken from Foursquare Estate, St Philip, by "a large number of persons".23 On 28 July, a crowd took a quantity of potatoes from Lear's Estate, St Michael.24 Two incidents that really revealed the bold intentions of the rural crowd occurred at Moonshine Plantation, St George, and at Windsor, Christ Church. On 29 July, at Moonshine Plantation, a crowd entered a field with iron stakes and bags, in the presence of the manager. They defiantly demanded potatoes, and, despite the manager's protestations, they dug more than five thousand holes of potatoes.25 At Windsor Estate, about twenty to twenty-five men marched into the yard and proceeded to dig potatoes in a nearby field in the presence of the superintendent and the watchman of the estate.26 Even when the size of a crowd could not be determined, their purposeful acts of destruction and the extent of their damage to estate property conveyed some idea of their motives. For example, on the night of 30 July two acres of sweet potatoes at Vaucluse Estate, St Thomas, were dug.27 At Battaley's Estate, St Peter, about fifteen hundred holes of yams were also dug in a night.28 In the former case, this large acreage (approximately three thousand holes), in much the same way as at Moonshine Plantation, could not have been dug by a small group in such a short space of time. And then, what were these people doing with more potatoes than appeared to be adequate to satisfy their personal consumption?

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These potato raids, and the attacks on the plantation livestock, were purposeful acts perpetrated with revenge as well as, ultimately, to make a political point. The rural crowd, like their urban counterparts, seized the opportunity to attack the plantation, the symbol of oppression of the black labouring classes. The plantation was seen as a hostile institution to Afro-Barbadians for a century after emancipation: low wages, seasonal employment and the insecurity of tenure, the latter institutionalized through the provisions of the Masters and Servants Act. This perception of the plantation is best expressed in a letter to the colonial secretary from a labourer of St John: Mr Taylor at Wakefield has a dog, it gets beef steak three times a week, Ovaltine and other things and we working men don't even get good saltfish. The owners say they are not able to pay anymore, but the trick is they all form a syndicate in the factories and sell the crop and buy the poor man's canes at a little price, the plantation books show nothing of a clearance but blend the factory with the plantation.29

It is said that perception is reality, and such was the widespread perception held of the plantation in Barbados that it was a source of exploitation. Hence, the raiding of the potato fields as the opportunity presented itself in 1937. It is reasonable to conclude that the black population, by their actions in July 1937, demonstrated their sense of a moral economy, similarly evident in the rioting crowds in England and France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Rioting crowds during that era possessed a "collective mentality"; that is, they were highly structured, their behaviour, actions and goals followed established political and moral traditions.30 The moral economy of the local raiders, then, was that they were not stealing but merely taking from those who had been taking from their foreparents and themselves what was rightly theirs. The practice of raiding estate provision grounds was a form of protest dating back to the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, and it did not die a sudden death in Barbados. Raiding occurred during the 1876 Confederation Riots and the 1895 disturbances, and again at the turn of the century. In June 1917, for example, a series of potato raids in the parish of St Lucy and in the Speightstown area, St Peter, forced the local authorities to offer a reward of £25 (a substantial sum at the time) for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrators.31 On

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I March 1918, the Belle Estate in St Michael was raided by a "riotous" crowd of eighty or more of the "lower class" who made a violent assault on a constable as he attempted to intervene in their nocturnal activities.32 On 27 October 1921, three men entered Mount Standfast Plantation, St James, and carried off 650 Ib of Indian corn fodder.33 Hence, the raiding of estate provision grounds during the July 1937 rebellion was nothing new, but the continuation of a tradition of protest so evident in Barbados in reaction to oppression and hopelessness. Another notable feature of the rural unrest, which was similar to the urban disturbances, was the tendency of the crowds to confront armed police and, in some cases, to discharge firearms. At Greens, St George, a crowd of about fifty were so "provoking" the security forces were compelled to read the Riot Act.34 The commandant local forces wrote on 29 July: I1 a.m. Captain F.B. Armstrong reports that whilst proceeding with two sections past Wilson Hill S.W. [sic] of St John's Church, he came upon Sargeant Gr charge of Police Patrol being threatened by a mob. Captain Armstrong persuaded Police to wait and then addressed the mob. Mob refused to be pacified and Volunteers and Police tried to arrest ringleader by encircling him together with portion of the mob.35

A confrontation at Walkers Plantation, St George, 29 July, was even more dramatic: 1:40 p.m. Llc.pl [sic] Wilson reports that at approximately 1:20 p.m. when passing Walkers Plantation, St George, there was a crowd of about 200 digging potatoes. He and two men proceeded to the scene. As he approached, the men came towards him and threatened him. He ordered them to stop and warned them that he would have to fire if they continued to threaten him. They still come at him and he fire two shots to scare them. The crowd dispersed through the canes.36

At Codrington Hill, St Michael, the police ordered a crowd of about 40 men armed with stones, bottles and sticks to disperse. From behind a wall the men bombarded the police with the stones, the police fired and one man was injured.37 At J.A. Tudor's shop, Taitt Hill, St George, a crowd threw stones at the shop, fired two shots at the proprietor and later ransacked it as the manager fled. A similar thing occurred at another of Tudor's shop at Holder's Hill, St James. Again a firearm was discharged by someone in the crowd.38

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159

At a shop in Massiah Street, St John, the "ringleader" of a crowd demanded money of the black shopkeeper. He went on to state that the shopkeeper "was the same as a whiteman", and that one man had no right with more worldly possessions than another. The businessman remonstrated with the crowd, suggesting that if they had any grievance he would draft a petition to submit to the proper authorities, whereupon one fellow again made "use of threatening language".41 As dusk approached, the crowd threw stones at the shop. When the police arrived, they were ordered to disperse but refused. Stones were thrown at the police again, and the police then opened fire. At the end of the melee, one man lay dead and four wounded.40 At Villa Nova, St John, a determined crowd attacked an armed policeman despite his threat to shoot. A volunteer patrol intervened before the incident could escalate.41 The various confrontations between the crowds and the police, even though violent at times, did not suggest well-organized and prolonged clashes as occurred elsewhere, such as during the French Revolution.42 In essence, there is no evidence of any intention of the crowd to violently overthrow the status quo. What occurred in 1937 was a rebellion. One observes some evidence of collective action on the part of the crowds. Moreover, the crowds made a number of telling political points through their actions and behaviour when defying the security forces and targeting particular properties or persons. Leadership during the rebellion never emerged above what has been reported in the official records as "ringleaders". No precise information exists as to the goals of the ringleaders, their political vision or their degree of organization. There were no Dottin brothers emerging, as during the 1876 Confederation rebellion, to coordinate the looting into a prolonged political protest. However, it still does not mean that the 1937 unrest lacked a political focus. The deliberate sabotage of communication lines, a fear Governor Charles O'Brien had expressed in 1920, cannot go unmentioned. On 29 July, the raiding of potato fields and the destruction of telephone lines between Sunbury, Crane, Bently, Edgecombe, Brighton and Windsor wer reported from Sunbury Plantation, St Philip.43 Corporal Bancroft reported the destruction of the line to District C. Shortly after, the lines to District D, St Thomas, and District F, St Joseph, were also cut. The police got

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around this inconvenience by hurriedly setting up a transmitter station.44 Mention has already been made of the widespread stoning of police patrols around the island. It seems reasonable to suggest that a concerted effort was made to harass the security forces, and to isolate them by deliberately impeding communication lines.

Industrial Unrest and the 1937 Social 'Disturbances' An uneasy state of industrial relations also developed during and immediately after the start of the rebellion. Tension was in the air when on 7 July 1937 a strike occurred at the Central Foundry, Bridgetown. This wa followed by a strike of the lightermen and stevedores on 30 July, four days after the start of the rebellion in Bridgetown.45 Haphazard work stoppages, less organized and less coordinated, also mushroomed on many rural sugar estates between 26 July and 9 August. On 2 August, the labourers at Dunscombe and Farmers estates went on strike, demanding forty cents per day, an increase often cents, as a wage.46 The manager of Sandford Estate, St Philip, reported how discontented workers who had earlier gone on strike returned to work on 3 August, "influenced to go back to work at present wages".47 On 9 August, the labourers of Four Hill Estate, St Peter, arrived at work and refused to do so. On the same day, cane hole labourers at Walkes Spring Estate, St Thomas, went on strike for increased wages.48 On 5 August, a labourer, Jacob Deane, was reported to be encouraging the labourers at Gibbs Plantation, St Peter, to strike and threatening estate personnel with violence.49 A crowd raiding a potato field at Carmichael Estate, St George, had encouraged labourers there to quit work.50 J.A. Haynes of Park House reported on 29 July, that "all of hi labourers left at 10:30 a.m., saying that if they work they would be attacked by rioters".51 This sudden upsurge in strikes, and rumours of strikes, was directly related to the general feeling of protest sparked off by the social upheavals. Moreover, the strikes would have been a continuation of a familiar form of political protest employed by the labouring classes over many decades. It would therefore have been a natural reaction of the black labouring population for such action to emerge again during the social

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161

upheavals. In essence, the disturbed industrial climate of July-August 1937 cannot be divorced from the social unrest of the time, or from previous forms of protest. Instead, the strikes and the actions of the rebels during the July 1937 rebellion must be seen as closely connected forms of political protests, manifesting themselves at different levels of intensity. In short, the rebellion of July-August 1937 represented the highest manifestation of political protest in Barbados; the strikes and rumours of strikes were lower levels of protests. The common thread in both cases was the fact that they were making the same political point in a different way, namely, the need to redress injustices confronting the Afro-Barbadian population.

Conclusion At the end of the July 1937 social upheavals in Barbados, more than fourteen people were killed, twenty-one injured and hundreds awaited trial on various charges, ranging from stone throwing to arson and treason. The black labouring classes had unleashed with a fury that stunned the local white oligarchy, who had always stereotyped them as passive and docile. One important fact that must be borne in mind, apart from the attacks on the property and businesses of select whites, is the behaviour of the crowds during these acts. In the rural districts some shops were looted, others were not. Some plantations provision grounds were looted, others were spared. A similar feature characterized the urban unrest. The rebels of 1937 were true to form as their enslaved foreparents of a bygone era had acted in a similar fashion. Some slaves were known to have unintentionally betrayed slave rebellions, not out of malicious intent but only to save the lives of their immediate masters. Toussaint L'Ouverture joined the Haitian uprising after he had escorted his master, and his family, to safety. Some rebels during the 1937 rebellion guarded Searle factory and Dodds Plantation with the same conviction they attacked other properties. It must be mentioned again that the invocation of a moral economy, sense of justice, decency and fair play were evident during the 1937 rebellion in Barbados. The crowds selected specific targets, white busi-

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nesses and property that they clearly perceived as symbols of their oppression. Therefore, there is no evidence of a mindless mob in action, but of a distinctive method in the 'madness' of the crowd. The race consciousness so evident in the 193 7 rebellion is not difficult to explain. One of the chief stimulants, apart from the widespread racial prejudice that existed in Barbados, was the abhorrence Afro-Barbadians had shown at Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. Strong words of protest were sent to the secretary of state, and the local Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) held political meetings throughout the island. Even an Abyssinian Welfare Fund was established to provide financial support for Ethiopia in her hour of need. In short, many black Barbadians saw a striking similarity in the way Ethiopians were treated by Italy and in their own domination by the local white oligarchy. No vibrant leadership with specific goals, organizational skills or political vision emerged. Hence, there was no possibility of the escalation of the rebellion into a revolutionary situation. By and large, the rebellion lasted longer than previously thought - from 26 July to 7 August. Moreover, it touched almost every parish in one form or the other, even though the greatest intensity was seen in Bridgetown, St John, St Michael, St Phili and St George. It is my view that the 'disturbances' of 1937 were not strictly an urban phenomenon. In a way, they must also be seen as having been stimulated mainly as a rural form of protest. In short, the urban to rural dimension discussed here is only to capture the unfolding of the events as they occurred. A closer scrutiny would reveal, as already demonstrated, that the political struggle had started earlier in the century in the form of potato raids in the rural districts. Payne harnessed the generations of political protest in the urban area that had been raging in the rural districts for a long time. In essence, he lit the fuse of a potentially explosive black population in 1937. The local rebellion, like others in the British Caribbean, created a watershed in the political history of the region. Significant social and political changes were fostered as a result of working class rebellion.

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Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19.

20. 21. 22. 23.

Disturbances - Governor's rough drafts, despatches and notes, July-August 1937, Government House Records (GH) 4/109 (Barbados Archives). Advocate, 28 July 1937, 3. Advocate, 28 July 1935, 5; Reports on progress of disturbances 1937, GH4/109. Leon 'Uncle' Clarke, interview with author, 11 October 1988; Dan Shepherd, interview with author, 15 October 1987. J.E.T. Brancker, Disturbances, complaints and grievances including Governor's interview with Messrs Brathwaite, Adams, Vaughan, Brancker and Reece, 29 July-2 August, GH/111 (Barbados Archives). Lloyd Alleyne, interview with author, 26 July 1997. Advocate, 28 July 1937, 9. Advocate, 3 November 1937, 9. Advocate, 28 July 1937, 8; see also Edward Stoute "Flashback to 1937 Riots", quoted in Bonham Richardson, Panama Money in Barbados 1890-1920 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985), 241. Advocate, 28 July 1937, 7. Advocate, 26 November 1937, 7. Andrew Gordon, 'The Crowd and Politics in Imperial Japan: 1905-1918", Past and Present, no. 121 (November 1988): 141-70; Robert Woods, "Individuals in the Rioting Crowd: A New Approach", Journal of Interdisciplinary History 14, no. 1 (Summer 1983): 1-24. Advocate, 5 November 1937, 9. Advocate, 12 November 1937, 9. Advocate, 30 November 1937, 9. Advocate, 20 September 1937, 9. Advocate, 20 September 1937, 10. Hilary Beckles, A History of Barbados: From Amerindian Settlement to Nation State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 163-69; see also F.A. Hoyos, Barbados: A History From Amerindians to Independence (London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1978), 206-40. Report of Commandant Local Forces to Mark Young, Reports on progress of disturbances 1937 - situation reports July 29-August 12, GH4/110 (Barbados Archives). Ibid. Advocate, 3 November 1937, 9. Advocate, 11 November 1937, 9. Advocate, 16 November 1937, 9.

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24. Advocate, 18 November 1937, 9. 25. Advocate, 18 November 1937, 9. 26. Advocate, 17 November 1937, 9. 27. Urgent - Staff Officer Local Forces to Private Secretary, 317-37 (Barbados Archives). 28. Situation report for period 2.8.37 to 3.8.37 (Barbados Archives). 29. Letter of "Grievous Citizen", Complaints and grievances in connection with the recent disturbances, GH4/100. 30. William Sewell, "Collective Violence and Collective Loyalties in France: Why the French Revolution Made a Difference", Politics and Society 18, no. 4 (1990): 525-48; see also E.P. Thompson, 'The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century", Past and Present, no. 30 (1971): 76-136. 31. House of Assembly Debates, 19 November 1917, 90 32. Barbados Standard, 2 March 1918,5. 33. Barbados Standard, 12 November 1921, 5. 34. Report of Commandant Local Forces to Mark Young. 35. Commandant Local Forces to Mark Young, 29 July 1937. 36. Ibid. 37. Advocate, 16 November 1937, 9. 38. Advocate, 12 November 1937, 9. 39. Advocate, 17 November 1937, 9. 40. Ibid., 8. 41. Ibid., 7. 42. George Rude, The Crowd in History 1730-1848: A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and England (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1964), 237-68. 43. Commandant Local Forces to Young, 31 July 1937. 44. Advocate, 31 July 1937, 10. 45. Report of the Commission Appointed to Enquire into the Disturbances, which took place in Barbados on the 27th July 1937 and subsequent days (N.P. 1937), 240. 46. State Officer to Private Secretary, 2 August 1937, Situation reports. 47. Situation reports for period 6:00 a.m. 9.8.37 to 6:00 a.m. 10.8.37, GH4/110 (Barbados Archives). 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid. 50. Reports for period 5.8.37 to 6.8.37 (Barbados Archives). 51. "Report by Captain Lamb, 29 July 193 7", in Reports on Progress of Disturbances 1937, GH4/109 (Barbados Archives).

7 Grantley Herbert Adams, Asquithian Liberalism and Socialism Which Way Forward for Barbados, from the 1920s to the 1940s?*

ANTHONY

DE V.

PHILLIPS

Mr Adams expressed his dismay at the dangerous reaction to expressions of discontent, which too often took the form of branding even moderate Liberals as firebrands and political agitators inspired and paid by Moscow to spread Communism in the West Indies. - "Labour Disturbances in the West Indies", report of a speech by Mr G.H. Adams, MCP of Barbados Why cannot the leaders of the Labour Party face the fact that they are not sectaries of an outworn creed, mumbling moss-grown demi-semi Fabian Marxism, but the heirs of eternal Liberalism? - John Maynard Keynes

Born in 1898, Grantley Herbert Adams came to maturity in the early years of the twentieth century. His years in England as a law student were formative ones when he was able to study and weigh contending ideolo*A version of this article first appeared in the Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 44 (1998): 1-20. 165

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The Empowering Impulse

gies and to consider their applicability to the circumstances of Barbados, an island colony within the British Empire. With a bow towards the aphorism (paraphrased), If a young man is not a Socialist, I worry about his heart, If a mature man is still a Socialist, I worry about his head.

Commentators on the career of Sir Grantley Adams used to refer with some puzzlement to his declaration soon after his return in 1925 as a budding lawyer that he was politically and ideologically aligned with Asquithian liberalism. To some extent this alleged puzzlement derived from an incomplete grasp of the scope of liberalism. The purpose of this article is to seek to explain why and how his sojourn in England had led Adams towards liberalism and not towards socialism as a model for achieving the transformation of the obsolete political, economic and social structures of Barbados. It will be seen also that liberalism and socialism fell along a continuum of progressive thought. The eminent historian H.A.L. Fisher went so far as to assert (in a conversation in 1926 with Gilbert Murray, the famous Oxford classical scholar whose translations from Greek were used by so many) that some form of liberalism had become a political necessity for all parties, and was in fact an essential feature of democratic civilization. It should be stated also at the beginning that liberalism had only a tenuous hold in the Barbados of the 1920s and 1930s. There were few genuine Liberals in Barbados, and certainly no Liberal Party. The selfstyled Liberals could not actually be regarded as being representative of Liberal ideas or programmes. It is not surprising that young Adams, first as a student and then as a legal practitioner, should have been attracted to the principles and practice of liberalism. It had the support of some of the best brains and was a venerable tradition. F.A. Hoyos, Grantley Adams' main biographer, has provided a clear exposition of his path to the decision to espouse liberalism, rather than the socialism or conservatism then also on offer. Adams was clearly already interested in politics and world affairs and rose within the ranks to become president of the St Catherine's Debating Society and also president of the Junior Common Room at St Catherine's.1 He also regularly

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attended debates at the Oxford Union where, on one occasion, he was present when the leader of the Liberal Party, H.H. Asquith, took part in a memorable debate. Mainly through his admiration for Asquith, Adams became a member of the Liberal Party at Oxford. Was Asquith not one of the most distinguished political thinkers of the day, and was he not, moreover, an illustrious son of Oxford? Adams was impressed by the achievements of the great Liberal who had brought about a new kind of social organization, based on a novel view of the functions of the state. The young Barbadian therefore began arguing and working for the Liberal Party. Concerning Adams' ideological conversion, his biographer concluded that: Adams became a fervent Asquithian by a process that was as much intellectual as it was emotional. As the master himself once expounded and Adams accepted it wholeheartedly Liberalism was not a bundle of catch-words and shibboleths, but a coherent faith, deeply rooted in historic foundations and fortified by all the best teachings of economic science. To the Barbadian, as to his mentor, it seemed to be permeated and penetrated by a spirit which manifested itself in the love of freedom, in a passion for justice, and in a ceaseless striving for equal opportunity for all that only a free state could give.2

Adams joined in electioneering. Hoyos tells us that he campaigned for the Liberal candidate, Frank Gray, a solicitor, who won the City of Oxford seat in 1922 and also in 1923. Then, in 1924, for Adams, one of his happiest tasks was the self-appointed one of canvassing for C.B. Fry when the latter stood for the City of Oxford seat. For here he was supporting the cause that appealed to him and the man whose intellectual power, athletic prowess and mellow liberalism seemed to him a model of allround excellence.3 What were the Liberals offering to the electorate at this time? Let us look at aspects of their election manifestos. The 1922 Liberal Party manifesto insisted that what was needed in the new Parliament was the full and effective expression of the Liberal spirit. Liberalism was not socialism. Liberalism repudiated the doctrine of warfare against private enterprises. The manifesto naturally presented detailed proposals for foreign policy, including support for the League of Nations, and for domestic policy urged:

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Fulfilment by the community of its responsibility for securing the workers against the hardships of unemployment, cooperation between capital and labour, and honest and fair treatment of organized labour as the only basis of industrial peace. The defence of such essential social services as education, housing, and public health. Political and legal equality for women and men. A comprehensive reform of the existing land system, including the taxation and rating of land values.4 Readjustment of our electoral system by the introduction of proportional representation.

In conclusion, under the subheading "Liberals Stand for the Nation", a note of realism was sounded: It would be easy to follow the example of others and attempt to purchase electoral support by displaying a long series of glittering promises. But the country has too much reason to know the difference between promise and performance . . . The essence of the Liberal spirit is that it sets the well-being of the community as a whole above the interests of any particular section or class.

Such a sane and sober manifesto would have had a clear appeal for one such as young Adams. He would have admired its fairness and balance. Similarly, he was obviously impressed by the manifestos of 1923 and 1924 as he undertook his electioneering. Again, significant attention was paid to foreign policy. Most criticism in 1923 was piled on the outgoing Conservative government, but Labour proposals were also condemned: The Liberal Party is equally convinced that the remedies recommended for unemployment by the Labour Party - Socialism and the Capital Levy - would prove disastrous. What is needed is not the destruction of enterprise but its encouragement; not the frightening away of Capital but its fruitful use . . . The Liberal Party will take all possible steps to promote the co-operation of employers and employed. The worker should be secured a proper status and a fair share in the produce of the industry in which he is engaged. Liberal industrial policy is based upon the principles of partnership between Labour and Capital, security of livelihood for the worker, and public advantage before private profit.

Additionally, Liberals proclaimed their commitment to equal rights for men and women, aiming to secure political, legal and economic equality.

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For the rural areas, Liberals recommended that opportunity should be given for the cultivator to become the owner of his own land on reasonable terms by a system of land purchase. Wages for agricultural labourers were to be improved, rural housing was to be "vastly improved" and the amenities of rural life enlarged. Education was to be given a boost. A moment's thought will identify many aspects of Liberal economic and social policy that Adams would have regarded as being transferable to the colony of Barbados. Reference will be made later to the first ever Labour Party government in Britain (in 1924) that did not have an overall majority of seats in the House of Commons and had to rely on Liberal Party support during its nine months in office.5 As a result, there had to be a third general election in two years. The Liberal Party manifesto for the general election of 29 October 1924 included many of the principles and programmes already noted. Reference may usefully be made here to a recommendation that was to be one of Adams' first concerns after he entered the Barbados House of Assembly - a continuation of the campaign led by O'Neal and others for slum clearance and an urban housing programme. The Liberals had observed: "A large section of our town dwellers have neither room to live nor room to work, nor room to play . . . The degradation and disgrace of our slums must be wiped out. The radical cure of slums by building new [housing areas] . . . must be taken in hand." Another policy, one that was to be implemented in Barbados only much later, related to social insurance: "A further extension and a complete co-ordination of the Insurance Acts, which were initiated by the Liberal Party before the [1914-18] War, is now a matter of urgent national necessity... [We need] a comprehensive policy of contributory insurance, maintaining self-respect and giving to all citizens security against destitution." So Grantley Adams' undergraduate and law student years in England were filled with a whirl of discussion and argument. Similar debates were also taking place in Barbados in the 1920s as the old order came under increasing challenge. When Adams returned to Barbados in 1925, therefore, he necessarily had to clarify his ideological alignment since he planned to enter public life and pursue a political career. He declared his continuing commitment to Asquithian liberalism and was at once embroiled in a series of increasingly hot exchanges with, in particular, the leading progressive journalist, Clennel Wickham of the Herald.

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Hoyos has laid out the gist of the argument by pointing out that Wickham had placed himself freely and unreservedly on the side of socialism, and insisted that there could be no middle ground between the Conservative idea and the socialist idea. On the other hand, Adams, using a classical analogy, queried this idea. He asked whether it was the case that because liberalism steers a clear course between the Scylla of conservatism and the Charybdis of socialist revolution it was therefore vacillating, ineffectual, out-of-date, a compromise.6 Answering his own question, Adams asserted that Liberal principles were imperishable. In contrast to socialism, the whole aim and purpose of liberalism was constructive. "Its essence was to better conditions, to remove the obsolete, to abolish privilege, to destroy prejudice."7 The Adams-Wickham ideological row culminated as follows, in the words of Hoyos: Perhaps realizing that the public platform offered better scope for his forensic skill than the columns of a newspaper, [Adams] challenged Wickham to a debate on the question of the day. With the flamboyance characteristic of his youthful years, Adams declared that the debate could be of any length, at any time, in any place, before any audience, on any aspect of Liberalism or Socialism. The conditions were to be determined solely by Wickham, the only proviso being that he should give Adams ten minutes notice of his choice of subject and of the length of the debate. [Depriving contemporary Barbados (and posterity) of what would surely have been an intellectual feast reminiscent of the Oxford Union, Wickhaml rejected the challenge "on the ground that there was no question that could not be profitably discussed in the columns of a newspaper".8

From the perspective of the 1990s, these quarrels within the progressive movement reflected differences concerning means rather than ends, concerning the pace of change rather than the direction of change, and concerning priorities and the short-term agenda rather than the longterm agenda. All wanted to raise the standard of living of the working classes. Much disputation related to the specific mechanisms for bringing about the intended economic and social effects. As indicated earlier, one of the features of Barbados in the 1920s and 1930s was that liberalism was not rooted there. Were there any Liberals with whom Adams could ally? Wickham had demolished that idea in a devastating piece published in the Barbados Herald of 25 July 1925,

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quoted in full in Hoyos. These "self-styled Liberals were labelled 'strange company' for a declared progressive, and indeed, 'very bad company' ". Gordon Lewis is surely overstating the case when he claims that it took years of painful experience for him to discover that colonial liberalism had little of the real metropolitan spirit in it.9 Adams would have had no difficulty in analysing the words and actions of the politicians of the time. Deciding on his course of action was linked to the ideological complexity of the left-of-centre political doctrines. There was a spectrum of beliefs, theories and recommended courses of action, considerable overlap, and a history marked by both collaboration and competition. Where along the spectrum was Adams to position himself? A historical look at some cases with which Adams would have been familiar will go some way towards explaining the point. In the nineteenth century organized political parties had not existed in Barbados, and even in England party discipline could not be strictly enforced on all issues. Parties tended to tolerate a range of interests and points of view. Men in public life were often eclectic in their choice of ideas. Parties split from time to time. Apart from the main parties (usually two), there also existed many single-issue groups and limited-issue groups, some regional, some denominational, and some linked to particular trades or occupations. A man might therefore derive his political/ideological identity from more than one source. Political behaviour would also be affected by the constituency involved in choosing between candidates in a representative system. A man (remember that no woman had a national vote in England until 1918 or in Barbados until 1943) would therefore seek to protect and advance his interests and those of his immediate group and the interests of the wider constituency.10 In Barbados the franchise was marginally adjusted in the 1830s and 1880s, but scarcely extended beyond the economic and social elite. In England, the right to vote was gradually extended in 1832,1867 and 1884, but it was not until 1918 that virtually all men (and some women) were included. As the working classes became voters their particular interests and concerns had to be taken more and more into account. For Adams, Asquithian liberalism was like a steady core of stability in the midst of the whirl of contending ideas. Who was the man Herbert Henry Asquith? David Marquand has provided an excellent brief sketch:

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For the first sixty-two years of his life his career had been a long succession of triumphs... As a boy at the City of London School, as an undergraduate at Balliol, as a barrister at Lincoln's Inn, the solidest, if not the most glittering, prizes of late-Victorian middle-class England seemed to fall into his grasp, almost without effort on his part. It was the same when he entered the House of Commons. From the first, Asquith spoke as though he were already a front-bencher; from the first, his colleagues accepted him at his own valuation. At forty - only six years after his first election to Parliament - he was Home Secretary in Gladstone's last Cabinet.

By 1906 he was the only possible successor to Campbell-Bannerman as Liberal leader. Following Campbell-Bannerman's illness and retirement, Asquith succeeded smoothly as prime minister. Marquand continued: Asquith held the premiership for an unbroken period of eight years and almost eight months, a record unequalled since the early nineteenth century. His Government was perhaps the most successful reforming administration which this country has ever had, as well as the most distinguished. Under its aegis, the "New Liberalism", which sought to adapt the individualistic radicalism of the nineteenth century to the social needs of the twentieth, momentarily became a political force. The reforms it enacted were substantial achievements in themselves. More important still, the logic behind them pointed the way to further advance.11

Let us examine the old age pension legislation as a case study of liberalism in action, with direct relevance to Barbados. A campaign advocating the granting of unconditional old age pensions had been gathering momentum for more than a decade: a number of investigations into poverty had produced statistical evidence concerning the plight of the elderly, and royal commissions had reported. The Liberal landslide electoral victory in 1906 had given rise to hope in the hearts and minds of progressives inspired by the manifesto issued in December 1905. The Liberals declared that they were fighting against powers, privileges, injustices and monopolies that were unalterably opposed to the triumph of the democratic system. The Liberals gained 400 seats in the House of Commons - a majority of 130 over all other parties combined. Asquith joined the Cabinet as chancellor of the exchequer, the minister responsible for the budget and the holder of the government's purse strings. He prepared the budgets of 1906, 1907 and 1908.

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New Zealand and Australia had both surged ahead of England in providing for pensions. Many Liberal members of Parliament had pledged to support pensions legislation at Westminster, but the government had to establish priorities for its initiatives. Asquith declared that no chancellor with funds available would ever be so lacking in basic humanity as to refuse to come to the aid of the helpless aged. In 1907 he announced that he was laying the foundation for the pensions scheme by building up a fund, earmarked for the purpose, "for the relief of necessitous old age".12 He expected to have £2.5 million plus an additional sum from increased estate duties. In the King's Speech on 29 January 1908, it was announced that legislation would be brought forward to make adequate financial arrangements for making better provision for old age. These arrangements were made by Asquith, but the resignation and death of the prime minister (see above) brought Asquith to the prime ministership in April. He appointed David Lloyd George as chancellor of the exchequer, but nevertheless introduced the budget on 7 May. He insisted that state provided noncontributory pensions were a moral obligation, and not a "Socialistic experiment discouraging to thrift... [nor] doles and largesses which [were] fatal to Rome. Our reply is that, if this is Socialism . . . it stands . . . in principle on precisely the same footing as the free education of children."13 As agreed in 1908, noncontributory old age pensions were to be paid as follows: There was to be a sliding scale, with the highest weekly rate of 5/- [five shillings, $1.20] being paid only to those with an income from other sources of less than 8/- weekly; between 8/- and 91- weekly income the pension was reduced by I/- to 4/-; then likewise in I/- stages until there was no pension for anyone whose income exceeded 12/- [twelve shillings, $2.88] weekly. The starting age for entitlement was to be 70. Conviction for serious crime within the previous five years would disqualify. Payment was to be through the Post Office. The first pensions were to be paid on New Year's Day 1909.14

Adams had to fight tooth and nail against the planter and merchant conservatives in the Barbados House of Assembly and Legislative Counci in order to secure old age pensions and other reform measures for the masses of the colony. Altogether, he had been most impressed by the series of Liberal welfare reforms that had been enacted during the period from 1906 up to the outbreak of the Great War (World War I) in 1914.

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Historians and other social scientists regard the Liberal welfare reforms as the foundation of the modern British welfare system. Asquith as prime minister encouraged and supported the radical initiatives of members of his Cabinet, notably David Lloyd George and Winston Spencer Churchill. Lloyd George had been appointed to succeed Asquith as chancellor of the exchequer and he continued the line of development. For instance, Asquith had begun to use the budget as an instrument of social change by limited income transfers and the beginnings of redistribution. Asquith's 1907 budget was the first to levy differential income tax rates on earned and unearned income. Lloyd George's 1909 budget, popularly known as the "People's Budget", was a watershed instrument in many ways and had multiple repercussions. It claimed to aim at an equitable distribution of the burdens among the different classes and interests in the community. It apportioned the new taxes "between luxuries, superfluities, and monopolies",15 leaving the necessaries of life untouched. This policy meant a significant shift in the incidence of taxation, deliberately designed to favour the working classes at the expense of the elite. As indicated above, Asquith's Cabinet also included Winston Spencer Churchill, son of the venerable Conservative leader, Lord Randolph Churchill. Winston Churchill himself had been first elected to Parliament as a Conservative in 1900, but had crossed the floor and joined the Liberals in 1904. He recognized that they held the moral high ground. In 1909 he published a collection entitled Liberalism and the Social Problem. One piece, "Liberalism and Socialism", is a transcript of a speech first delivered at St Andrew's Hall, Glasgow, on 11 October 1906. Churchill stressed the moral necessity and the practicability of Liberal policies and programmes, as follows: The fortunes and the interests of Liberalism and Labour are inseparably interwoven . . . Liberalism . .. proceeds by courses of moderation . . . The cause of the Liberal Party is the cause of the left-out millions... I look forward to the universal establishment of minimum standards of life and labour, and their progressive elevation as the increasing energies of production may permit . . . [Regarding private enterprises] do not grudge them their profits.16

Churchill's summary of the Liberal aspiration was: "We want to draw a line below which we will not allow persons to live and labour."17 Later,

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after Asquith's death, Churchill acknowledged the debt which he owed to him for the privilege of allowing him to serve in his Cabinet. In his book Great Contemporaries he revealed: Asquith was a man who knew where he stood on every question of life and affairs in an altogether unusual degree . . . At the time when I knew him best he was at the height of his power. Great majorities supported him in Parliament and the country. Against him were ranged all the stolid Conservative forces of England. Conflict unceasing grew year by year to a more dangerous intensity at home . . . He was always very kind to me and thought well of my mental processes . . . His orderly, disciplined mind delighted in reason and design . . . In fact 1 believe I owed the repeated the repeated advancement to great offices which he accorded me [to my carefully marshalled written submissions].18

Both Lloyd George and Churchill contributed significantly to the Liberal track record of the prewar period. The Liberals were obviously engaged with a range of other issues of domestic policy and foreign policy beyond the scope of this paper. Reference must be made, however, to support for the trade union movement by the 1906 Trade Disputes Bill which overturned the Taff Vale legal judgement, so providing complete protection for union funds and allowing union members to engage in peaceful picketing. A later enactment of 1913 amended the 1909 Osborne judgement, providing that a union member could contract out of paying a political levy as part of his union dues. This legislation allowed trade unions to continue to engage in political activity. The legal status of trade unions was confirmed by the 1911 Trade Union Act. This legal framework gave industrial action immunity from certain defined legal actions, once the union members were acting "in pursuit of an industrial dispute". The Liberal government also recognized the Post Office Trade Union. Workmen's compensation protection was also extended to additional categories of workers including seamen and domestic servants. Government conciliation in major industrial disputes became increasingly the norm, and the Liberals moved towards the idea of a minimum wage for certain occupations. The Labour Exchange Act of 1909 was designed to be part of the attempted solution for the scourge of mass unemployment. In the British West Indies, on the other hand, trade unions were still banned in the 1930s. With the onset of the social rebellions of that decade,

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the colonial government had to move hastily to establish labour departments headed by labour officers who were usually English. Adams and the other progressive leaders all recognized that theirs was a dual struggle. The establishment of the Barbados Workers Union in 1941 and the securing of its status and immunities were therefore among their early objectives. So far, the focus of this paper has been on establishing the aspects of Asquithian liberalism that persuaded the young Grantley Adams that its tenets provided a model applicable to Barbados. On that foundation he proposed to build his political philosophy, social programmes and economic projects. To examine the other side of the coin, attention will now focus on the reasons why on his return from England socialism was rejected as an ideology appropriate for the transformation of Barbados. We have already seen that Adams' intellectual clash with Wickham necessarily involved a denigration of socialism. There is a saying, "We are all Socialists now", which, with variations, has been attributed to many persons in public life, including George V. The Dictionary of Political Quotations identifies the saying as follows: 'The saying has been attributed to me that every one is a socialist now. I do not know whether I ever said that" (Sir William Harcourt [1827-1904], English Liberal politician, chancellor of the exchequer, 1886 and 1892-95, introducing the budget in the House of Commons, 24 April 1893).19 The term, socialism, is in fact a slippery concept and has naturally been subject to varying interpretations according to time and place. As with liberalism, one must be aware that for some analytical purposes it is necessary to refer to 'socialisms'. Some broad categories applicable to the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century would include pre-Marxian socialism, Marxist and Marxist-Leninist socialism, Christian socialism, Guild socialism, and democratic socialism - and all possible permutations. A most influential English variant was the highly intellectual Fabian socialism. Adherents to socialism divided into a number of camps depending on their preferred tactics. Some opted for a parliamentary route, while others sought revolution, either by peaceful means or by violence. It was the fear of revolutionary violence that predisposed many social thinkers and activists to harbour a fear and loathing for socialism (or at least for some variants). In other words, Did the concept of class struggle inevitably imply class conflict or even class warfare? Some thinkers

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therefore labelled socialism as confrontational, sinister, subversive and possibly violent. Socialist groups also displayed fissiparous tendencies. Owing to the heated debates concerning ideological differences, orthodoxy and heterodoxy, many groups were short lived and splinter groups were the norm. Also, many movements were led by middle class intellectuals and some of them were viewed with considerable suspicion by the working classes. As a result, when Grantley Adams went up to Oxford University in 1919 he was not impressed by the heritage, achievements, track record or future prospects of socialism in Britain or the British Empire. As previously mentioned, Adams would also have been aware of the background. In the nineteenth century, to paraphrase Gilbert and Sullivan's not so tuneful assertion in the light opera lolanthe, "Every boy and every girl is bom either a little Liberal or a little Conservative." Since the interests of the working classes were more likely to be promoted by the Liberals, as labouring groups advanced from being pressure groups to seeking admission to Parliament they usually did so under the aegis of the Liberal Party. This progressive alliance was made formal in 1903 by the Lib-Lab Pact. It was agreed that in thirty-five constituencies where Labour had a good chance of defeating Conservative candidates in a two-cornered race, the Liberal Party would not put up candidates but would support the Labour candidates. In return, Labour would not intervene in Liberal-held constituencies. The Liberals stated: "We are ready to do this as an act of friendship and without any stipulation of any kind, because we realize that an accession of strength to Labour representation in the House of Commons is not only required by the country in the interests of Labour but that it would increase progressive forces generally and the Liberal Party as the best available instrument of progress."20 So said, so done. The manoeuvre was eminently successful. In 1906 when the Liberals won four hundred seats, the Labour Representation Committee (LRC; soon to rename itself the Labour Party) won twenty-nine seats. The LRC had been founded on 17 February at a conference held in Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, London, the same hall where (as stated in the epigraph, above) Grantley Adams was to address the League of Coloured Peoples in December 1937. The LRC-Labour Party was only one of the Labour groupings. Some miners, dockers and other occupational groups steered an independent course. Indeed, the Independent Labour

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Party (ILP) and the Socialist Labour Party (SLP) shared the Labour Party designation. Keir Hardie (well known as the socialist mentor of Dr Charles Duncan O'Neal) had pushed for the establishment of the ILP in 1892, linked to the trade unions. From his years of experience, Keir Hardie concluded that "Parliament does not respond to argument. It responds to pressure." Working class parliamentarians were much facilitated by the 1911 Liberal measure providing for the payment of salaries of £400 a year. The Great War of 1914-18 changed the political landscape in basic ways. The wartime coalition government split, the Liberal Party split, and Lloyd George, who succeeded Asquith as prime minister, acquired a reputation for unscrupulous intrigue. Of great significance too was the considerable extension of the franchise in 1918 which gave the vote to all men and to women over the age of twenty-eight. The 1918 election was also the first one in which the Labour Party fought in a large number of constituencies all over the country. At its annual conference in that year it also adopted a new constitution, including the famous Clause Four announcing that a basic objective of the party was the public ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. There was, from that point on, a clear gulf between Liberal and Labour. While Adams was an undergraduate, Ramsey MacDonald regained his seat in Parliament in 1922, becoming leader of the Labour Party. He shortly afterwards made history when he became the first man of working class birth to become prime minister of Britain. In October 1923 Baldwin, the Conservative prime minister, dissolved Parliament to seek a mandate to impose protective tariffs. He did not secure the mandate as the Conservatives won 258 seats; Labour, 191; and the Liberals, 158. The fear of socialism appeared on all sides. Churchill (no longer a Liberal) declared that "Labour is not fit to govern." This was a widely expressed view. The Liberal Party was in the position to determine the outcome. Asquith opted to allow the formation of the first Labour government, stressing the obvious point that there was no need for panic since the balance of parties in the House of Commons would not permit Labour any opportunities for extreme measures. Speaking in Parliament on 17 January 1924 Asquith revealed that correspondents had been deluging him with entreaties:

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It means, for the first time, the installation of a Socialist Government in the seats of the mighty . . . I have never come across more virulent manifestations of an epidemic of political hysteria ... I have been in turn, during these weeks, cajoled, wheedled, almost caressed, taunted, threatened, brow-beaten, and all but black29 mailed to step in as the "saviour of society".

Asquith's feet remained firmly on the ground as he reminded the Commons: "We of the Liberal Party are deeply and sincerely pledged to give no ... countenance to Socialistic experiments . . . with a House of Commons constituted as this is, it is idle to talk of the imminent dangers of a Socialistic regime."23 Ramsey MacDonald became prime minister, and that first Labour government lasted for nine months. It introduced basically moderate measures which were able to gain Liberal support. The fall of the government was occasioned by a vote of censure for political interference with the administration of justice. The second Labour government, 1929-31, was again a minority government. Economic and social circumstances were particularly unpromising as the Wall Street crash and the onset of the Great Depression created massive unemployment. No socialistic policies could be introduced, and in August 1931 the government fell after two years and four months. MacDonald then formed a coalition, establishing a national government. He was denounced by Labour activists as a traitor. So the policies, programmes and personalities of the British Labour Party did not impress the young Grantley Adams. There was a phase in Adams' political and trade union career, however, when he openly declared for a brand of socialism and the class struggle.24 His biographer, Hoyos, was a participant-observer of these developments and had a role in attempting to redirect the movement. By 1946, twelve years after he had entered the House of Assembly, the pressures created by the stubborn Conservative resistance had led Adams to adapt Keir Hardie's previously quoted aphorism as follows: 'This ruling class does not respond to argument; it responds to pressure." The strategy remained the same, but tactics changed. Political and trade union meetings included the singing of the "Red Flag" and the flaunting of the hammer and sickle symbols of Bolshevism. In his autobiography, Hoyos reveals that, as a devout Roman Catholic, he was assigned to "steer Grantley Adams away from the dialectical

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materialism of Karl Marx to the doctrines of Christian social philosophy".25 In particular, an encyclical of Pope Leo XIII "strongly condemned the evils of unrestricted capitalism, while stressing the importance of private enterprise and individual freedom".26 Whatever the precise effect of particular influences on Adams, we may on this point perhaps conclude with Gordon Lewis that, notwithstanding his splendid record, it is open to grave doubt as to whether Adams, any more than his contemporaries Cipriani and Marryshow, was socialist in anything except the idiom that he borrowed from the British Labour Party.27 As a postscript on this point, in 1978 Grantley Adams' son, Tom, then prime minister of Barbados made the Barbados Labour Party a full member of Socialist International, the worldwide federation of social democratic parties. Tom Adams insisted that the move to full membership was an indication that Barbados would remain firmly attached to the principles of social democracy. In conclusion, it may be useful to note that Asquithian liberalism has had an enduring influence. As late as 8 June 1970, a piece entitled 'The Asquith Ideal" in the Times of London concluded: "Asquithian Liberalism . . . is in our view the finest of all the British political traditions, humane, conscientious, lucid, intellectual, courageous, and just."28 Similarly, writing in 1992, Ronald Quinault, analysing Asquith's liberalism, reported that he had started his parliamentary career as an "advanced Liberal" and continued to be described as such. His progressivism is also attested to be the fact that "In the later Edwardian period Asquith was widely regarded . . . as a radical who had attained power . . . As Prime Minister, Asquith was a convinced and determined reformer, who was not deterred by bitter opposition from the Conservatives . . . As Winston Churchill rightly observed: 'Henry Asquith was not only a Liberal, he was a Radical'." Also, it could justly be said of Adams as it was said of Asquith 'Though he was much interested in law, he was more interested in politics."29 Adams was not interested in politics for its own sake, but regarded it as a means to an end. He had seen with his own eyes the social progress that the toiling masses were making in England, and he was inspired by the achievements made and being made through liberalism. He had recognized the central position of Parliament and of legislation. His legal training and his analysis of Asquith's career and accomplishments therefore naturally led him to operate as a parliamentarian himself.

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Political commentators, without intending to be unduly cynical, often refer to the thought-provoking aphorism penned by Alexander Pope in 1733 and published in his Essay on Man: 'Tor forms of government let fools contest; Whate'er is best administer'd is best." Certainly, in retrospect, now that the tumult and shouting has died (or has been temporarily muted), it is possible to survey developments with a degree of objectivity. The worst fears did not come true for those who regarded the 1909 People's Budget as "a cross between the social revolution and the Day of Judgement"; nor for those who identified socialism as "the end of all, the negation of faith, of family, of property, of monarchy, of Empire". Save that the British Empire is no more, predictions have not been reliable. Similarly, those who were startled by Grantley Adams' red flag and other symbols in 1947 saw a gradual adjustment to contingent factors, specific actions and reactions within Barbados, the British West Indies, the British Empire, and the world. Certainly, it was clear that no system can be transferred wholesale from one social milieu to another. Ironically, today, since the collapse of the communist system in the late 1980s and 1990s, even left-wing governments seek to encourage a mixed economy, as advocated by liberalism. The social partners - government, the trade unions and staff associations, private sector organizations, churches, and other nongovernmental organizations - are all seeking to promote social harmony and government by consensus.31 The lion has come to lie down with the lamb.

Notes Head of chapter: "Labour Disturbances in the West Indies: Report of a Speech by Mr G.H. Adams, MCP, of Barbados", Keys 5, no. 3 (January-March 1938): 66; John Maynard Keynes, in an article in the New Statesman (January 1939), quoted in David Marquand, The Progressive Dilemma (London: Phoenix, 1992), 46. 1.

F.A. Hoyos, Grantley Adams and the Social Revolution: The Story of the Movement that Changed the Pattern of West Indian Society (London: Macmillan, 1974), 18; Margaret and Derek Davies, Creating St Catherine's College (Oxford: St Catherine's

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College, 1997), 7. It is worthy of note that the Grand Old Man of late nineteenth century British politics and leader of the Liberal Party, William Ewart Gladstone, died on 19 May 1898, a few weeks after Grantley Adams was born. So Adams reached Oxford at the age of 21, an impressionable young man during whose youth and adolescence the New Liberalism had dominated political life. For the student politics and cricket career of Adams at Oxford, see St Catherine's Magazine, nos. 3, 6, 8, 9, 10. In no. 12 (Trinity Term 1924), the article on the Debating Society reported that G.H. Adams had been resident at the university for four years and had not yet changed his political views. He still pleaded for some liberalism. Finally, his going down was chronicled in no. 14 (Hilary Term 1925) in the section "Notes and News": "After a most successful Varsity career, G.H. Adams sailed for [Barbados] on Christmas Day [1924]. During his sojourn here, Adams was a tower of strength to the Cricket Club, and the 'Debater*, both of whose fortunes he so ably managed at one time or another. Last term he was 'called' at Gray's Inn and the very best wishes of all his friends for a successful legal career go with him." Liberalism was generally still thriving in Oxford. Gordon Lewis, The Growth of the Modern West Indies (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1968), 246, identified one of Adams' Liberal mentors as Professor Gilbert Murray, famous classical scholar, fellow of New College, and a Liberal political activist who came forward as a parliamentary candidate. See, for illustrations of his influence, the following: Brian Harrison, ed., The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 8, The Twentieth Century (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 377-409; Sir Maurice Bowra, Memories, 1898-1939 (London: Weidenfeld, 1966), 214-29. Bowra commented as follows on Murray: "In the Greeks he found a sane and generous ideal of what men ought to be and of what is most significant in their lives, a desire to create order out of chaos, whether in the self, or in society, or in knowledge, or in the arts" (228). Hoyos, Grantley Adams, 19. From Harrison, The History of the University of Oxford (London: Oxford University Press), however, it is clear that the election contested in June 1924 by C.B. Fry was for the Oxford City constituency, and not for the university seat. This election is one in which the Liberal effort was adversely affected by the developing Labour Party policy of contesting across the country. Bourne, the Conservative candidate, won with 10,079 votes. Fry, Liberal, gained 8,237 votes and Lindsay, Labour, gained 2,769. In a two-cornered fight, Fry might well have won (3 79). C.B. Fry's sporting exploits may be conveniently consulted in the Dictionary of National Biography. He put out an autobiography, Life Worth Living: Some Phases of an Englishman (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1939), and also wrote several other books, edited a magazine, and was an active newspaper journalist. There is a mainly sporting biography, Denzil Batchelor, C.B. Fry

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(London: Phoenix, 1951). Adams, no doubt, would have adopted the summary uttered by his frequent batting partner, Prince Ranjitsinhji: (taking all types of wicket into consideration) "he was the greatest batsman of his time". Following his death in 1956, Wisden commemorated his achievements in 1957. Sir Maurice Bowra summed him up as "the greatest athlete of his age" (Bowra, Memories, 142). C.B. Fry in fact contested three parliamentary elections unsuccessfully, 1921-24. Adams would have been aware of all of these contests. 4.

The Liberal "Land Song" had been enormously popular: Sound the blast for freedom, boys, and spread it far and wide, March along to victory, for God is on our side While the voice of Nature thunders o'er the rising tide, "God gave the land to the people!" The land! The land! 'Twos God who gave the land! The land! The land! The ground on which we stand! Why should we be beggars with the ballot in our hand? God gave the land to the people!

5.

See below.

6.

Hoyos, Grantley Adams, 24.

7.

Ibid.

8.

Ibid., 26.

9.

Lewis, The Growth of the Modern West Indies, 246-47.

10.

Hoyos, Grantley Adams, 101.

11.

Marquand, The Progressive Dilemma, 26-27.

12.

Ibid.

13.

D. Goodman, How the Pension Was Won: The Forgotten Story (London: Third Age, 1998), 79-80.

14.

Ironically, much of the praise for the introduction of the old age pension scheme went to David Lloyd George. Many old ladies, eternally grateful for the boon, mistakenly referred to him as follows : "God bless that Lord George." E.P. Hancock, "Poverty and Social Reforms", in Twentieth-Century Britain: Economic, Social and Cultural Change (London: Longman, 1994), 82-86.

15.

Martin Pugh, State and Society: British Political and Social History 1870-1992 (London: Arnold, 1994), 117-18.

16.

W.S. Churchill, Liberalism and the Social Problem (London: Longman, 1909), 72.

17.

Ibid.

18.

W.S. Churchill, Great Contemporaries (London: Longman, 1937), 44-45. After World War II, Churchill, who had gained heroic stature as the prime minister and had led Britain and the Allies to victory, visited Barbados.

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19.

Robert Stewart, comp., The Dictionary of Political Quotations. (London: Europa, 1984) 71. 20. Frank Bealey, "Negotiations between the Liberal Party and the Labour Representation Committee before the General Election of 1906", BIHR 29 (1956): 209. See also Henry Pellng, Modern Britain, 1885-1955 (London: Cardinal, 1974), 16-17. 21. Malcolm Pearce, British Political History 1867-1995: Democracy and Decline, 2nd edition (London: Routledge, 1996), 248-49. 22. Earl of Oxford and Asquith, Memories and Reflections 1852-1927, vol. 2 (London: Cassell, 1928), 208. 23. Ibid. 24. Hoyos, GrantleyAdams, 96, 106-7. 25. F.A. Hoyos, The Quiet Revolutionary: The Autobiography of F.A. Hoyos (London: Macmillan, 1984), 32-33. Hoyos states that he sought to divert the attention of the Labour movement to the tenets of the 1891 encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum. The Roman Catholic church set its face against socialism, but it encouraged trade unionism and urged the state to work for a just wage and the regulation of working conditions. Despite frequent reference to the "Red Flag", the words are little known: The people's flag is deepest red It shrouded oft our martyred dead And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold Their heart's blood dyed its every fold. Chorus Then raise the scarlet standard high! Beneath its shade we'll live and die. Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer, We'll keep the red flag flying here! 26. 27.

Hoyos, The Quiet Revolutionary, 32. Lewis, The Growth of the Modem West Indies, 247. The fear of socialism or Bolshevism obviously increased throughout the British empire after the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917. It was expected that they would plot to export revolution. One of Adams' last memories in this connection was the scare in England just before he left caused by the Zinoviev Letter of 1924. The fact that this document was a forgery was not known for decades later. The letter purported to reveal a plot for revolutionary intervention in English affairs. It contributed to the overthrow of the 1924 Labour government. Adams was to

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remain most condemnatory, later urging that the world had much to learn "from an examination of that disease called Russia" (Hoyos, Grantley Adams, 24). 28. F.A. Hoyos, Tom Adams: A Biography (London: Macmillan, 1988), 101 29. Roland Quinault, "Asquith's Liberalism", History 77 (1992): 33-49. The quotations are at pages 35 and 49. Quinault draws special attention to the 1911 Parliament Act that the Liberals had pushed through in order to curb the powers of the unelected House of Lords. Resistance had been bitter, and there had been two general elections in 1910. Asquith, then prime minister, was to dub this "the greatest advance in the march of popular government since the Reform Act of 1832" (47). Grantley Adams faced a similar situation in Barbados where the Legislative Council, nominated by the governor, had at first been a stubborn barrier against progressive legislation. 30. Herbert Samuel, Liberalism: An attempt to state the Principles and Proposals of contemporary Liberalism in England, With an Introduction by the Rt. Hon. H.H. Asquith (London: Grant Richards, 1902). 31. G.R. Searle, The Liberal Party: Triumph and Disintegration, 1886-1929 (London: Macmillan, 1992).

8 Sir Grantley Adams as Seen by Others *

Oral Histories of the Private Man

KARL WATSON

Much has been written of the public life and contribution of Sir Grantley Adams to Barbados and the West Indies. This article does not seek to revisit or comment on the work of individuals who have written articles or, as in the case of Sir Alexander Hoyos, a biography of Adams.1 What I have attempted to do is to show the private side of the man, by using accounts of those who knew him and his family intimately. I begin with Miss Maggie Bartlett.2 She grew up in Flinthall, St Michael, next door to the Adams family who lived at Bingen, having moved there from their previous residence in Government Hill. Fitz Herbert Adams, headteacher of the St Giles Boys' School, married Rosa Frances Turney of Castle Grant, St Joseph. This was his third marriage. The couple had seven children: Edna, Ellis, Stanley, Grantley Herbert, William Herbert, Gladys and Maurice Guy. Life in Flinthall in the decade prior to World War I must have been pleasant for this middle class family. Miss Bartlett, at the age of ninety*A version of this article first appeared in the Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 44 (1998). 186

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two, is gifted with a sparkling memory. She smiled as she remembered the games she watched the Adams children play on the lawn of their house. "In those days little girls were kept by themselves and the little boys by themselves, so we did not join in ... the boys played rounders, not cricket." The young Grantley was good at this game, which, as Miss Bartlett remembers, was the game he most frequently played. The skills he developed at rounders must have been transferred later to the cricket field, for the teenaged Grantley played cricket for Harrison College, Spartan, St Catherine Club at Oxford and also had the signal honour of playing for his country. Under the watchful eye and guidance of his father, Grantley developed a passion for reading that remained with him for the rest of his life. He was being groomed for Harrison College and the Island Scholarship. This gave him a good degree of self-confidence. His nephew Eric Bishop, whose mother, as the elder sister, dominated the family for a time, points out that "as Grantley developed he challenged everybody, even his father".3 Of course, there was time for fun in between the hard work. Miss Maggie remembers birthday and Christmas parties, with food and song and indoor games. Time passed and with his winning of the Barbados Scholarship, Grantley set out for England and Oxford University where he read law. With his scholastic achievements over, the young man returned to Barbados and his destiny. My uncle Ian McChlery, some eight years younger than Grantley, met him in the late 1920s.4 As young men of successive generations know, the lure of the bright lights of Nelson Street was hard to resist. This was especially true of decades gone by, when entertainment outlets on the island were extremely limited, a fact that the young of this tourismoriented generation find difficult to comprehend. They were in separate groups at the same bar having a drink when, as my uncle remembers, Grantley asked a mutual friend who he was. Introductions were made; Grantley broke the ice by offering a drink, and a friendship ensued. They, along with others, formed a social group and had many an escapade together. Grantley at that time had a Ford roadster which he drove very fast. Two episodes remained in my uncle's memory from those days. One night a fight broke out at a bar, and the situation seemed threatening as chairs

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and bottles were broken. Grantley tried to pacify the crowd, but to no avail, and a hasty retreat was made down the stairs, with the young Adams maintaining a defensive position at the rear so that his friends could escape unharmed. In those days, of course, no guns were used and very rarely were knives brought into play. Fighting between young men of villages or districts was almost ritualistic and often prearranged. Word would go out, for example, that the men of Carrington's Village would engage the men of the Bayland at the comer of Culloden Road. Householders in the neighbourhood would be forewarned and take the necessary precautions, such as closing up windows until the police came to quell the fighting. On another occasion, some prolonged bar hopping left Grantley thoroughly drunk. He was duly deposited on the steps of his house in a semicomatose state and his car kept safely until the next day, when an anxious Grantley sought confirmation that nothing had happened to his prize vehicle! Those halcyon days of youth passed with the courtship and marriage of Grantley and Grace Thome. My uncle also married and raised a family. Although circumstances caused the paths of these two young men to diverge, he never forgot the young lawyer who was destined to become premier of Barbados and prime minister of the West Indies Federation. In the course of a telephone conversation we had shortly before his death, my uncle reminded me of one aspect of Sir Grantley's character that he greatly admired and respected. In an age when racial differences resulted in considerable prejudice and bias being directed at brown and black people and the colour line in Barbados was sharply drawn and demarcated, Grantley Adams in his everyday life would have none of this. He himself had encountered prejudice on a bitterly personal level during his courtship of Grace Thorne, daughter of a member of one of the elite planter families of the island. Thorne even went to the extent of writing to Grantley, as Sir Alexander Hoyos recalls, asking him to stay away from his daughter.5 Dear Mr Adams, What have I ever done to you ? Why don't you leave my daughter alone. It will bring disgrace to the family if she marries you, do not tempt her please. My uncle remembered Adams as a supremely fair and caring individual who extended a helping hand to many people irrespective of race. As he

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observed, "there are white families who owe their present position in this island to Grantley Adams, yet there were many whites who wanted to bring him down, but he harboured no bitterness and helped people when he saw a genuine need". Miss Maggie relates an incident at Tyrol Cot that speaks to the calm and balanced perspective of Grantley Adams. Grantley was in the garden at Tyrol Cot tending his roses - he loved roses you know - dressed pretty shabbily with a fork in hand. Up drives one of the eminent personalities of the day and seeing what appears to be a worker in the garden, shouts quite rudely at Grantley "Hey you, I looking for Mr Grantley Adams!" Came the cordial reply, "Well here he is!" No fuss or pretence, that was the nature of the man.

Sir Donald Wiles who worked for many years as permanent secretary to Sir Grantley Adams, concurs in the assessment that he saw beyond stereotypes of race, and was quite pragmatic in his approach. "He had the greatest respect for white people, for what they had done for Barbados . . . he respected them as human beings, for example, Sir Archibald Cuke, he went to a dame school (Daily Meal School) and rose to the Legislative Council."6 Moreover, as his nephew Eric Bishop points out, respect for another person's views was not an indication of weakness. I don't think that Sir Grantley was too overly concerned with the people who felt negatively or exercised a stultifying influence. I think that he was willing to stick his neck out to achieve what he wanted to achieve, whether it matched the views of Barbadians of the time or not. Barbadians of the time may have been more myopic in their analysis of what was obtaining at the time.

That firmness, however, was matched with a flexibility and pragmatism when the occasion warranted it. Sir Donald recounted the occasion the white businessman K.R. Hunte applied for an increase in the price of margarine based on new packaging costs. Sir Donald did not think it was appropriate at the time and advised Sir Grantley against it, hence Cabinet was warned to stand firm against any proposals for price hikes that Hunte might make. The strategy agreed upon was that delaying action in the shape of bureaucratic hurdles would be put in place. In the course of the meeting, Hunte talked about increased world market rates, Sir Grantley advised that the paperwork supporting

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these observations could be supplied at a subsequent meeting . "Well," replied K.R. Hunte, "here they are." He proceeded to pull reams of paper with all sorts of calculations from his jacket pocket. The discussion then focused on the packaging. "Well, Mr Hunte," Sir Grantley said, "perhaps one of these days we can see your packaging and be able to judge whether this increase is justified or not." "Just one second," came K.R. Hunte's retort, as he stepped to the door and flung it open, saying "Come in", whereupon a young chap came into the room with samples of the new packages. Realizing that he had been checkmated, Sir Grantley gave in and conceded the price increase. In 1931 the Adams had their first and only child. The delivery was a difficult one and Maggie Bartlett was there to help her dear friend Grace Adams who was exhausted and weak, causing the doctors grave concern. "Go and see him," whispered Grace, and there in the room next door was the ten-pound Tom Adams, who had just entered this world. He was to be the only child of Grantley and Grace. The couple had a strong relationship. Eric Bishop regards Lady Adams as being a silent but effective partner - a significant power behind Sir Grantley. She wasn' the sort of person who sought to throw her opinion at you or say it's the only opinion, but quietly she expressed her opinion and when you gave it thought, you found that her opinion had merit. No doubt about it, she stood solidly behind Sir Grantley. She drove him to political meetings when he had to speak and waited for him - she was really the sort of woman that Sir Grantley needed to be a successful person.

Sir Grantley loved being at Tyrol Cot with his family. Donald Wiles recounts: When I was his permanent secretary, he turned to me one day and said, "I can't work in this place [meaning Government Headquarters], the phone is ringing constantly, people are barging into my office asking my opinion about something. You have lunch, then bring up all the files to Tyrol Cot." So this was the routine we established and we did an enormous volume of work. Whenever the telephone would ring, Grace would answer and say, "I'm very sorry, he's just gone in the bath." This was the excuse she used for everybody, without saying that he was working with me, so I got to know him very well.

Besides working with his roses, Sir Grantley released the tension of holding office by doing minor repairs to furniture. He loved to work with

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his hands and had a workshop constructed at the back of the house, where he kept his tools and pottered around. He also loved the beach and would take the family to nearby beaches, such as Freshwater, or on weekends go to Bathsheba. He was protective of the people's right to access to beaches and may have foreseen the conflict between the needs of the tourism industry for security and privacy and the needs of the Barbadian population for recreational outlets on this very crowded island, as this example given by Sir Donald Wiles illustrates: The very popular beach at Accra built up in this century through wave action and sand accretion. This natural land reclamation was, by law, the property of the contiguous landowner, which in this case was Blue Waters Beach Hotel, which had plans to use the area in a way that would have prevented public access to the beach. The possibility of this perturbed Mr Adams considerably. "We can't let that happen," he said. "What are you going to do about it?" I replied. "Well, where would people go on a Sunday morning?" This was his concern, [that] you would have to go way up to the top of St Lawrence with no parking. He said, "Look, telephone and ask Victor Goddard how much he wants for it." Victor Goddard was the chairman of Blue Waters Hotel. He said $45,000, the land has been valued at $45,000. Grantley said, "Look, today is Tuesday, the House is meeting, prepare a resolution there quickly for me." I prepared a resolution for $45,000, and Grantley told me, "I'm going down and face the boys." He went down and was able to move a resolution to suspend the rules of the House so this money resolution could go through at one sitting, because normally it takes three sittings. About a quarter past six, I was still at Government Headquarters working, and he called me up and said, "Look the House has just passed that resolution. You can call Victor Goddard and tell him that the government will be acquiring the land. If anybody telephones, you can tell them for me this beach belongs to me and God." It was with this intervention that the most popular beach in Barbados was saved for the enjoyment of locals and tourists alike. Eric Bishop recalled his earliest impressions of his uncle: I thought he was to me at that time a physically big man almost overpowering: when he looked at you he had big brown eyes . . . he held his head in a particular way that always seemed to give him the advantage over you in conversation. But he wasn't intimidating. He was extremely charming, almost soft towards us children you felt that you could get around him, you felt that you could turn him around your finger . . . yes, I would say that he liked children, children were honest, he could relate to them, they could help him relax.

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Sir Alexander Hoyos recalls of their first meeting that "he was charming, friendly, of medium build, handsome, with a presence and an attractive personality . . . a gifted orator".7 According to Miss Maggie Bartlett, Grantley was not an experimenter with cuisine, but liked his staple Barbadian food. His great favourite was steamed flying fish and cou-cou, which was frequently on the menu at Tyrol Cot. Sir Donald Wiles recounts an official visit made by Sir Grantley and Lady Adams to the island of Montserrat, when he was prime minister of the West Indies Federation. They stayed at the official residence of the then administrator, Donald Wiles. On the first evening, Montserratian pineapple was served as dessert. Sir Grantley proclaimed this the best and sweetest in the West Indies, and insisted on having it as dessert for the rest of the visit, thus satisfying his sweet tooth and solving a dilemma for the administrator's cook. Sir Grantley has been criticized for his seemingly conservative approach to politics and it has even been suggested that he was less than sensitive to the needs of the poor and marginalized. He has been attacked for not being a grass roots man, as if that were a badge of honour to be worn proudly, conferring as it were, an aura of authenticity lacking in other sectors of the population. He was a product of his upbringing, which was decidedly middle class. This did not make him any less an individual, nor did it turn him into an oppressor, an ally of the 'haves' and scourge of the 'have-nots'. This unfair criticism does not judge the man in the context of his times, but imposes a historical thinking based on present generational perspectives. No less a person than C.L.R. James, in an unpublished pamphlet titled "Analysis of the Political Situation in Barbados, 1958", says that Adams has been seriously misunderstood. What his background did was to give him a perspective that enabled him to bring about socioeconomic change in a pragmatic fashion, as he engaged in the politics of change, if you like, without throwing out the baby with the bath water. Sir Alexander Hoyos describes him as "one of those rare examples of an intellectual with high educational and professional qualifications who turned his back on the prospects open to him and identified himself completely with the fortunes of the popular movement". If small incidents are good indicators of where a man's heart lies, then Sir Donald Wiles tells a touching story of Sir Grantley's arrival at Montserrat, when a poor old woman broke through the barricade to present

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Sir Grantley with her bouquet. Not elegant roses or lilies, but a clump of croton branches she had snapped from the bush and tied up with string. According to Sir Donald, the prime minister of the West Indies Federation bowed from the hips and with consumate ease and elegance took this woman's mite - a meeting of two disparate beings, with each recognizing the other's humanity. Despite his prominence, the Sir Grantley was approachable and genuine in his concern for the problems of others, lending a quiet, and often behind the scenes helping hand. Eric Bishop and his wife recall with affection one of Grantley Adam's flaws, which was related to his open and receptive nature. He was not always punctual. Not because of ill manners, but because his sense of time was overshadowed by his concern for others. According to Mrs Bishop, "Sir Grantley had time for everybody." Many a time, Mrs Bishop laughingly recalls, they would patiently wait for Sir Grantley to come to their house for a previously arranged engagement, while he was on the street corner listening attentively to some impassioned plea for help from an individual who had spotted him. Time would slip by, as Sir Grantley counselled, simply listened or arranged some form of assistance. Sir Donald Wiles, privy to sensitive information because of his close working relationship with Sir Grantley, confirmed that on several occasions people were helped in meaningful ways by Sir Grantley, who never expected or looked for favours in return. Sir Grantley was seen by all of my informants as a consummately honest man who took the job of handling public finances very seriously. Both Eric Bishop and Sir Donald Wiles stress this point. He demanded a stern accounting and would not tolerate wastage. Sir Donald emphasized, "He hated anybody who wasted government funds or misspent government funds." Yet, perversely, he paid little attention to his personal finances, allowing Grace to look after these. Sir Donald recounts that on a visit to St Lucia, Sir Grantley discovered that he had insufficient funds to pay his hotel expenses and had to borrow money from Wiles. Sir Grantley was perhaps more of a visionary than we give him credit for. Sir Donald gives two examples. The first concerns the building of the Government Headquarters away from the centre of town. The architect Captain Tommy' Tomlin made this suggestion, which at first aroused criticism, for as Sir Donald says, "Who ever heard of building away from town? . . . Who would ever come up to the top of Bay Street to conduct

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business?" Sir Grantley called a meeting and authorized its construction with the proviso that it was not to cost a cent over $400,000. 'The way he spoke you knew he meant it." At the end, as it was due to be officially handed over, he was informed that his instructions had been complied with, and that the entire cost of the project was $397,000. "Well," he said, "with the change we can have a party to launch the building!" Again, Sir Donald recounts the decision to construct the deep water harbour. "It was in 1954 that Grantley came into Government Headquarters and said to us, 'Boys, we've been talking about building a new deep water harbour for the past one hundred years. Now we've decided to stop talking and build a proper deep water harbour to save the trade of the day and of the future.' " In this respect, Sir Grantley was instrumental in raising the capital needed on the London Market. Certainly, the greatest disappointment of his life was the collapse of the West Indies Federation. Miss Maggie, though a childhood friend of Sir Grantley, had a closer relationship with Lady Adams, and it was through her that she learnt of the deep emotional cost and sense of personal loss that Sir Grantley endured with the ending of that well-meaning but unstable political experiment. Eric Bishop says, "One could detect a terrible disappointment in the fact that this had failed because the impression was certainly given to me that this was what he was living for, to see the Caribbean together." We conclude with a summation by his nephew, who admitted frankly that his observations might be biased given the family relationship, but they formed his fair evaluation of the man Grantley Adams: I thought that he came along at the right time. Whether he changed his political direction or not is unimportant. The point is that the direction he eventually chose was a direction for the people. It is widely known that at one stage he was regarded as Moses, because that is how the people perceived him.

Notes 1.

F.A. Hoyos, Grantley Adams and the Social Revolution: The Story of the Movement that Changed the Pattern of West Indian Society (London: Macmillan, 1974).

Sir Grantley Adams as Seen by Others

2.

3.

4.

5.

195

All quotations from Maggie Bartlett are taken from an interview with the author, August 1998, Almair House, Belleville, Barbados, audio cassette. Bartlett, now deceased, served as private secretary to Sir Granley Adams. All quotations from Eric Bishop are taken from an interview with the the author, August 1998, Blue Waters, Christ Church, Barbados, audio cassette. Bishop is a nephew of Sir Grantley Adams. All quotations from Ian McChlery are taken from an interview with the author, July 1998, Worthing, Christ Church, Barbados, audio cassette. McChlery, now deceased, was a friend of the young Grantley Adams. Sir Alexander Hoyos, personal communication with the author, n.d.

6.

All quotations from Sir Donald Wiles are taken from an interview with the author, August 1998, Pine Hill, St Michael, Barbados, audio cassette. Sir Donald, now deceased, was permanent secretary to Sir Grantley Adams.

7.

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Sir Alexander Hoyos are taken from an interview with the author, Falmouth, St Philip, Barbados, audio cassette. Sir Alexander was a friend and supporter of Sir Grantley Adams.

9 Pan-Africanism in Barbados

RODNEY

WORRELL

This paper examines the activities of the major pan-African formations that have existed in Barbados. It is important to note that these formations have always existed as subcultural movements. Throughout the Caribbean, social and political movements as subcultural manifestations of constant pressure for change have played crucial roles in the social and political development of the Caribbean.1 From the mid nineteenth century, behaviouralists have tended to discuss social movements as (1) vehicles of change; (2) disruptive social forces; (3) manifestations of abnormal psychology; and (4) threats to the status quo.2 However, the factor of social change is central to the study of social movements. Sociologists tend to view social movements as reactions to the structural changes in society. They believe that social movements are influenced by technological innovations, economics and population shifts. Therefore, sociologists see social movements as an inevitable consequence of the structural strains within a system.3 Many other social scientists view social movements as manifestations of individual needs or discontent. Hans Toch stated: "For the psychologist, these kinds of efforts [social movements] must be monitored. They must stem from specific situations in which they find themselves."4 Further, 196

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Allen Edwards stated that: 'The supporters of any movement, it is true, tend to come from those groups which are already frustrated or anticipate frustration in some respect and which see this particular movement as a means of restoring equilibrium or obtaining relief for their anxiety."5 Gary Rush and Sergie Denisoff define a social movement as a joint organized endeavour of a considerable group of persons who try in some way to change or alter the course of events by their joint activities.6 Therefore, the pan-African formations that existed and the ones still in existence are essentially social movements seeking to realize change locally and internationally. If an organizational form exists, it is most likely of a proto-organization type. The question of what exactly is pan-Africanism has challenged scholars to provide an adequate working definition. Indeed, Immanuel Geiss contends that it was difficult, perhaps even impossible, to provide a clear definition of pan-Africanism.7 According to Geiss, pan-Africanism covers: (i) intellectual and political movements among Africans and AfroAmericans who regard or have regarded Africans and the people of African descent as homogenous. This outlook leads to a feeling of racial solidarity and a new awareness, and causes Afro-Americans to look upon Africa as their real homeland without necessarily thinking of a physical return to Africa; (ii) all ideas which have stressed or sought the cultural unity and political independence of Africa, including the desire to modernize Africa on the basis of equal rights. The key concepts have turned on the theme: the redemptions of Africa for the Africans; (iii) ideas or political movements which have advocated or advocate the political unity of Africa or at least close political collaboration in one form or another.8 Colin Legum shares Geiss' sentiments about the impossibility of providing an adequate definition of pan-Africanism. He opines that, although it is possible to talk about the way pan-Africanism expresses itself, it is not so easy to give a concise definition of the concept.9 He stated that pan-Africanism is essentially a movement of ideas and emotions, at times it achieves a synthesis, at times it remains at the level of thesis and antithesis. In one sense Pan-Africanism

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can be likened to world Federation, Atlantic Union or Federated Europe - each allows for great scope of interpretation in its practical application. And yet in its deepest sense, Pan-Africanism is different from all these movements in that it is exclusive.10 Similarly, Ofuatey-Kodjoe suggested that "Pan-Africanism existed as a body of ideas that led to the formation of a political movement containing many different organizations. These organizations have two common characteristics -the acceptance of a oneness of all African people and a commitment to the betterment of all people of African descent."11 This writer defines pan-Africanism as a movement and an ideology of African peoples globally that is concerned with the social, political, economic and psychological upliftment, as well as the protection of Africa and African peoples worldwide. The psychological unity in the struggle of all persons of African ancestry and the organic unification of the African continent are necessary ingredients to the realization of the noble objectives of pan-Africanism. The seeds of pan-Africanism were sown from Africa's incorporation into the capitalist economy, during the first major wave of capitalist internationalization. In order to satisfy the labour demand to supply the expanding plantation systems, the capitalist countries turned to Africa for this manpower. This development was largely responsible for the creation of the transatlantic slave trade.12 Tony Martin, the pan-African scholar, succinctly argues that pan-Africanism became inevitable with the inception of the transatlantic slave trade. Europe, by scattering Africa to the winds, inevitably if unwittingly set in motion a process which would bring Africa together again at a higher level. It was inevitable that the journey to rediscovery would be a journey against colonialism that uprooted Africa in the first place. It was inevitable that a final re-unification of scattered Africa could come only at the expense of colonial Europe. This was set in motion by the trans-Atlantic slave trade, a process whose course even now has not fully run.13 In the period before the slave trade, Africans were very attached to their political groupings (for example, Hausa, Igbo or Yoruba). With the development of the transatlantic slave trade, however, these political attachments were forgotten within a couple of generations. The national

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identities became less important and pan-African ideas began to evolve. Africans came to the harsh realization that they were now part of an international community of African people who came from different ethnic groups, but now shared the same condition of slavery, and who found themselves facing a common struggle.14 European racism, the ideological couplet of capitalist expansionism, was also an important factor that gave rise to the emergence of a pan-African consciousness. The ideology of racism was developed and was systematically applied to legitimize the enslavement of Africans. Moreover, racism was used to justify the military conquest of Africa during the conversion period, and was used to buttress the system of colonialism in African and elsewhere.15 Throughout the colonial world, the immediate postwar period was one of intense ferment. Marcus Mosiah Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) contributed immensely to the heightened consciousness and new awareness of African peoples at this juncture. Martin is of the view that Garvey was the most potent force in his time for the forging of a spirit of pan-African oneness among black people everywhere. Indeed, branches of the UNIA were created wherever African peoples were found.16 Marcus Garvey is the father of twentieth century black nationalism.17 Black nationalism is African nationalism that finds its highest aspiration in pan-Africanism. Black nationalism can be seen as a countermovement away from subordination to independence, through refutation to self-affirmation. It is an attempt to transcend the immediate conditions of an undesirable relationship by a process that creates a different constellation of symbols and assumptions. Additionally, black nationalism is an ideological movement of social, psychological and political portent.18 Black nationalism is usually energized when (1) there is a general expansion within the capitalist world economy with blacks lagging behind; (2) when there is a rise of racist violence against black people; (3) when the traditional black leadership is either unwilling or unable to articulate the grievances of the disaffected, marginalized young people and unemployed workers; and (4) when the dominant discourse justifies the unequal division of power and resources in terms of black dispossession or cultural inferiority.19

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In 1919 the first branch of the UNIA was started in Barbados through the initiative of John Beckles and Israel Lovell. The objectives of this organization were: (1) to teach Negroes to respect themselves and join the organization, so that they might be able to win back the glories of Ethiopia; (2) to bring about the unity of Negroes; (3) to assist and advise them how to obtain the best wage possible for their labour; (4) to keep them out of the Law Courts, where they part with much of their hard-earned wages; (5) to collect money for the Black Star Line, and for their shops and stores and kindred objects.20 The UNIA platform was largely concentrated on teaching the virtues of black solidarity and black unity. Garveyites recognized that black unity was an imperative in the quest to transform their wretched, degraded conditions. Melville Innis, a former president of the UNIA stated that "every Negro is living in Hell. He who is not living in Hell is living next door to Hell."21 However, the members of the UNIA believed that if the black masses united, they could overcome all obstacles and redress the disabilities they were facing. "Let us unite so as to avoid insults and wrongdoings which we now suffer."22 Moreover, they saw unity as a prerequisite to the attainment of justice, liberty and equality. The Garveyites believed that they were the only organization capable of solving the problem of the black man. Indeed, Tony Martin makes the point that by the 1920s, the UNIA became the virtual representative of the black population.23 This occurred in an era when the majority of blacks were denied the franchise because they could not meet franchise requirements to participate in the electoral process. The UNIA engaged in a form of embryonic trade unionism by seeking to organize the workers to ask for better pay and working conditions in an age where trade unions were outlawed. Additionally, the UNIA branches performed the functions of a mutual aid society. The UNIA, like the early pan-Africanists, held a very strong emigrationist stance and African consciousness in their philosophy. It must be noted that Ethiopia was an important symbol to pan-Africanism. Ethiopianism (the gospel of worldwide African redemption) had been preached by

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African evangelists for centuries. Many of these preachers interpreted Psalms 68:31, "Princes shall come out of Egypt and Ethiopia shall stretch forth her hands unto God", to mean that Africa's past glories shall be restored to Ethiopia.24 The anthem of Garvey's UNIA was "Ode to Ethiopia", and one of the highest awards the UNIA bestowed was the distinguished order of Ethiopia. Israel Lovell, the Garveyite, argued that "every intelligent black man should join the UNIA so that they might win back the glories of Ethiopia."25 Mr F. Gittens believed that "the time was ripe for Ethiopia to stretch her hands unto God, and He will help her".26 Samuel Radway asserted: We should be proud to go back to Africa our forefathers land, we are in a far distant land distributed throughout the West Indies. I don't hear my people saying that they are going to Africa, but to other places. You may say that you can't get to Africa, but if you do nothing and sit down God will not help you. Africa is not coming to you . . . The pendulum of the Negroes clock is moving to and fro, and the time is not far off when the clock shall strike twelve for the Negroes of the world . . . When I shall trod the soil of Africa, then I will say Lord now let thy servant depart in peace for my eyes have seen thy salvation.27

John Catwell stated, "We were stolen from home 400 years ago by John Hawkins and brought out here as slaves, but thank God under the Headship of the Honourable Marcus Garvey, we are going to return to Africa . . . I have been to Africa, and it is the sweetest place in the world."28 Melville Innis, the UNIA President, urged his followers: We are going forward fighting for Africa's redemption, don't be disheartened, don't believe that we are good for nothing... friends if we only follow the dictates of Marcus Garvey, we are sure to achieve the object for which we aim. Africa is our aim and object. It was the home of our ancestors, and we have got to redeem it. So let us work and work until we set our feet on its soil.29

By seeking to emphasize black pride, the UNIA gave the black masses a new, positive, conception of themselves. Many of the Garveyites sought to challenge the falsehoods that were propagated about Africans. They mentioned, "we are equal to any other man, we are not from the devil in Hell, and they [referring to the white man] are not from Heaven".30 Melville Innis proudly proclaimed: "I was never ashamed of being a Negro. I am proud because I am a Negro. There are thousands of Negroes

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who are ashamed because they are Negroes, but the time is coming when the whites will wish they are black."31 John Alleyne argued, "we have the same five senses as the other races and why not let us put them to the test".32 The authorities in Barbados, like the authorities throughout the Caribbean, were very concerned with the activities of the UNIA. They were particularly concerned with the contents of the Negro World, the mouthpiece of Garvey's movement. In fact, the Negro World was blamed for causing disturbances in Belize and elsewhere. Therefore, the reactionary regimes in the Caribbean sought to curb the circulation of this paper. The governor of Barbados argued "that the introduction of such legislation would only stir up trouble without any chance of becoming law". Moreover, the governor believed that the UNIA would die a natural death. However, the Barbadian government did introduce a Seditious Publications Ordinance in 1920.33 From the inception of the UNIA the police were closely monitoring their meetings. The governor indicated that the UNIA members had sent threatening letters to the planters and were encouraging workers to strike. It was generally felt that the UNIA members were actively involved in the industrial ferment that was taking place in Barbados. The governor, in response to these developments, held a meeting with the leading planters advising them to increase their wages in order to spare Barbados from the scourge of insurrection.34 With the imprisonment of Marcus Garvey, the UNIA branches worldwide suffered some major decline. In addition, the local movement suffered from internal and leadership squabbles; a shortage of funding; adverse propaganda that resulted in the reduction of its membership; and the departure of many of the middle class blacks who left the organization to be part of the Democratic League. The Workingmen's Association (WMA), the industrial wing of the Democratic League, was founded in 1926. The main planks of the WMA platform were compulsory education, manhood suffrage, unemployment allowance, workmen's compensation and old age pensions. However, the WMA placed tremendous emphasis on black unity, black self-help and power, and the necessity of organization. It is significant that the anthem of the UNIA and the hymn of the red flag were sung at the WMA meetings.

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Moses Small, Moses Taitt, Edwin Turpin and George Belle, the leaders of the WMA, argued that the major task for the recovery of black peopleculturally and politically must begin with the recapture of Ethiopia as the Mecca for the continent.35 Moses Small, the leading pan-Africanist of the movement stated: We (the black race) will not be satisfied until we walk on the continent of Africa, then we will be able to sing 'lusty'. We are clamouring for better conditions for our people. We are scattered all over the world and not represented. The time will come when God said that we will rebuild the temple.36

The WMA and the UNIA worked together during the early 1930s. Indeed, they held a demonstration on 7 August 1933 to commemorate the centenary of William Wilberforce, for his role in the abolition of slavery, and they also paid tribute to Marcus Garvey. Moses Small at this meeting argued: Friends and comrades . . . for the purpose of commemoration of Marcus Garvey, our great leader, the greatest Negro ever to live. He is the mouthpiece of God . . . he was placed in prison because he taught race salvation of labour... Marcus Garvey has done no wrong to anyone he was only leading his people . . . two thousand years ago Christ was preaching the gospel to the people, for this reason he was crucified; so it is with Marcus Garvey, but they placed him in prison, he has paid the penalty for the Negro race.37

Edwin Turpin, in his presentation, clearly cast the WMA as a Garvey organization. He stated: Marcus Garvey is the greatest Negro in the world . . . he has promoted human progress. The time has come that you should unite together, today what we are doing is from the doctrine of Marcus Garvey, he has done no wrong. He only brought the Negro to light... He is placed in prison for the redemption of Africa . . . I will continue to preach the gospel of Garvey. Any man who fails to preach this gospel will never get any further . . . We have now in our midst a great association which have sprung from the gospel of Garvey.38

David Brown argues that the theology of the African Orthodox Church was very evident at the prayer meetings held by the UNIA and the WMA activists. These pan-Africanists sought to interpret the scriptures from a black nationalist perspective. The teachings of the established churches,

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especially the Anglican and the Catholic, were attacked. These churches were accused of being "deceivers and sky pirates", who pointed the masses towards the sky while they were living like dogs on earth. Black Barbadians were taught to embrace aspects of Christianity that portrayed the black race in a positive light.39 The Abyssinia-Italian War, which witnessed the concretization of the bonds of pan-Africanism, saw the UNIA and the WMA in the vanguard against the invasion of Ethiopia. They sought to do everything possible to help Ethiopia's cause, and kept prayer vigils and held fundraising activities for the benefit of the Ethiopian people. Many of the WMA members tempered their pan-African activities and became preoccupied with getting members of the Democratic League elected to sit in the House of Assembly. They believed that black politicians would articulate their fundamental concerns and implement policies to address their stark conditions. However, the Democratic League quickly moved to the political centre by highlighting the concerns of the middle class and not the masses. The death of Charles Duncan O'Neale and the removal of Clennel Wickham from the Barbadian landscape witnessed a mellowing of genuine working class concerns. Indeed, the UNIA and the WMA associations were now spent forces and were unable to play the role they previously played. In 1937 the pan-Africanist Clement Payne arrived in Barbados from the "Garvey-infected" land of Trinidad. Payne enlisted the support of the veteran pan-Africanists Israel Lovell and Fitzgerald Chase. The Payne/Lovell alliance sought to build on the work of the earlier pan-African formations seeking to organize the workers into a strong viable trade union, in order to challenge the power of the merchant and planter elite. It must be emphasized that collective bargaining was outlawed during this period. The Payne/Lovell alliance attracted massive crowds to their platforms. Many of these persons were already politicized from the UNIA, WMA and the Democratic League. Race relations, black cultural suppression, Garveyism and the Italian invasion of Ethiopia were the main points of Payne's crusade.40 When the repressive apparatus of the state imprisoned, convicted and deported Clement Payne from Barbados, Israel Lovell sought to carry on the struggle. Lovell organized a series of meetings in Golden Square and returned to the message of Garvey. He stated: "Let us organize to with-

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stand violence. If we were organized, Goddard would have thought a thousand times before he touched Payne."41 Moreover, Lovell argued: We cannot steal from the white man, because if we take anything, it will only be some of what they have stolen from our fore parents for the past 250 years, but Christ has been crucified today. The situation in Barbados is a funny one, we make the wealth of this country and get nothing in return. Our slave fathers were in a better condition than we are in today. The world is against us so let us unite in mass formation and stand up like men.42

Hilary Beckles is of the view that this statement by Lovell, and speeches of this nature delivered by Lovell, demonstrated that the UNIA had temporarily taken over the leadership of the workers movement.43 However, Lovell and his lieutenants were imprisoned. The repressive arm of the state crushed the ensuing disturbances and prevented the pan-Africanists from entrenching their leadership. Grantley Adams, at the Deane's Commission, reported that the Italian invasion of Abyssinia had a great deal to do with the disturbances. He asserted that "this was the first time he saw people talking white against black".44 The 1960s were years of intense ferment and radicalization throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America and the USA. Within Africa the freedom fighters were heavily engaged in protracted struggles against settler colonialism. In North America the civil rights struggle had made a qualitative leap, from begging for civil rights to demanding Black Power. Throughout the Third World the revolutionary fires of Cuba, Korea and Vietnam were burning brightly. Indeed, this was a period of rabid antiimperialism, anticolonialism and anticapitalism among the dispossessed countries of the world. In the Caribbean, this period witnessed the granting of nominal independence to the English-speaking territories. The countries received (briefcase) independence without any militant anticolonial struggle. However, the commanding heights of the economy were still controlled by the merchant-planter elite and the foreign multinational firms. The condition of the masses of people remained quite stark; independence did not mean any transformation in their condition. They still suffered grave wretchedness and deprivation. Against this background, a movement emerged calling itself the People's Progressive Movement (PPM). The PPM held Marxist pretensions. The leading members Bobby Clarke, Calvin Alleyne

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and John Connell had been exposed to progressive thought and organization while studying in Britain. Leroy Harewood, the editor of the Black Star, -the PPM mouthpiece, was actively involved in the black struggle in England, editing a paper called the Monthly Torch.45 The Black Star sought to enlighten the masses of Barbados and the wider Caribbean. The Black Star was created to articulate the concerns of the masses in the Caribbean and to challenge the monopolistic control of foreign press and the hegemony of capitalist ideas. It is important to note that the name "Black Star" is of great significance to pan-Africanism. Garvey's historic shipping line was the Black Star Line. Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana was called the Black Star because it had lit the path of Africa to independence and the unification of the continent. This paper has described a form of revolutionary black nationalism. Revolutionary black nationalism is a fusion of black nationalism and Marxism-Leninism, where race and class factors are creatively utilized to explain black exploitation and degradation. The proponents of this philosophy believed that a structural transformation in society from capitalism to socialism was a necessary prerequisite in ending exploitation and racial discrimination. Indeed, it became quite fashionable to link black liberation with socialism and capitalism with oppression and exploitation.46 The PPM and the Black Star saw their mission as fighting for the full coming into their own of the people of the third world . . . We are fighting to establish the unquestioned dignity of the black man; we are against the dictatorship of capitalism, against exploitation by international capitalism. We are fighting for a redistribution of our national resources for the benefit of the masses.47

However, the perceptive Calvin Alleyne recognized that this struggle would not be an easy one: "Our struggle is the harder because many of our people, as a result of the more than 300 years of plantation influence and brain washing, have sub-consciously accepted inferiority."48 Nevertheless, the PPM and the Black Star took up the challenge and sought to tackle many of the misconceptions that were prevalent about black people. The Black Star lucidly demonstrated that the psychological indoctrination carried out during slavery was responsible for the creation of a divisive mentality that made the realization of black unity so elusive.

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Alleyne pleaded for patience and forgiveness, since this behaviour was not innate in black people but was part of the legacy of slavery. He strongly believed that the problem could be rectified by a process of re-education.49 Leroy Harewood, in a series of articles entitled "Who Are We?", sought to educate the masses about their proud history. Harewood, like Garvey, recognized that Africans worldwide faced a stark existence and were treated as second class citizens. Whether by physical or psychological coercion, the black man was forced to conform to the Eurocentric culture and values. Indeed, everything white was seen as good; everything black was seen as bad. European culture, thought and methods of organization were seen as superior. In fact, the Europeans had made it appear that Europe was the cradle of civilization whilst Africa and Asia seemed to be backward.50 Harewood pointed out, however, that as late as the fourteenth century the level of culture in sub-Saharan Africa was comparable to that in Europe. Moreover, it was indisputable that Africa was the main influence in the Nile Valley from 2100 to 1600 BC. In addition, East Africa, South Africa and West Africa had monuments of a great past and a thriving future between 1600 BC to 1500 AD. Harewood blamed slavery and the slave trade for wrecking African civilization and blighting our advancement. Slavery was responsible for the fear, docility, childishness and lack of self-confidence in the minds of Africans.51 The Black Star sought to promote pride in blackness among black Barbadians. The paper attacked the idea that lighter skins and straight noses in women were more beautiful and those who lacked those characteristics were ugly. Ava Turner, in an article titled "Black Women and Beauty", argued that "no other ethnic group degrades itself like the black race".52 Many blacks were not comfortable with their hair, nose and complexion. She believed it was pathetic that these ideas still persisted. African women, Turner asserted, should be proud of their African beauty because no matter how they try, they cannot Europeanize themselves.53 The Revd O.C. Haynes deplored the lack of real black pride among a large segment of the black population who disliked the colour of their skins. He stressed that God could not use individuals who were annoyed with the way they were born.54 Haynes believed that there was no reason why black people could not have a black Virgin Mary when the Indians had an Indian Virgin Mary. He blamed the educational system for

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teaching blacks to be inferior, and to ape the Europeans, as "if the only way to get to heaven was through the European door".55 Additionally, the Black Star aimed to sensitize its readers to the various anticolonial, anti-imperialist struggles occurring worldwide, particularly the liberation struggles throughout Africa. The paper was firm in its condemnation of the illegal racist regime in Rhodesia. The Black Star also sought to give psychological support to all black struggles worldwide, and carried articles written by important black revolutionaries such as Rap Brown, Huey Newton, Sekon Toure, Kwame Nkrumah, Stokely Carmichael and Walter Rodney.56 The PPM and the Black Star were very hostile towards the repression that was sweeping the Caribbean and North America. In Trinidad, the reactionary regime of Eric Williams sought to ban all progressive literature. The government refused to give Stokely Carmichael and his wife permission to enter the land of his birth. The government also introduced the Industrial Stabilization Act to suppress the natural aspirations of the working classes. In Jamaica, the government withdrew the passports of Dr Taylor and Dr Beckford and expelled Walter Rodney from the island.57 The Black Star also gave solidarity to Huey Newton, Rap Brown and the imprisoned Black Panthers, and to the Caribbean students who were imprisoned in Canada for taking part in a demonstration at the George Washington University. Leroy Harewood, at a public meeting, "linked the struggle of the Caribbean students in Canada with the universal struggle of black oppressed peoples everywhere in the quest for freedom".58 The PPM and Black Star platform was centred around the following charter, which could bring genuine rights to the Barbadian masses: 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Smash the plantation system. Give land to the landless agricultural workers to be worked under the strict cooperative system directed by trained agricultural officers. Control all the banks and banking. Nationalize all insurance companies. Slash all prices and implement rigid price control, with severe penalties for anyone who tries to fleece the people. Raise the wages of all manual labourers. Slash the salaries of all top civil servants and MP's and abolish the unnecessary office of Governor-General.

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7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

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Ask the Yankees to remove their military bases and all other war like installations on Barbadian soil. Start tearing down the slums and carry out a gigantic building programme to provide homes for the homeless. Stop teaching one way religious knowledge to our children and introduce a study of comparative religions. Tear down all imperialist statues and rename all the streets. Stop Yankee cultural imperialism in films, books, religious broadcasts etc. Open diplomatic, trade and cultural relationships with all countries especially Africa, Asia. Ask Eric Williams to lift his ban on literature. Condemn the fraudulent Guyana elections. Condemn the Jamaican Government for its ban on literature. Control the tourist industry and bring all hotels under public ownership. Nationalize all public utilities - electricity and the telephone. Stop selling Barbadian land to foreigners. Wherever possible avoid using arable land for building purposes. Abolish the so-called independent schools by introducing free education for all. Provide full employment for all and stop the drain of young people and talent away from this country to racist countries.59

The Black Star was effectively destroyed when it was announced that all newspapers in Barbados would have to pay a registration fee of $100. Unlike its competitors, the Black Star did not carry any advertisements on its pages to raise revenue; this was dictated by its anticapitalist stance. Therefore, this fee was an additional burden that the paper could not afford. Indeed, the PPM members saw this development as being directly targeted against the Black Star to silence the voice of protest.60 To many of its readers, the Black Star was responsible for lighting the path of black consciousness that was crystallized in the Black Power movement in the island. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the Black Star contributed to the development of black dignity and black consciousness in Barbados.61 The demise of the PPM quickly followed the death of the Black Star. The by-election in the city in May 1969 represented the final development that effectively destroyed the PPM. While the movement was reconstituted and continued to function until 1973, promoting Black Power philosophy, it had lost many of its leading figures. The reasons for the demise of the PPM are (1) co-option into other political parties; (2) frustration (not being

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able to gain any significant number of votes, far fewer seats, in the electoral process); (3) personality clashes, especially on tactics and strategies; (4) organizational weaknesses (Bobby Clarke is of the view that the major failing of the PPM was that it was not sufficiently grounded with the people); (5) political naivety (they believed that naked oppression and poverty are the raisons d'etre to awaken a people to a sense of struggle); (6) financial hardships; and (7) repression and harassment best manifested in the Public Order Act, which was specifically aimed to curb the activities of the PPM and prevent the people from spontaneously assembling.62 Around 1970 there emerged a loose formation that called itself Black Night. Black Night consisted of radical poets, actors, musicians and writers who met at Baxter's Road and discussed the major issues of the day. Elton Elombe Mottley, the director of Youth of Rural and Urban of Barbados (YORUBA) describes Black Night as "an experience. It is the coming together of all those experiences that make us Black. It is the fears, the trials, the tribulations of the Black man living in a 'white' world of white values."63 Mottley, in seeking to clarify the position of Black Night on Black Power, stated that Black Night believes in power to the people because 95 percent of the Barbadian population is black, hence power to the people means Black Power. Stokely Carmichael, the pan-Africanist, argues that Black Power logically leads to pan-Africanism, and the highest political expression of Black Power is pan-Africanism. Black Night believed that true Black Power can only be achieved when political power is exercised more in the interests of the majority of the people. Black Night recognized that one of the greatest myths told to black people is that the attainment of political power equals Black Power. When the black political elite assumed the governance of the country they did little to change the thinking and attitudes that encouraged the subservience of black people to white values, white institutions and white ideologies.64 Black Night argued that it was imperative that black people seek to redefine themselves. They should no longer accept the definitions of the white man. They must cease to be a 'nigger'. They must reject the idea that black people are lazy. In fact, the Black Powerites asked the people to reject and re-examine all the falsifications propagated about black people and replace them with positive affirmations. You are no longer ugly, you are beautiful. Your black 'kinky' hair is good hair. You have a

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long historical tradition that you should be proud of.64 Black Night held that the system of capitalism in the West Indies developed on the exploitation of black people. Therefore, Black Night wanted to see the cooperative method utilized in business and banking. They envisioned the creation of a society in which the spirit of community and humanistic love would prevail.65 The cry for Black Power by the PPM and the Black Night movement made the corporate elite take stock. They recognized that something would have to be done to appease the Black Powerites to prevent the violence that was attendant to cries of Black Power elsewhere. The corporate elite therefore agreed to give some concessions to the Black Powerites. They embarked on a policy of 'black visibility': black people were hired to work in stores, banks and in many jobs that were previously the preserve of whites. However, the fundamental demands of the Black Powerites for land reform and economic democracy went unanswered. The embryonic Black Power formation suffered when some of its members, including Elombe Mottley and his lieutenant Kofi Akobi, were co-opted into the ranks of the Barbados Labour Party (BLP). These pan-Africanists concentrated on partisan politics to the detriment of the Black Power movement.66 Moreover, many of the people became satisfied with the tangential victories achieved by Black Power agitation; they believed that they could gradually accomplish their objectives and retreated from the radical tactics of the past. In the spirit of pan-African brotherhood and global African solidarity, in 1977 an organization was created in Barbados called the Southern African Liberation Committee (SALC). The objectives of SALC were: (i) to carry out educational work in solidarity with the struggles of the liberation fighters of Southern Africa; (ii) to organize and coordinate activist campaigning in support of the liberation movement; (iii) to, in any other way, as determined by the executive, render material or moral support and solidarity with the oppressed people of Southern Africa.67

SALC, under the astute chairmanship of Mike Cummins and leading figures Ricky Paris, Harry Husbands and Norma Faria, expressed unity in the struggle and solidarity with the oppressed peoples of southern Africa and the major organizations involved in the liberation struggles - the

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South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) in Namibia and the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa. The SALC was very concerned with the atrocities being meted out to their African brothers and sisters. Therefore, they sought to sensitize and educate the Barbadian public about the horrors of apartheid. The SALC, like the ANC, firmly believed that the racist order could be defeated if the international boycott was effective. Therefore, the SALC consistently called for a total boycott against the Pretoria regime. To this end, they demanded that the Barbadian government support the boycott by refraining from giving contracts for government work to transnational corporations with branch plants in South Africa. Additionally, the SALC waged a campaign against the sale of a computer to the South African Air Force by a Barbadian-based company. Moreover, they educated the Barbadian public on the links of the notorious munitions company Space Research Corporation (SRC) to certain Caribbean governments and launched a vigorous campaign against SRC.68 The SALC was firm in its condemnation of the Caribbean governments who took a weak-willed stance on the Robin Jackman affair and did not support the firm stance taken by the Guyanese government. The members of SALC believed that this was an excellent opportunity to demonstrate to the world that the Caribbean was united against apartheid. Instead, the Caribbean governments issued a statement that read: 'The continuation of the tour must be interpreted to mean that the Gleneagles Agreement leaves it entirely open to national sporting authorities or individual sportsmen to engage in sporting contacts with South Africa."69 SALC was equally strong in its condemnation of the West Indian cricketer who went to South Africa to play cricket. This development represented a slap in the face for the SALC and Africans everywhere who believed that South Africa must be isolated. The SALC held numerous discussions on apartheid and lobbied the various cricket bodies in the region to ban the players for life for this unpardonable sin.70 The committee did an excellent job in raising the consciousness of Barbadians to the horrors of apartheid. Moreover, they gave psychological and practical support to the liberation movements in Africa. By 1984, when the attention of the world became focused on South Africa and the senselessness of apartheid, the SALC quietly receded into the background. The church

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and other arms of civil society became involved in sensitizing and condemning the apartheid system. In 1987, the centenary of Marcus Mosiah Garvey, a number of progressive pan-Africanists led by Lloyd Jones created the Marcus Garvey Hundredth Anniversary Committee (the Marcus Garvey Committee). This organization sought to demonstrate that the ideas of Garvey were still relevant and to raise the consciousness of Barbadians to the work of Garvey. The Marcus Garvey Committee wanted Barbadians to reconnect to the African Continent spiritually as well as physically. To fulfil this objective, the movement held many lectures and discussions around important occasions such as African Liberation Day, Namibia Day, SWAPO Day, Ghana's independence day, and on the birthdays of important figures such as Amilcar Cabral and the like. The members sought to de-educate the minds of the people from the negative images that were still prevalent about Africa due to the legacy of colonialism and the propagandizing efforts of the Western media.71 The Marcus Garvey Committee lasted for about two or three years before it exited the scene. Indeed, the limited objective of the movement straitjacketed its operations. After 1987, the movement was not as visible as it had been before. As was the case with the other pan-African groupings, the major successes of the committee can be seen as raising consciousness and reawakening Barbadians to their African heritage. David Commissiong, one of the main figures of the Marcus Garvey Committee, decided to create a pan-African organization to occupy the vacuum created by the demise of that organization. In 1989 the Clement Payne Cultural Centre/Clement Payne Movement was born. The platform of the movement was largely a black nationalist one. Throughout their weekly meetings and discussions the Clement Payne Movement sought to keep the flames of pan-Africanism burning. By building on the efforts of the past pan-Africanists, the movement agitated for the recognition of the heroes of the 1937 disturbances, the removal of Lord Nelson from Broad Street and the renaming of our streets from European heroes to black Barbadian heroes. Additionally, the movement was very involved in working class activism, as manifested during the visitation of the structural adjustment72 programme in the early 1990s. The leadership of the Clement Payne Movement believed that one of the major weaknesses they suffered from was a lack of state power.

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Indeed, they saw this as the main weakness in the pan-African formations that preceded them. To redress this development, the movement joined the National Democratic Party (NDP). The Clement Payne Movement believed that it was quite possible to give the NDP a pan-African orientation. While David Commissiong and Trevor Prescod rose to the ranks of general secretary and vice president, they failed to influence the electorate at the 1994 elections enough to get a share of state power. Indeed, they also failed in their quest to give the NDP a pan-African face. However, some of the ideas of the Clement Payne Movement became part of the NDP manifesto (such as the teaching of African civilizations in schools). Moreover, the supposedly conservative BLP, the government of the day, has made 26 July a day of national significance. Clement Payne has also been made a national hero and Emancipation Day a national holiday.73 In 1990 Naiwu Osahon, the Nigerian pan-Africanist, issued the call for Africans to organize themselves into pan-African organizations.74 Throughout global Africa many pan-Africanists believed that the time was ripe to convene a seventh Pan-African Congress. Out of these pan-African formations, representatives would be chosen to participate at this historic gathering. Many pan-Africanists and progressive figures, including Bobby Clarke, David Commissiong, Kofi Akobi, Ricky Paris, David Denny and George Belle, heeded the call and created the Pan-African Movement of Barbados (PAMOB). PAMOB provided another vehicle for the left to engage in anti-imperialist activity, given the collapse of socialism in Grenada and its apparent demise in Europe. The veteran Marxist pan-Africanist, Bobby Clarke, became the chairman of this body. With its motto of "working together, moving forward together", the overridding political objective of PAMOB was the total liberation of the African continent and the diaspora from the scourges of colonialism, neocolonialism and imperialism. 75 PAMOB launched a campaign to inform and educate the public about its philosophy and programme. The organization started a newspaper called the New Vision, edited by Leroy Harewood, the former editor of the Black Star. New Vision was expected to be the voice of pan-Africanism in the Caribbean that would enlighten people about their heritage, past culture, past strengths, past accomplishments and chart the new path with a new vision.76

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The membership of PAMOB enthusiastically sought to build and develop the organization. Indeed, the newsletter of the international panAfrican coordinating committee rated PAMOB as the number one branch worldwide. A model for other pan-African bodies to follow, PAMOB got this rating because it 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

held a fortnightly radio programme called "Africa Must Unite"; started a monthly newspaper called the New Vision; held fund-raising programme for the relief of the famine in Africa; staged a preparatory Caribbean conference of pan-African organizations in 1991; started an antipoverty programme in Barbados; established an agricultural cooperative and a pan-African trading company.77

These ambitious programmes did not meet with the success hoped for. However, they were pointers to the direction that PAMOB should follow. Many of these programmes suffered from the critical shortage of finance. Bobby Clarke and David Commissiong took part in the important seventh Pan-African Congress. While many of the original leading figures have retreated from PAMOB, the organization is still involved in the struggle. The pan-African formations have influenced governmental policy throughout the years. Many of their demands have been embraced by various governments (such as teaching African studies in schools and honouring the 1937 heroes). However, the calls of the pan-Africanists for serious land reform, the cessation of selling of land to foreigners and economic democracy have not been resolved and are still major issues that must be addressed. The decisions by the Barbados government to create a commission for pan-African affairs is a historic development. Previously, pan-African activity was normally associated with left wing fringe groups. Paradoxically, it is now accepted by a 'conservative' party. The pan-African commission is intended to give all government departments a pan-Africanist vision and seek tangible cultural, economic and trade links with Africa and the diaspora. This commission can be viewed as a culmination of all pan-African agitational activity. Therefore, the Commission for Pan-African Affairs represents a new stage in the development of pan-Africanism in the diaspora; it represents the first occasion

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that a government has openly sought to promote pan-Africanism at the governmental level. In all the major epochs of capitalist internationalization, African peoples have suffered tremendous hardships. In this period of capitalist expansion, African peoples continue to suffer and their harsh conditions have been exacerbated. SAPs have been savaging Africans, the millstone of debt has been crushing Africa and the nation states of the diaspora. Moreover, the free market neoliberalist creed has eroded the former protected markets, as evidenced by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), now institutionalized in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Historically, pan-Africanism has always been triggered by the disabilities of Africa and Africans. The destiny of Africans is interconnected; it was so in the past and so it will be in the future. Therefore, pan-Africanism in the unfolding conjuncture must seek to tackle the pressing problems facing global Africa. All Africans, whether on the continent or abroad, must work for the realization of the African economic community and an African high command to bring stability to the continent. Pan-Africanists must work actively to have the debts of global Africa written off so as to be able to tackle the unacceptable levels of poverty existing among Africans worldwide. Debt relief should be tied to the question of the payment of reparations to African peoples. Pan-Africanism must work for the reforming of and the democratization of the Bretton Woods institutions. At the level of theory, the pan-Africanist movement must constantly critique the neoliberal orthodoxy and seek to create a more humanistic society. Pan-Africanism must work for the democratization of the African continent and the acceptance of the Rule of Law. Pan-Africanists must seek to transcend black nationalism for a more transformative model of pan-Africanism that will embrace and link up with all oppressed and exploited peoples. Pan-Africanism must remain grounded in the masses, concerned with transforming the conditions of the masses. Africa and the diaspora must work much more closely within the chambers of the WTO, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. The challenges facing pan-Africanism are formidable. However, Africans have shown in the past that unity in the struggle can accomplish significant benefits. The challenges identified above are the necessary

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ingredients for the resurgence and renaissance of Africa which would allow the past glories of Ethiopia to be returned to Africa and its peoples worldwide.

Notes 1.

See Neville Duncan, "Movements as Sub-cultures: A Preliminary Examination of Social and Political Protest in the Anglophone Caribbean" (typescript, 1983), 2.

2. See Gary Rush and R. Serge Denisoff, Social and Political Movements (New York: Meredith Corporation, 1971), 2. 3.

Ibid.

4.

Ibid., 3.

5.

Ibid.

6.

Ibid., 5.

7.

See Immanuel Geiss, The Pan-African Movement, translated by Anna Keep (London: Methuen 1974), 3.

8.

Ibid.

9.

See Colin Legum, Pan-Africanism: A Short Political Guide (London: Pall Mall Press, 1962), 14.

10.

Ibid.

11.

See W. Ofwatey-Kodjoe's definition in Ronald Walters, Pan-Africanism in the African Diaspora: An Analysis of Modern Afro-Centric Political Movements (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993), 48.

12.

See Peter Gutkind and Immanuel Wallerstein, The Political Economy of Contemporary Africa (California: Sage, 1976), 33; and Immanuel Wallerstein, The Capitalist World Economy (London: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 27-41.

13.

See Tony Martin, The Pan-African Connection: From Slavery to Garvey and Beyond (Massachusetts: Majority Press, 1984), vii.

14.

Tony Martin, 'The Caribbean and Pan-Africanism", in The African Caribbean Connection: Historical and Cultural Perspectives, edited by Alan Cobley and Alvin Thompson (Cave Hill, Barbados: University of the West Indies, 1990), 71.

15.

See Norman Girvan's views in Rupert Lewis and Patrick Bryan, Garvey: His Work and Impact (Kingston, Jamaica: Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies, 1988), 16.

16. See Martin, The Pan-African Connection, 53.

218

17.

The Empowering Impulse

See Stokely Carmichael, "Marxism-Leninism", Black Scholar 4, no. 5 (February 1973): 41.

18. See James Turner, 'The Sociology of Black Nationalism", Black Scholar 1, no. 2 (December 1969): 18; and E.U. Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism: A Search For an Identity in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 6. 19.

See Manning Marable, Beyond Black and White: Transforming Afro-American Politics (London: Verso, 1995), 211-12.

20.

Government House (GH) 3/5/series, Government House Records (Barbados Archives).

21.

GH37, Government House Records (Barbados Archives).

22.

Ibid.

23.

Martin, The Pan-African Connection, 59.

24.

See William Scott, The Sons ofSheba's Race: African Americans and the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935-1941 (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993), 6.

25.

GH35/series, Government House Records (Barbados Archives).

26.

Ibid.

27.

GH38d, Government House Records (Barbados Archives).

28.

Ibid.

29.

GH37/b, Government House Records (Barbados Archives).

30.

GH37/d, Government House Records (Barbados Archives).

31.

GH37/b, Government House Records (Barbados Archives).

32.

GH38, Government House Records (Barbados Archives).

33.

See W. Elkins, "Suppression of the Negro World", Science and Society, no. 30 (Fall 1971): 344-46.

34.

GH3/5/5, Government House Records (Barbados Archives).

35.

See David Brown, "Barbadian Reaction to the Italian-Ethiopian War: Pan-Africanism in the Early Twentieth Century Barbados" (Seminar paper, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, 1988), 5.

36.

GH4/37/38/d, Government House Records (Barbados Archives).

37.

GH4/38/d, Government House Records (Barbados Archives).

38.

Ibid.

39.

See Brown, "Barbadian Reaction", 6.

40.

See Hilary Beckles, A History of Barbados (London: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 164.

41. See "Israel Lovell Charged with Sedition", Advocate, 5 November 1937. 42.

Ibid.

4 3.

Beckles, A History of Barbados, 167.

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219

44. W.A. Beckles, Review of the Barbados Disturbances 193 7: Reproduction of the Evidence and Report (Bridgetown, Barbados: Advocate Co., 1937), 4. 45. Bobby Clarke, interview with author, 14 April 1998. See also "Barbadian Pioneers", Black Star, 4 November 1967. 46. See Melvin Leinman, The Political Economy of Racism: A History (London: Pluto Press, 1993), 259. 47. See Calvin Alleyne, 'The Nature of Struggle", Black Star, 4 November 1967. 48.

Ibid.

49. Ibid. 50. See Leroy Harewood, "Who Are We?", Parts 1-4, Black Star, 6 April 1968; 27 April 1968; 11 May 1968; 8 June 1968. 51. Ibid. 52. See Ava Turner, "Black Women and Beauty", Black Star, 8 February 1969. 53. Ibid. 54. O.C. Haynes, "We Are Still too Slavish", Black Star, 22 June 1968. 55. Ibid. 56. See "Black Panthers and the US Establishment", Black Star, 17 August 1968; Kwame Nkrumah, "Black Power", Black Star, 11 May 1968; H. Rap Brown, "Message from Jail", Black Star, 6 April 1968; "Black Panthers to Arms", Black Star, 21 September 1968; W. Rodney, "Negritude and World Revolution", Black Star, 2 November 1968; W. Rodney, "Jamaica Today", Black Star, 16 November 1968; "Black Power and the Revolutionary Struggle", Black Star, 11 January 1969; H. Rap Brown, "We're Going to Be Free by Any Means", Black Star, 10 February 1968; Kwame Nkrumah, "Myth and Reality", Black Star, 2 December 1967. 57. See Bobby Clarke, 'The Inevitable Must Happen", BlackStar, 16 December 1967. See "Jamaican Government Bans University Professor", BlackStar, 19 October 1968; John Connell, 'The Drift to the Right", Black Star, 8 February 1969; "Dangers of Fact", BlackStar, 2 November 1968; "Williams Says No", BlackStar, 17 August 1968; "Witch Hunt Hits Caribbean Progressives", Black Star, 20 July 1968; John Connell, "Banning Literature Is an Attack on the People", BlackStar, 4 November 1967. 58. 59. 60.

61.

"Meeting Held in Support of Imprisoned Students", BlackStar, 22 February 1967. "Human Rights", BlackStar, 14 December 1968. See John Connell, 'The Drift to the Right", Black Star, 8 February 1969. Also see Leroy Harewood, 'This Man Must Go", BlackStar, 20 July 1968; "Personal Budget Shoots at Black Star", BlackStar, 20 July 1968. Kofi Akobi, interview with author, 12 September 1998.

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62.

See "A Vote to Break Their Own Necks", Black Star, 7 June 1969. See also the editorial, Black Star, 7 June 1969; the House of Assembly Debates, 12 May 1970; Leroy Harewood, "Are Barbadians Revolutionary?", Manjak (April 1974); Calvin Alleyne, 'The Experiences of Black Star and PPM", Manjak (April 1974).

63. 64.

Elton Mottley, "Black Night Role in Idea", Advocate, 18 July 1970. Elton Mottley, "Imported Ideology, but It's Relevant", Advocate, 15 July 1970; Elton Mottley, "What the Idea Means", Advocate, 16 July 1970. Ibid. Ibid. Kofi Akobi, interview with author, 12 September 1998. See SALC Information Bulletin, September-October 1980, 1. SALC, Space Research Corporation: How a Trans-National Munitions Company Used a West Indies Government to Test Artillery Shells for the South African Armed Forces (Bridgetown, Barbados: SALC, 1981). See also "SALC Condemns Murders of South African Blacks", Sunday Advocate, 11 July 1982; "Appeal to Isolate South Africa", Nation, 10 June 1982. SALC files, 'The Robin Jackman Affair" (Press release, 7 March 1981); "SALC Protests Jackman Stand", Nation, 15 March 1981. Michael Cummins, interview with author, 31 August 1998; Ricky Parris, interview with author, 24 August 1998; "Stay Away from South Africa", Advocate, 28 May 1983; SALC, Sports and Apartheid (Bridgetown, Barbados: SALC, 1983); 'The True Character of the SACU", Nation, 4 June 1983; 'The True Character of the SACU", Advocate, 4 June 1983. Lloyd Jones, interview with author, 3 September 1998; David Commissiong, interview with author, 12 September 1998. David Commissiong, interview with author, 5 September 1998. Ibid.

65. 66. 67. 68. 69.

70. 71.

72. 73. 74.

75. See Naiwu Osahon, 'The Call", Pan-African Foundation Lagos, Pan-African Movement of Barbados (PAMOB) files. 76. See Draft Constitution of Pan-African Movement of Barbados. 77. See editorial, New Vis/on 1, no. 1 (July 1991). 78. See "Pan-African Movement of Barbados Grows from Strength to Strength", New Vision 1, no. 2 (September 1991), 12. See also "Barbados Is Our Number One", Pan-African Movement Newsletter, no. 2 (July 1991).

10 Radicalism and Errol Barrow in the Political Tradition of Barbados* HILARY McD. BECKLES

When R.H. Tawney, the acclaimed scholar of British socialist thought, wrote of the radical tradition of his country, the parameters of his analyses were never fluid, nor were they supported by vague conceptual foundations. To the contrary, he was always clear and precise in defining the process in terms of its ideological premises and political activity, and particularly so in relation to the individuals and movements that fell within the limits of the process. For him, the radical tradition of Western culture had to do with the general process of "revolt against capitalism", not only in terms of material deprivation, "but in resentment against an economic system which dehumanizes existence by treating the mass of mankind . . . as instruments to be manipulated for the pecuniary advantage of a minority of property owners". The agents within the leadership of such movements, he argued, were not anarchist, nor the "lunatic fringe" of the labour organizations, but "a community of responsible men and women working without fear in comradeship for common ends". Tawney's definition of radicals and radicalism, insistent upon the use of the term "respectable" and dismissive of actions likely to constitute *A version of this article first appeared in Caribbean Affairs 2, no. 2 (April-June 1989): 104-13. 221

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revolutionism, is directly relevant to trends and visions found within the context of the Commonwealth Caribbean. Whereas such a perception of radicalism sits uncomfortably upon the Caribbean historical experience one characterized by endemic rebellion, daily existence of class and racial violence, and suicidal approaches to the attainment of personal liberties -the veneer of colonial respectability cherished by twentieth century black political activists makes relevant the Tawneyite perceptions. For socialists, however, conceptions of the Caribbean radical tradition exclude those "bourgeois respectables" and revolves primarily around the revolutionary actions of individuals and movements that aimed to transform and liberate, as opposed to modernize and reform. For C.L.R. James, Walter Rodney and Richard Hart, for example, Tawney's precepts are but bourgeois impositions upon antibourgeois activity. The precepts are part of an attempt to use hegemonic powers of definition in order to ensure cultural and intellectual domination. In the colonial context of the twentieth century, however, Tawneyism cannot be so lightly dismissed. It remains directly relevant to an understanding of the politics and ideas of men such as Errol Barrow, and the times and intellectual culture in which they moved. By way of deepening these conceptual concerns, it is also necessary to outline the manner in which young, 'radical' black colonial politicians of Barrow's ilk were caught within the intricate webs of the anticolonial movement overseas and at home. Rarely did they adopt the same politics on both fronts, and in most a gulf can be identified, with the politics of distant decolonization being the more radical. Another aspect of this ideological movement concerned the metropolitan intellectual spheres in which these politicians moved and the largely pseudoradical nature of the ideas they brought back to bear on the colonial context. Here I am referring to the disjuncture between the real colonial world and its objective radical/revolutionary tradition, and the anticapitalism of the metropolitan worlds. Most 'successful' black politicians of the region, especially relevant in the case of Barrow, were forced to come to terms with these variants of radicalism. The politics of Barbados and West Indian decolonization emerged, then, in the context of these two ideological forces. In fact, the political culture was, to a large extent, the offspring of these two parents -imperial respectable radicalism and an indigenous revolutionism. Both struggled

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for the heads and hearts of the child, and both demanded full commitment. The imperial mother in most cases won out; she had more to offer, both in terms of honours and materials, and so lackeys and mimic men abounded. In a few instances the ancestral parentage got the upper hand and, in these cases, the alienated colonial starvelings found themselves with leaders of high quality. At times, however, the progeny oscillated and, being neither fish nor fowl, it learnt to move comfortably among the higher classes and with ease among the lower classes. These became 'men of the people', loved by most and proud of their 'balanced' approach. Barrow cannot be removed from these trends and patterns that were evident within the evolution of the political culture of Barbados. Behind him was a tradition of slave revolts and labour uprisings. During the slavery epoch (1627-1838), thousands of black people were massacred in their quest for freedom and self-expression. In 1816 they were crushed in their most daring challenge to ruling class power and authority. Again, in 1876 they intervened in the constitutional quarrels of the elite, attempted to wrestle political power and were defeated. The folk culture transported knowledge of these events down the line, and many insisted upon their inclusion in the struggle for civil rights. The aborted revolution of 1937, then, cannot be divorced from 1816 or 1876. These events, and the preparation between, constituted the radical tradition of Barbados against which Errol Barrow made his entry into politics. It is also true that both before and after Bussa in 1816 the revolutionary culture tended to dissipate into various strands of 'respectable' and 'semi-respectable' radical liberalism, with which colonial structures and authorities were able to live after an initial period of discomfort. The politics of Samuel Prescod in the first two decades after emancipation and the constitutional machinations of Conrad Reeves fell within this category. Prescod took some white urban 'liberal' support with him in his leadership of sections of the formerly enslaved population, which would have alienated some blacks, especially those who remembered well the events of 1816. Also, these persons would have been wary of his attempt to bring the liberal mercantile-based antiplanter political ideology into the fore of what was essentially their long-established civil rights movement. Conrad Reeves, though politically to the right of Prescod, sought his political support among sections of the constitutionally minded landed

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elite, and his politics represented something ideologically akin to the mid Victorian conservatism generally associated with leaders such as Disraeli. The belief that the labouring poor could be represented by a fabricated mixture of upper class humanism, paternalism and social enlightenment pervaded Reeves' approach to mass politics. The legalism that dominated his public life, and his pursuit of high office within the colonial structure, can partly account for his belief that the masses stood to benefit from constitutional reforms from the top as opposed to popular agitation and social protest. Though it has been argued, convincingly in parts, that his politics only moved around to concern itself with the labouring poor after he had reached the 'top of the slippery pole' in his appointment as chief justice, that he had emerged from the bosom of the plantation yard was still the basis of his popular image as a champion of civil rights. Prescod and Reeves, then, represented two variants of 'respectable radicalism' within postslavery Barbados. The former was characterized by popular agitation and the raising of public consciousness; the latter was concerned almost exclusively with constitutional reforms and civil rights legislation. It is possible, even if in general terms, to suggest that these two variants of black radicalism were to impose themselves upon the developments of the twentieth century, pushing the revolt/rebellion element into a corner of illegitimacy. Barrow, therefore, found that the parameters of his politics were narrowly constrained by the social culture, since, of course, it was unlikely that he would have skipped camp in order to identify with the Bussa line. His early years, however, were dominated by the politics of men such as his uncle Dr O'Neale, Clement Payne, Grantley Adams and Clennell Wickham. Both Payne and Wickham were ideologically to the left of O'Neale and Adams. Wickham came closer to being a Marxist, or scientific socialist, than any of his contemporaries, while Payne's radical, popular agitation in 1937 almost drove the colony into a revolutionary situation. O'Neale, of course, was a respectable Fabian social democrat, while Adams had no difficulty in defining himself as a liberal, which in the colonial context for a black professional stood just short of being reactionary. Barrow's political career fits comfortably into the ideological structures that support the vision of men such as Prescod and O'Neal. The lineage was one of progressive liberalism and democratic socialism, and was located just left of centre of the political culture of the colony.

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Ideological Lineage in the Political Culture of Barbados Left

Left of Centre

Right of Centre

Slave rebels

Reformist slaves, free coloured/black civil rights agitators

White/creole/imperial constitutional reformers

Bussa

Prescod

Reeves

Wickham

O'Neale

Payne

Barrow

Adams

The specific logic of Barrow's political radicalism, however, was informed by two distinct, though related, crises within the well-developed anticolonial movement of the immediate prewar period. One of these concerned the determination of the British state to ensure that the reins of power in the dying empire fell into the hands of persons who considered their interest and that of Britain to be one and the same. That is, that decolonization would not be structural or ideological, but constitutional in nature - what Kwame Nkrumah referred to early in the 1950s as neocolonialism. The other crisis concerned the failure of Adams' Progressive League and his Barbados Labour Party (BLP) to carry out the radical reform mandate given them by the black population in the aftermath of the 1937 aborted revolution. Both of these crises emerged from a fundamental refusal on the part of the British ruling class and its Barbadian subtype to give way to more virulent social forces that threatened to revolutionize colonial society. In the case of the British government, its decision to confront with arms the anti-imperialist politics of Kenya and India, for example, illustrated that meaningful social change was not part of its recipe for decolonization. In the case of Barbados, it was clear that Adams had embraced the principles of British colonial policy and by 1948 had become the darling of the colonial office. Barbadian decolonization, then, could not take on these dimensions. But even closer to home, Barrow was particularly

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hostile to Adams for his supportive role in assisting the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and British MI5 to overthrow the Jagan regime in British Guiana in the early 1960s, even though he himself had hardly sympathized with the Marxist-Leninism of Jagan's popularly elected People's Progressive Party. During the early 1950s, then, Barrow showed his colours as a young radical in the specific context of a frontal assault upon the growing conservatism of Adams' ruling BLP, in which he was a prominent, though alienated, member. The details of the charge he led are now well known, but in ideological terms he was opposed to Adams' soft line on the rights of workers, independence and the political arrogance of the white plantermerchant elite and their 'coloured' supporters. He threw in his lot, then, with the organized workers in an attempt to recapture the spirit of 1938-44 when Adams himself had emerged as the leading representative of the labour movement. In order to clearly identify Barrow's ideological position during the early 1950s, it is necessary to locate precisely where Adams and his BLP had drifted by that time. During the late 1930s, Adams had already expressed his objection to socialist thought in various ways - an objection that was to intensify later as he joined in the anticommunist hysteria of the McCarthy era. In his ideological combat with Wickham, and the role he subsequently played in the destruction of his radical platform, he had illustrated to the governor and the Colonial Office his loyalty to imperialist interests. Also, his lukewarm legal defence after the 1937 event, and his refusal to politically defend the principles and objectives of Payne's campaign, confirmed to progressive minds that he was an antisocialist. Gordon Lewis summed up the conservative nature of Adams' leadership and ideology during the early 1950s as follows: The Adams leadership apparently accepted the widespread Barbadian belief that a radical stance on the sugar question destroys a political career . . . [and] the belief, sedulously spread by the plantocracy, that a nationalization policy would lead to economic disaster and social chaos. Adams, in any case, was first and foremost a liberal constitutionalist, convinced of the primacy of politics: when the political fight is won, economic ill will disappear. Major emphasis was laid upon constitutional advance, in willing co-operation with liberal Governors. That explains why, on the economic-social side, little was done to set up a modern comprehensive social security scheme under central

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control, and . . . why, on the political side, no thorough-going campaign for independence was undertaken . . - 1

Lewis, furthermore, disagrees with Alexander Hoyos, Adams' biographer, that the main political crises in his career came with the collapse of the federal movement in which he had heavily invested and posits instead two other developments, both of which accounted for his vulnerability to Barrow's radical onslaught in the mid 1950s. First, that he allowed himself to be used as spokesman for the Colonial Office during the postwar era lost him the respect of many other black nationalists in the empire, most notably for his 1948 defence of British imperialism in a speech before the United Nations. Second, he allowed the BLP, which had ridden on the back of the organized labour movement, to be infiltrated and then dominated by renegades from right-wing planter-merchant organizations. Both these processes laid the foundation of Adams' subsequent political defeats, and established the context for Barrow's emergence as a popular radical during the 1960s. Barrow's entry into the mainstream of middle class anticolonial and black nationalist radicalism, therefore, was directly associated with an attempt to rescue the political wing of the labour movement from the rapidly encroaching white conservatism. By 1953 reports of Barrow's split with Adams on a range of policies and approaches to government were already in the open and being discussed on street corners. The nature of Adams' response to this confrontation confirmed the popular perception that the labour movement under the ruling BLP had weakened on the anticolonial issue, and that the life possibilities for labourers, thrown open by their own actions in 1937, were once again being reduced. Strengthened by the addition of Cameron Tudor in 1954, the Barrow radical faction within the BLP, which included Lorenzo Williams and R.G. Mapp, was preparing to upstage the government on the question of anticolonialization, socialism and independence. Adams' defence of the ideological reposition of the BLP and his own increasingly conservative pragmatism were based upon the notion, vague though it was, that the white power structure of Barbados, and its imperial supporters, could not be effectively challenged by an elected political party. Wilbur Will noted, for example, that for Adams the "British, the local power elite, and the conservative Barbadian culture", as he per-

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ceived them, "were facts of life that had to be worked with".2 He also stated that Adams perceived his positions and policies as based upon experience and facts, as opposed to Barrow's untried radicalism, which was based upon idealism and academic intellectualism. Logically, then, that Adams decided to 'cast out' the radicals was not surprising. In 1955, Barrow and his group had formed the Democratic Labour Party (DLP), and by 1961 they had replaced Adams and the BLP as the government of the colony. Between 1961 and the attainment of independence in 1966, Barrow's radicalism was not of the kind associated with Cheddi Jagan in British Guiana, nor, indeed, that expressed by Eric Williams in Trinidad and Tobago. Barrow was no socialist, in the Marxist use of the term; nor was he advocating the restructuring of the Barbadian socioeconomic landscape. He was within the O'Neale tradition of Fabian socialism, that sentimental and moral expression of concern for the poor, and the belief that organized governments should place at the centre of their agendas policies directed to the material and social upliftment of the poor. Placing the reigns of power directly in the hands of the poor was another issue altogether, and in this sense Barrow was also in the Prescod tradition of advocating 'responsible', conscientious, middle class government. Both Lewis and Belle have offered political judgments on the DLP administration under Barrow's leadership between 1961 and 1971. For Lewis, it was the politics of modernization and not social transformation, while for Belle it was the politics of factionalism and populism. Lewis argues that Barrow "sought less to socialize the economy than to modernize it, which is not necessarily the same thing".3 For example, he stated that successive debates on, and investigation into the sugar industry under the Barrow regime degenerated into questions about management and organization, rather than ownership, control and social relations, thus confirming for some the principle of Adams' policies that an attack upon the sugar interest could destroy a political career. Also, to questions of economic development, solutions such as tourism expansion, labour emigration and sugar subsidies would emerge to the fore. Even the independence issue in 1966 was not a radical one, as it was in line with British imperial policy and the larger territories of the region had already gone that way.

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Barrow, then, initially sought to halt the degree of regression that had occurred in the political culture of the island since 1937, without in any way resorting to policies designed to tackle the economic stranglehold that the white business elite held over the country. But on matters external to Barbados, he appeared consistently progressive. On issues such as Anglo-American imperialism in the region and African independence and anti-apartheid struggles, he was hard line, as were his contemporaries, Michael Manley and Forbes Burnham. How far did Barrow go in extending the ideological parameters of the radical tradition? In real terms, he merely reopened the limits that had been significantly reduced by the Adams regime, and he never succeeded in stirring the social consciousness of the masses in the way that Payne had done. In order to break the hold by the white commercial elite over policy, Barrow sought to modernize the economy by expanding tourism and manufacturing. These sectors, he suggested, would give government a sufficient capital flow in order to reduce dependency on the merchantplanter alliance, and at the same time give him sufficient elbow room to attack their archaic and regressive socioeconomic attitudes. To some extent, he was successful in the diversification of the country's economic base, but such an expansion did not result in the weakening of the merchant-planter control over policy. In fact, during the 1960s, the economic base of this alliance increased rapidly, and by 1976 it was still strong enough to spearhead the defeat of the government and reinstate the BLP. Belle, in a perceptive analysis of the country's political economy between 1966 and 1974, had this to say: "the planter-merchant class continued to monopolize the best agricultural land and the sugar industry; as well as the distributive sector; and examination of the centre of its economic power, the conglomerate Barbados Shipping and Trading Co. Ltd, simply confirms that this class was growing from strength to strength".4 Unable to implement structural changes in the ownership of productive resources and the social organization of the plantation-based formation, Barrow resorted to radical social policies that carried the potential for long-term transformations. These policies included free secondary and university education, infrastructural developments, national insurance schemes, incentives to small black businesses, and a cohesive health policy. The policies, however, represented a retreat to Fabian socialism and the politics of gradual reform, both of which were

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considered respectable from the ideological viewpoint of the dominant class and race. Barrow's refusal or inability to pursue a rigorous socialist policy, in line with Michael Manley and Forbes Burnham must therefore be seen against the background of his compromise with the ruling classes -the same sugar planters, commission agents and speculators for whom he had little intellectual or economic respect. These groups proved durable, and their swing against his government in the mid 1970s had the same overwhelming result as their counterparts' swing against the Manley government in the late 1970s. With these policy developments in mind, and the refusal of his government to grant admission to the country of Stokely Carmichael, the Trinidad-born, US-based Black Power activist, and the subsequent passing of antiblack protest legislation in the form of the May 1970 Public Order Act, Barrow's record on black radicalism can be conceived as having been significantly tarnished. His pandering to reactionary white racist entrepreneurs and repressing black activism, and conceiving these policies to be in the interest of the country in the context of a dying colonization, must surely be considered part of the basis of his defeat in 1976. Certainly, by that time his image as 'man of the people' and popular hero took a significant hammering, especially since the populace referred to his apparent arrogance and aloofness as leader. In this regard, his defeat in 1976 was similar, in many ways, to that of Adams' party in 1961. During the period 1976 to 1986, the swing to the right of the BLP, especially under the leadership of Tom Adams, led to the formidable entrenchment of 'white power' in Barbados, while the Public Order Act continued to exist as a deterrent to Black Power hopefuls. The psychological profile of the regime was certainly one that confronted the black masses with big capital and high finance. Fear of victimization by black radicals was widespread, and the belief that government would use security forces against socialist activists did much damage to the democratic spirit that the DIP had fostered during the 1960s. With the election in 1986, the black population defeated the BLP regime and returned Barrow to power in a 'silent revolutionary' fashion that restored his credibility as representing the black popular conscience. For many, he was offered a second chance to carry out radical changes in the country. Barrow was expected to crush the arrogant offensive of

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the white business community, which was a characteristic of the BLP regime. He was also expected to return Barbados to a more radical path, following the BLP participation in the invasion of Grenada and support for Reagan's militarization plan for the region. His death on 1 June 1987 meant that all these expectations were never fulfilled, but the majority of people in Barbados believed that he had a plan to right the wrongs that characterized his regime between 1970 and 1976. Some, however, believed that he would have been much of the same - a populist on domestic policies and a vigorous radical on foreign issues - both of which would fall short of a radical transformation of the country's socioeconomic structures. There are few, however, who would conclude that Barrow did the best for his day and with the resources at his disposal. The range of possibilities for Barbados was never as great as the other larger territories that remain rich in natural resources. As such, he was limited by the economic contours of the country which offered little scope for the manipulation of the social landscape. In these regards, he was very much the respectable radical moving within narrow political parameters in a manner similar to his conceptual predecessors, Samuel Prescod and Dr O'Neale.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

Gordon Lewis, The Growth of the Modern West Indies (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1968), 247-48. M. Wilbur Will, "Political Development in the Mini-State Caribbean: A Focus on Barbados" (PhD diss., University of Missouri, 1978), 198. Lewis, The Growth of the Modern West Indies, 248. G.A.V. Belle, 'The Political Economy of Barbados 1937^6, 1966-72" (MPhil thesis, University of the West Indies, 1974).

11

Popular/Folk/Creative Arts and the Nation C U RWE N B E S T

Current postmodernist trends in culture analysis and conceptualization question the logic of national cultures claiming their essential selves. In the face of this First World scepticism -where national cultures are object, postcolonial, honourary subjects, other, or black Atlantic - it seems that notions of nationhood are also under attack by both philosophy itself and the philosophy of cultural identity. Barbados is not immune from these strategies. In light of the rising furore over theory, it does seem evident that the nation will find it even more imperative to engage the cultural theorizing of George Lamming and Kamau Brathwaite, with a view to making them even more relevant within the national context and in light of postmodernity and new hardcore youth culture phenomena. This chapter provides some insights into the conceptualization of a Barbadian aesthetics, through an analysis of popular subversive works. It discusses the connection between apparently disparate artists and art forms, by way of illustrating how the subversive has developed over time, culminating in the contemporary works of Barbadian youth culture. This chapter also focuses, to some degree, on the hindrances to the formulation of a national culture industry. What is the destiny of the nation at the crossroads in its development, and how do the creative arts and popular 232

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culture begin to impact on and reflect this future? It is important to make some initial observations concerning key terms such as 'popular culture', 'folk culture', and 'creative arts'. I make this effort less to quote a variety of sources than to attempt to give a better assessment of how this chapter understands and begins to interpret and reinterpret these terms in the context of a discourse on Barbados.

Terms The old term 'mass culture' is no longer preferred among scholars in the field of cultural studies and popular culture. Mass culture has traditionally referred to the culture of the unschooled and undereducated masses of industrial society. Historically, academic work that treated mass culture tended to focus on either the dislocated masses of postwar societies or on that culture transmitted by the mass media. The problem with all this was that the first area of focus held negative connotations, while the second area limited the field of study only to the formal media agencies. 'Popular culture' as a term and concept now replaces 'mass culture'. Popular culture is a less value-laden term. But it is not without its own site of contention and embattlement. Its meanings have varied over time and from academic to academic. Sometimes it has been used as a replacement for low culture, and has been placed in opposition to high culture, where high culture is constituted by art, literature, the classics, the canon, traditional formal study and a formal curriculum. There is a school of thought that still conceives popular culture to be an exclusive type of product, one born of an advanced society, produced and disseminated via the media and technology, and subject to copyright and patent laws. This view continuously links popular culture to industrialized society. Even if we go along with the paradigm of popular culture equals industrialization, it must be recognized that popular culture as a concept in these social contexts is still excessively contradictory. On the one hand, popular culture is industrialized and commercially bound. It subsists of "commodities produced and distributed by a profit-motivated industry".1 But, on the other hand, culture is also in actuality, 'the people' and their outpourings. Their diverse materials must be seen to form part of the popular. Popular culture is therefore less exclusive than it is an inclusive

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category. It cannot be tied indefinitely to the industry, for the concerns of the people are not always those of the industry. Around 1994 and 1995, there was an initiative by the music industry to lure Barbados and the wider Caribbean towards mainstream rock. This initiative was marked by the promotion of international bands such as Survivor and Starship, and the staging of concerts throughout the Caribbean. It was also noticeable that selected international acts within this vein were played with greater frequency, even being promoted on AM radio. Listeners to Barbados' Voice of Barbados (VOB 790) and Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation (CBC 900), must have pondered the meaning of hearing Tears for Fears' "Break It Down Again" in the early morning slots. But 'the people' were not amused. They did not turn up in great numbers to support industrydriven concerts featuring mainstream acts in adult rock. The popular culture of one country can be unpopular in other contexts. John Fiske is therefore correct when he summarizes that: "popular culture is not consumption, it is culture -the active process of generating and circulating meanings and pleasures within a social system: culture, however industrialized, can never be adequately described in terms of the buying and selling of commodities".2

Folk Culture/Creative Arts/Popular Culture Fiske's categorization of popular culture vis-a-vis folk culture must be called into question, however, especially within a Barbadian context. Among many other cultural specialists, there is a tendency to distance the field of popular culture from folk culture. Fiske says point-blank that popular culture is not folk culture. This view sees folk culture as the product of a stable traditional social order in which social differences are not at work, a society therefore characterized by social consensus rather than social conflict.3 Hence this view is one of folk culture as a fossilized set of practices, and it seems to adhere to a totally static view of history, culture and the signifying process. The reality is that the past is never stable, static or fixed. The past is always continuing to mean as life goes on. As people come to terms with their present and future selves they also reassess and re-image their past, their folk culture. It would be fallacious to conceive of the folk culture in Barbados as being a site of no conflict. The fact that

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the folk culture of Barbados has been little expounded on is not an indication that it has been unearthed and finally put to rest; rather, it is a reflection of the intensely contentious politics that still pervade Barbadian society - and the trepidation with which the nation sits nervously concealing the tectonics of an inevitable eruption. A phenomenon such as the indigenous percussive band called the tuk band, for example, is both folk and popular: it embodies simultaneously the symbolism of the past, and it harnesses the potential of the present and future. But institutions such as these are little understood in Barbados. In its current manifestation, the tuk band is a thing of curiosity. The nation does not understand its dynamics, its subversive African-Barbadian potentialities. Again, the point here is that forms traditionally designated as 'folk' are at times, and in cultures such as Barbados, potential formidable agents of subversion. When unearthed and understood, folk culture becomes one of the most popular creative tools for transformation of ultraconservative outpost colonial societies such as those in the Caribbean and elsewhere. I therefore take issue with any reading of 'the popular' as exclusive to contexts where the market economy has penetrated most forms of cultural production and consumption.4 Popular culture does not exist only because of, or in support of, production and consumption. This view that I hold leads me to examine here a range of Barbadian artists who and art forms that might not have been perceived as connected in any way, because of received categorizations. Although I do not deal specifically with the tuk band here, it would have been possible for me to consider it both within the popular culture paradigm, which this chapter creates for itself, and in relation to Barbados. The category called 'creative arts' has its own connotations. It seems to suggest a broad area of practice whose end products are aesthetically acceptable items, fit for display by a society, and more so by and for institutions of the arts, learning and dissemination. When one speaks of the creative arts, people begin to take hold of paintings, handcrafted items, and the like. In contrast, popular culture forms are not so readily graspable or accepted in their present state, not in the same way that the creative arts are housed by the establishment. Forms of popular culture are often disruptive and devoid of many of the attributes attached to the creative arts in our society. Indeed, popular culture forms do not readily fit into categories of the creative arts because of the perceived lack of

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'creative' uniformity (and other such descriptions) in the tendencies of popular culture. I will ignore this rigid categorization, since I want to suggest that there is a closer connection between Barbadian creative artists (and art forms) and their popular culture 'others' than has been previously realized. In the text Culture Media Language, Janet Batsleer et al. consider that there have been four major conceptualizations of popular culture as 1. 2. 3. 4.

the material of the working class the product of a culture industry myth an ideological apparatus of the state.5

I am concerned largely with the first conceptualization; that is, the material of the working class, the folk, the socially deprived and the subordinated. But, as this chapter develops, I will also consider the concept of the culture industry, and I will examine the role that the state apparatus seeks to play at this current juncture of Barbados' development as the 'number one?' developing nation in the world. Because I have chosen this structure and approach, it would seem that I am only concerned with the protestation of the lower class, who resent their subordination. Still, popular culture and the establishment do not always live in constant antagonism. For their oppositionality is sporadic: it is sometimes dormant, and sometimes stirred up into symbolistic guerilla raids. The nature of this relationship also has to do with a series of negotiations between these antagonistic and oppositional coexistent forces. These bases are therefore constantly shifting. Because of this shifting it is especially hard to pin down, the many disguises of 'the popular', in particular. In Caribbean fashion, for example, the popular wide-bottomed pants of the 1970s, called bell-bottoms, went out of vogue in the 1980s, but they returned in disguise in the 1990s as the 'pallazo', and again as 'hold-me-tights'.

The Field It is a mammoth task to speak to the wide range of genres and art forms that constitute the creative and popular arts. So, in my attempt to provide

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a generous spread of real examples, mixed with penetrative analysis and a spattering of theory, I will limit the scope of my substantive discussion here to Barbadian writing, oral literature, performance verse and music. Barbados is a complex entity. For centuries it has been categorized as 'little England', having its own statue of Lord Nelson erected before that of the British - and in Barbados' own Trafalgar Square. I want to propose that there are at least two Barbadoses: the mythic Barbados, and the other Barbados that I want to explore through an examination of its popular culture. The mythic Barbados has existed and been perpetuated by planter, selected historiographic texts, travelogues, diaries, letters, pastoral poems and other fictions. In the age of institutionalized tourism, the myth has been continued by travel brochures, and in such Hollywood-type promotional productions as: "out in the turquoise sea . . . somewhere beyond your imagination". When I say mythic Barbados, I am referring to the strategies and constructions that have stereotyped Barbados as an homogeneous entity: Protestant, prim and proper, transparent, noncomplex. The relatively sparse academic writings on the contemporary creative arts of Barbados perpetuate the one-dimensional view of the artistic propensity of Barbados. But it is a fact that the nation is complex in ways that its nationals have not yet begun to conceive or consider. They have been unable to do so because what Althusser calls "the ideological state apparatus" has consistently, throughout history, not encouraged self-actualization; it has discouraged the desire to interrogate the complexities of the nation. Such a self-examination and conceptualization can be done, I suggest, by engaging with and analysing the popular creative arts. This type of analysis of popular culture offers revealing insights into that other Barbados which has comparatively been under-critiqued. And I want to make the radical suggestion that many of the current dilemmas Barbados faces in all facets of development continue to escalate because there is never really a sustained analysis of its many constituents. At the turn of the new millennium, the society is throwing up its hands in disbelief at the state of the nation, at the state of its youths, at the spate of crime, and at the increase of antisocial behaviour. This is the natural reaction of a society that has not been reading its own cultural signs and contradictions. This is the reaction of a people who are in a state of social and cultural dislocation, a society that has been fed misreadings of itself,

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and has too uncritically accepted wholesale the fabricated idealism of a mythic Barbados. An examination of selected popular culture formations can begin to open up the perception and discourse on some of the silences within Barbadian culture. There are real and symbolic results that derive from an exploration and explication of cultural signs. No global entity can sustain its sense of national significance in the new millennium unless it harnesses and consolidates its sense of cultural difference.

Reading Popular Subversive Strands After having decried the misreading and non-reading of Barbadian culture, I want to show how there is an active subversive and connected link between a number of popular Barbadian creative artists. And, ultimately, I want to go on to interrogate the pronouncements of creating a culture industry. Since it is my belief that a structured industry of culture cannot precede an identification of the constituents within the very culture, I deal firstly with identifying connected strands. In the academic literature beyond the region, relatively few of Barbados' creative artists have received much attention. I could mention Kamau Brathwaite, George Lamming, and there are very few others. These two are creative writers. In an important work of the 1980s, Out of the Kumbla, which focuses on the contribution of Caribbean women in the arts, Daphne Joseph Hackett is given a few sentences.6 In Judy Stones' text Theatre in the Caribbean, Barbadian playwrights and troupes are almost negligible.7 In recent and near-recent studies of Caribbean music by the likes of Peter Manuel, Harry Hoetink and Roger Wallis, Barbados and its artists are mentioned only for the presence of a pressing plant and a local distribution outlet for major record companies outside of the region. The international All Music Guide places Barbados' greatest singing legend, Gabby, as a Trinidadian singer, and misrepresents Red Plastic Bag as Red Plastic Bay.8 Writing in the early 1990s on the nature of Barbadian theatre, the reputable Caribbean literary critic Al Creighton refers to the "tame" theatre practised in Barbados.9 Some people might agree with this reading of dramatic productions such as Man Talk, Laugh It Off, Bajan Bus Stop, Talk Tent, Off Snakes and Grasshoppers, King fa fa, and A Hero's Welcome. Creighton's conclusion is based on a comparison with other Caribbean

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and non-Caribbean theatres, and shows no concern really with examining the particular context of Barbados. This is a problem with some writings on Barbados; they are done as external discourses, when perhaps a closer, more penetrative, analysis of local forms reveals the particularities of Barbadian aesthetics. A revolution of creative arts on the ground cannot always be visible to the onlooker who peers down from on high. In order to detect the revolutionary in a society, one must first have a sense of the norm within that same society. Barbadian theatre and much of the creative arts are indeed potently subversive, even as they are also (and at the same time) negotiated and tame. The comic masking of political statement in such productions as Laugh It Off begs to be examined as subversive camouflage. If one examines the ways in which laughter violates a number of discursive proprieties of Barbadian society, it becomes more evident that the tendency towards comic/satiric theatre marks a distinctive act of subversion by producers, directors and actors. Barbadian theatre is more prone to operate through subversive subtlety than through overt confrontation. A number of commentaries on Barbadian writing continue to lament the absence of continuity within the tradition marked by the likes of Lamming and Brathwaite. The view is therefore held that there are no Lammings and Brathwaites on the horizon. To a large degree this is true. But it is also important to interrogate the viewpoints from which such statements are emanating. It should be said that the social, political, cultural and literary climate that gave birth to those writers was a specific moment in Barbadian and Caribbean history. Those writers were born of a movement that was Caribbean-wide, and was facilitated by literary migrations to metropolises and by the interest of large publishing houses in certain types of exotic writings. There were also fledgling literary magazines at that time. Much of the curiosity of that era is now gone. I am not discrediting the sheer skill of writers of that generation, but it must be admitted that they were born of a certain geopolitical, economic and cultural process. To lament the total absence of similar practitioners is therefore to misunderstand the dynamics of our society. I would contend that it is because of the nature of the differences between then and now that we do not have replicas or clones of those writers. It has little really to do with the perceived absence today of creativity, skill and craft of writing by Barbadians.

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Now I want to make a case for the creative/popular dimension of the culture of Barbados, not always seen by the naked eye, not always easy to detect, not necessarily the focus of tourist brochures. And I want to suggest how a number of disparate entities of creative arts are connected within a corpus of works that have struggled for legitimacy, but for many reasons have existed unnoticed by critics, by foreigners and by Barbadians themselves. The logic of making this connection is that it gives great credence to my calls for other Barbadian discourses, and it begins to demonstrate the possibility of mapping a Barbadian aesthetics, one that links earlier popular forms with current hardcore styles. The culture is multitracked. Between the 1970s and the present there are a number of subversive creative arts phenomena that have surfaced in Barbados. Each of these is related in some way to a later, more subversive, artistic manifestation. In the recent postindependence history of Barbados, there has been an ongoing eruption of subversive, creative forms of expression. These have emerged, confronted established traditions, and have subsequently renegotiated their position in the face of a repressive establishment and ideology. These subversive practices are continuing to resignify or resurface in varying forms and media. In order to be able to theorize on the existence of a popular counter-discursive expression in Barbados, it is necessary to locate a few of these expressions to see how they are related, and how they confront and violate discursive proprieties of Barbadian society. A people's language, speech patterns, varieties, intonations and lexicon are perhaps their most important and self-defining attributes. It is no surprise, therefore, that current academic debates in the realm of literature, culture, philosophy and sociology have positioned language at the centre of analysis. When one considers the creative uses to which Barbadian nation language has been subjected and projected, the names of selected creative artists readily come to mind. Edward Cordle, writing at the turn of the twentieth century, with his formulaic and structured Barbadian dialogues between Lizzy and loe is one example. In his late nineteenth century verse, built on rhyming couplets, the Creole was not projected as a medium of 'serious' expression. His verse form created the backdrop for the portrayal of humourous encounters between the pro-

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tagonists, two stereotypical characters. In one poem, Lizzy calculatingly waits on a seductive Trinidadian women who has her eye on Joe: But when she tink she gwine see Joe, she gwine see me face, when a put my big hand pon she, and drag she ouk the place she gwine tink a donkey kick she and wish that she was ded a gwine gie she all the butting a got ouk side muh hed.10 And I switch to Bruce St John whose collection of poetry Bumbatuk begs to be interpreted for its nation language, tonal inflections and its use of the rhythm of tuk. St John's essay, which precedes a volume of this poetry (found at the main library University of the West Indies, Cave Hill), begins to formulate a context for the perception of a tuk aesthetics. Anthony Kellman is presently also experimenting with the use of tuk phrasing through a complex structure based on advanced methods of poetic scanning. It is left to other theorists to construct an even larger framework for the study and analysis of Barbadian arts by invoking the tuk analogy. These are but a few of the local artists who have engaged the language of the nation. But there are many more, whom I do not intend to discuss here: Timothy Callender, Jeanette Layne-Clark. I want to propose that, within an overall analysis of Barbadian creative writings, there are few artists who have demonstrated a greater skill and astuteness, engaging issues of Barbadian society, and projecting Barbadian aesthetics through language, than has been done by a number of young, uncritiqued performance-based artists operating during the mid 1980s and throughout the 1990s. These artists have been practising within the related genres of Bajan dub, rhythm poetry and orature as a broad category. My proposal therefore begins to question the politics and biases within the conventional privileging of a literary tradition. By the late 1990s, the establishment began to lay claim to Kamau Brathwaite as a vital cultural, creative symbol. It became noticeable that commentators and traditionalists, in an attempt to dismiss younger artists/performers, invoked Brathwaite's poetry as a benchmark for all other writers to emulate. But many of these commentators do not seem

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to understand the dynamics of the works of Brathwaite. They are not aware of a vital connection between Brathwaite and many of the younger artists with their hardcore styles. It is not accurate, in the first place, to position Brathwaite squarely within a literary tradition. His work has been much more rooted in the politics of a disruptive popular culture tradition than many are aware. Herein lies one connection between his work and that of younger dub and dancehall artists: Brathwaite fits squarely within a wider popular culture discourse precisely because his position has been one of oppositionality to what was 'proper' at the time (1960s-1970s) when works such as The Arrivants, Mother Poem and Sun Poem were produced. His work was and is to a large degree orally based. It speaks in the language registers of many so-called uneducated peoples. It privileges their lifestyles and experiences. Brathwaite sought to elevate the nation language. For a long time, the literati and the critical establishment abroad and at home were not prepared to accept this readily. They were not equipped to handle many of his experiments. So disruptive has been his work that it caused a rupture within the then stable literary philosophical establishment in the Caribbean. It created what is still the most passionate confrontation in the history of anglophone Caribbean literature: the Brathwaite versus Walcott aesthetic divide. There is an underground connection between Brathwaite and the more youthful dub/dancehall and rhythm-based poets. When it is shown how Brathwaite's work influenced and preceded many of the performance poets of Jamaica and the Caribbean, then my arguments for a Barbadian aesthetics, which links Kamau Brathwaite to T Farrell, to Adisa, to UP Rick, become more plausible. What we call dub poetry (not to be confused with dub chanting), that is, works by practitioners such as Mikey Smith, clearly has its roots in the music of reggae and the developments of reggae in the 1960s and 1970s. But few analyses have considered Brathwaite as forerunner to 1970s and 1980s dub poetry bards such as Smith and Oku Onuora. Indeed, the term 'dub poetry' has its contested origin in the late 1970s, which is a long time after Brathwaite's influence had been established. When one begins to acknowledge that by the late 1960s, performance pieces such as Brathwaite's "Negus", "Wings of a Dove", "The Dust" and "Rites" were already created on vinyl by Decca Argo, then I think we can begin to contemplate not only the influence of the Jamaican oral and

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music tradition on Brathwaite, but, more significantly here, the immense influence he would also have had on the radical poets of the dub poetry tradition: Smith, Onuora, Benjamin Zephaniah, Mutabaruka and others. Brathwaite appeared on stage and on record much earlier than these poets. So when, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, these major dub poets began to influence the performance tradition in Barbados, it was after they themselves had been influenced by a Barbadian. This is how national art forms and cultures interact and develop. My critical point here goes back to the site of interplay and interactivity between Brathwaite and writers such as 'I' Farrell and Adisa, and the natural progression into the dub genre through Fatman, Jesse James, Kidsite, Lil' Rick, Peter Ram and others. Farrell and Adisa have acknowledged a direct influence by Brathwaite; others have not. There are those who are unaware of the tradition, but there is a hidden connection between the earlier Brathwaite and these newer hardcore performers. This is part of the underground Barbados, not yet widely unearthed by critics, artists or the society itself. This is not a tenuous connection that I refer to, but rather a major conduit in the mapping out of a Barbadian aesthetics. I want to go further by proposing that the latter of these artists are, in some cases, even more attuned to the nuances of the Barbadian nation language and culture than is Brathwaite's poetry. And I speak here not only of the word on page, but of the texts in total. That is, the works in performance and in their performance domains. The Barbadian nation language, in its many formations and intonations, has been projected with unprecedented unabashed forthrightness and potency in such works of the 1980s and 1990s as Farrell's "Busman", "Minibus Hustle", "African Lion on the Loose"; Adisa's "Concrete Jungle", "Ah Come Back Now", "Conscious Again"; Kidsite's "Can't Find Hall"; Ram's "Quicksand"; and Rick's "The Youths". Each of these works has, in one way or another, proved disruptive to notions of good taste. Each has been subversive. But each has, like Brathwaite's work, also undergone a process of contestation and subsumation and has returned to be embraced by agencies of society's mainstream, whether it be at the National Independence Festival of the Creative Arts (NIFCA), the Frank Collymore Hall galas, Crop Over events or as showpieces for visiting emissaries. This is the process whereby popular culture forms disseminate, subvert, negotiate and return to be

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tentatively called creative arts. I say tentatively because there is always a certain care that is taken in re-presenting popular disruptive culture for the limited consumption of the nation's establishment. There is never really a total acceptance in Barbados of the artists mentioned above, never total consumption. Although I am suggesting that underground practices invariably surface to gain wider social acceptance, there are some practices in Barbados that have surfaced in disguise, but of whose underground origins the nation has little or no knowledge. There is a subdiscourse in youth popular culture which has been in operation by and after the late 1980s. This subdiscourse was voiced through original song-poems composed, recorded and disseminated throughout the informal transport system. It developed in consort with the popularity of the dub chanting tradition in Barbados. I am speaking about the creative artistic song-poems of the subversive counterculture, song-poems that have supported the minibus and ZR culture in Barbados.11 This minibus and ZR subculture began to be termed as frightful by the early 1990s. The lifestyles of young Barbadians began to be dramatized in songs by young dub chanting composers. The tracks of these youth discourses flourished within the transport systems of Barbados for a long time. They have not totally died by the .end of the twentieth century, but they are not as widely composed and disseminated as in the earlier part of the 1990s. On public transport a lot of time was spent by Barbadian youths listening to Jamaican dub, but there was also the ongoing composition and informal dissemination of personalized tracks on cassette tapes featuring the lyrics of nonprofessional aspiring artists. There are many personalized audio cassette tapes that were passed on throughout youth culture. Many of these tapes featured local chanters singing in reference to their own contexts. Some of these tapes featured fictitious encounters between males and females, and between the subjects and the police. Unfortunately, the hidden tracks of many of these encounters were never a part of general public consumption or hearing. (My direct reference to individual texts does not therefore appear with accompanying footnotes. Suffice it to say that the lyrics quoted here can be dated between 1990 and 1993.) This following extract might serve as an example of the lyrical tendencies of some of these compositions. The

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composition verges on slackness, but it is built on the effective, witty use of metaphor: he start to undress to show she dundamite he tek off he hat, he hair dundamite she look in he eye, he eye dundamite she tek off he shirt, he chest dundamite But when she look down she holluh wid fright You got too much dundamite an' such a short piece uh fuse . . .

Another major impetus for many of these underground productions was the confrontation among DJs and sound boys. In the following extract, one DJ employs the Gulf War analogy to 'test' (confront) his rival: Dust to dust ash to ash Sound boy claim that he is Hussein in this gulf war clash but move he lyrics plane crash I goin' kill he in this big gulf war clash . . .

There is no more forthright collection of creative artistic expression of the Barbadian body social, than the subversive voicings contained in these hidden tracks of recent history and the present. Contained in the large body of such tapes is an unharnessed and uncritiqued dimension of youth popular culture. One way of better understanding the development of subcultures such as ZR and minibus cultures would be to engage with these often transgressive, creative works. I say creative for a number of reasons. First, because, as the above lyrics demonstrate, there is a certain literary crafting and strategy involved in the creation of these tracks. There is also a high degree of form and structuring to many of the performances recorded on these tapes. An example of this structuring is encoded on this particular performance, which I collected: The music begins Seven minutes of a popular rhythm: "Bandolero" The local chanter intervenes and warns that he will "sit down pun de rhythm" He shouts out to "Admiral Bailey", "a man like Hugo Barrington", "Brigadier" [all local people]

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Stops the rhythm [for one second] Brings it up again Introduces the reason for his present response to other sound boyz: he has been accused of playing in the drug game Music stops Brings up the rhythm again Names the perpetrators Starts to counteract Accuses one opposition of sexual impotence and of being "a damn father crab" Accuses another male of having misplaced sexual proclivities because of how he dresses: "Locks part in two like Houston Whitney,/the back groom down like Cagney and Lacey" Music stops He brings up the rhythm again Names other perpetrators and challenges them etc. . . . Ends with a warning to fresh young girls to "beware the eye-raping Bajan men"

Much of the performance is spontaneous rhyme voiced in quick style. The Bajan intonation rules. It is rich in local metaphors. The simile rules. There is a calculated structuring of the material on tape. It is created to impress the wide underground listenership. As has happened with Brathwaite, Farrell and Adisa, many of the creators of this early 1990s phenomenon have, with time, repositioned themselves to other levels of engagement with society. DJs such as Lil' Rick, Peter Ram, Rameses and Natalie have all renegotiated their stance. They are all now partly legitimized by their involvement in the government-institutionalized Crop Over festival. I have said only partly legitimized because they have kept some of their older subversive traits. These artists are, arguably, still the most unapologetic, perverse and transgressive composers and performers in Barbados. As Brathwaite did, they have both consciously and unconsciously renegotiated their positions in order to be heard in the way that the nation hears them today. They have had to reinterpret their artistic works in order to gain greater access to discourse. By repositioning themselves during the cultural expansion of the 1990s, the young artists have shrewdly ridden on the crest of the wave of popularity at a wider national level. They have gained much broader respect than they had before, though never total respect, one senses,

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because some are still mindful of their youthfulness and volatile positioning. Their re-engagement and reworking of their material is not a new phenomenon within or outside of Barbados. Theirs is a reality of popular culture forms in society. Popular culture is never static. It is not always in direct opposition to society's established institutions. It subverts, inverts and performs cultural metamorphosis, hiding, transforming and resurfacing in disguise, like Anansi. Like the trickster god, these artists become disguised. The establishment and the wider society do not really know them as creative artists. Their creative practice or propensity is never stable, as the category called 'creative arts' wants them to be. Their practice is always shifting. Hence, the creative art of Lil' Rick at Pic-O-De Crop calypso finals in the late 1990s is different from his material on another 'private' occasion, say at Mar's Place in St Lucy. The Pic-O-De Crop performance is more negotiated. Pic-O-De Crop is about singing to a prepared script given to a panel of judges, and singing a rehearsed text and performance; but on the same night at another performance event, Lil' Rick 'licks down' lyrics that would make his earlier performance seem contrived and tame by comparison. This point is made stronger by the fact that his song "ABC", which was recorded and performed to acclaim on national radio in the early 1990s, was only one version. There was also another version of the "ABC", but only for "all bad boys!" This is not a condemnation of the artist; rather, it is an acknowledgment of the guerilla raids by popular culture. Brathwaite and artists of this lineage have, at one time or another, carried out these kinds of raids and negotiations.

Graffiti While the lyrics of dub were audibly licking down the transport system, there were other youthful creators who sought to give voice to their feelings through another medium. To my mind, the single most overlooked body of subversive, disruptive creative art in Barbados can be found in a little-considered form of expression: that is, in graffiti writing. This form of expression, like the other underground form of personalized tapes, has pervaded Barbadian society, but largely without the nation's conscious awareness of it. Graffiti writings on public walls and spaces have

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been speaking the screams, disaffections, violences and injustices within society, as seen by youth popular culture, for a much longer time than one thinks. My ongoing study of this form of expression reveals varying levels of manifestation. These writings, which can be found in communities, on public and private transport vehicles, can be categorized in three phases: 1. 2. 3.

The imitative phase, which is pictorial: creating pictures and realistic visual images. The transition phase, where letters and words become increasingly important. The apocryphal phase, which depicts words in disguise.

The apocryphal phase, where writing appears in disguise, is said to be representative of our postmodern times. It symbolizes society in chaos. Some of this apocryphal writing is to be found in Barbados, although, this is not the dominant phase of graffiti writing to be found locally. Graffiti of the transition phase, are the most popular form in Barbados. This phase is characterized by personal expression and message expression, where words are part of clearly distinguished messages. Some people have offered the underinformed opinion that Barbados does not posses a lot of graffiti. But this is bound to be the conclusion of those who drive swiftly along the major highways; those who do not gaze upon the many creative or upsetting cultural signs. There is a noticeable absence of mural-type drawings, or tags, on the major roads and on walls within what are called "the heights and terraces". But when one veers off the major roads of the mythic Barbados and turns onto some of the gaps, tenantries, lanes and the byways, the texts of these hidden discourses in society are revealed. The concentration of graffiti writing within housing communities is surpassed in quantity only by that which has been put up within the national public transport system. Graffiti found in the transport system is interesting because the government-owned transport buses have always been proliferated with writings and art, whereas the other privately owned buses have been relatively devoid of this disruptive/creative art. One reason for this anomaly is that since privately owned ZRs and minibuses have already been inscribed with their own tags ("Hobbie Class", "De Ruff Ting", "Wu Tang Clan"), they are already symbols of the counterculture. Since putting up graffiti might be interpreted as the act of graffiti writers to conquer and define spaces and 'run things' within the

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vein of society, then the government-owned vehicles are obvious targets. Throughout the 1990s, these vehicles bore the expressive messages of a youth culture denied a significant voice in a highly politicized Barbados, a society that increasingly thrives on patronage and privileging of the already privileged; a society that throughout the 1990s thrived on granting concessions to foreign investors and creating a further disparity between the financially wealthy and the poor. In response to recent tendencies and policies, contemporary graffiti writings scream the following warnings: respect due to the people BORDER VEX . . . JOB # I/ DANGER

A recurring motif in the graffiti tags that continue to proliferate the island is the gun. It appears in all shapes and sizes, from M60s to smaller, more intricately defined pieces. It is significant that in spite of the stiffening of penalties for the illegal possession of firearms, there has continued to be an escalation in gun-related crime by the end of the twentieth century. These drawings of firearms are often surrounded by indefinable names such as Hally, Slim, Ted, Jason, Dan, and semi-military associations such as FBI, KGB, Kuwait. All of these are not the names officially given to districts in Barbados, but they exist as underground communities. Many of these graffiti writers are nonprofessionals. They have not formed themselves into tight-knit writing crews. They do not systematically convene meetings just to write; these crews exist based on other associations. They share the same kinds of social experiences. They live within the same community. Quite often, the writings become sporadic, spontaneous outpourings of their feelings when they meet for social intercou rse. In the school bus context, there is the relative freedom to write and create artistic pieces because of the absence of authority and immediate social restriction. But this should not hide the fact that there are conscious graffiti writers and artists in Barbados. Some school taggers consciously walk with fabric markers and other brushes to put up tags. This is evident

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in the large number of recurring motifs, names, crews that appear with the ® sign, signifying that a particular piece has been registered to and patented by a particular individual. The recurring motifs one observes are evidence that the gangs of artists exist as school and community writing crews. Many recurring motifs highlight the names of individuals and their school names, or the names of individuals and the names of their communities. Often the names of communities are their underground names (Thunder Bay, Afghanistan, Rome, Kuwait). The names of individuals are also in disguise, creating a metatext. The metatext links all those together who are privy to this other culture, so it excludes the oblivious passing observation of an unsuspecting or ignorant Barbadian or visitor. Other kinds of logical or structured features of this subversive art (such as might lead others to call this creative art), concern the male and female politics in much of this writing. By talking to those who write or have written (and after having identified which sex has created different pieces), there are numerous instances where the male and female writings have tended to differ, to be in opposition. Some female writings have tended to exhibit what I call the structure and form of ongoing narratives, that is, the kind of writings that are sequential and in the manner of a give-and-take conversation. This form of narrative sequencing does not characterize male-centred writings. One male graffiti writer has explained to me that he does not conduct his arguments like this, in public; if he has a problem with someone he deals with it in person, as man! But, in fact, there is also a structured ongoing contention between males and females in Barbadian graffiti texts. Many of these confrontations appear less hostile than those between females and females. These male versus female graffiti usually feature the projection of male potency onto the female as object. The female responses are themselves rarely passive. In fact, there seems to be an open defiance by female tags. In one instance, and on the same space, the tag "IRON LOVER MAN" is superimposed by the female response: "Shernelle Nayasha, Lisa In his dreams". To my mind, this kind of female voicing and presence symbolizes the perceived imposing dominance of the female within contemporary Barbadian society. In this domain, the female is not satisfied to remain as fictionalized object, or as gratifying other, but has spoken her subjectivity into fuller presence: something that tags by males have not done as

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consistently and effectively. Certainly, writing is one gateway into the pulse of youth popular culture. It is admirable that more formal poetry writing groups began to surface in the late 1990s, such as the Barbados Writers' Collective and their publication of a Barbadian anthology of verse. But further study and examination of informal art like the graffiti of youth culture is also needed. These writings should all be considered in light of a wider Barbadian aesthetics.

Postlude It does seem to me that, at every stage in its development, there has been a misreading of Barbadian culture. What is also worrying is that there have been relatively few extended academic studies to understanding contemporary popular culture forms, such as those to which I referred here. Barbados has never really understood popular subversive institutions and personages such as the tuk band; landship; the folk song; the folk artist; the calypso; banja singer; Shilling; Lamming; Brathwaite; Bruce St John; Timothy Callender; Jackie Opel; spouge; Okras in de Stew as radio drama; comic theatre and laughter as violation; Harvest Home; Crop Over; subversive gospel stylings of the late 1980s; Blue Wave; Ice; the home recording studio phenomenon; visual arts as cultural realism; dance and national rhythm. All these phenomena have, at given periods within history, been demanding greater expression, understanding and presence. As a nation Barbados has never been able to come to terms with these phenomena in their present. This is partly because of the conservative orientations of the society; partly because of the subversive qualities of much of the creative arts; and partly because the nation has not yet matured enough (politically, socially, culturally) to accept the creative possibilities of an aspiring number of peoples, many young, but all given to the expression of particularly Barbadian aesthetics. Because, presently, the nation is still not doing the job of 'seriously' considering the creative arts, and remarking the trends of popular culture, it is still as an entity undergoing the tremors of a fractured cultural sensibility. Presently, at the end of the twentieth century, music is touted to lead the way in the creative arts, but even this area is requiring greater engagement on a number of levels. One must shudder on hearing the talk

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of creating a culture industry in the near future, with music at the forefront. It is significant that by the mid 1990s the Ministry of Industry was having much say in this new thrust. That is a good sign, since the experts in marketing are being brought on board. But how can one promote a product about which one is not familiar or confident as a nation? How can the nation promise a product by name to buyers, and then proceed to give them something that is not the said named product? The point here is that currently the major artists of Barbados are still being mislabelled for packaging. These artists are not primarily in the 1990s calypso or soca artists, proper. Since the early 1990s, the music of Barbados has changed. Barbadian artists have been at the forefront of projecting a new set of cultural aesthetics to the Caribbean and the world; yet, at home, the nation has not recognized this. The technological moment of the recording studio has inscribed a new set of recording habits that give fuller presence to drums and other percussive constituents. Having learned from Eddy Grant how to harness the power of the drum, and how to strip a musical text to its barest essentials, a number of young recording engineers have begun to experiment further with progressive sounding hardcore rhythmic styles. But, because of a general tentativeness and an unwillingness to take the music to other levels, there are echoes of the 1970s and the spouge era, which again haunt the music industry of Barbados. Spouge became Barbados' major export to the Caribbean and ethnic markets in the metropolises during the 1970s, until it contracted in the mid to late 1970s. In 1995, when the debate surfaced surrounding Ringbang and tuk, one felt that the nation had a unique opportunity to project a popular musical style to the world. Instead, many music and industry personnel considered the Eddy Grant hardcore Ringbang drive as an attempt to co-opt a national rhythm (tuk). And so the debate degenerated into the safety of binary oppositions, and the mainstream industry at home and the press reverted to the safe label of 'soca', to define what Barbadian musicians were re-creating. But soca is no longer an adequate label. The music that young Barbadian artists and musicians are creating for national festivals is much more hardcore. Such is the frailty within Barbadian culture that the nation does not forego personalities to dwell on larger issues of culture, cultures and empowerment. As yet, the nation does not make the critical link between culture and power. Cultural power is not achieved and produced without

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cultural empowerment. Cultural empowerment cannot be achieved without a concerted harnessing of the potential of a people. This harnessing cannot be achieved unless there is a process of acknowledgment, examination, education and dissemination. The present drive towards culture industries seems to want to ignore the groundwork of this dynamics. Cultural administrators want to concentrate solely on the disseminative stage. This is a weakness in the culture projection model of Barbados. It seems imperative that leaders and cultural administrators should consider the power relations within the current global era. Further consideration of the global structure at the turn of the new millennium reveals that economic power is but one facet of global domination. The economic relations are obvious and direct. But there is a much more potent, insidious and dangerous type of global subjugation. This is the subordination and domination of peoples through culture. The lone superpower at the turn of the century continues to render nations such as Barbados as fragile and insignificant through its agencies of culture: through satellite television and other cultural forms. As a result, the nation is unable to achieve or conceive of its own potential. So the nation creates FM station after FM station, which all compete for Top Forty dominance and project narrow play lists. The nation sells rights to a total catalogue of national recordings. The nation does not have functioning catalogues of local productions anywhere. Its archival facilities are on the verge of collapse. At the turn of the century, Barbados is still lacking vital support agencies for buttressing cultural production and generating empowerment. This state of nonconsolidation exists in the presence of a move at official governmental levels to create, politically, a constitutional republic in Barbados. But there are some anomalies. A transition such as this cannot only be affected meaningfully at the level of political administration. Social, and certainly cultural, factors and forces must also propel such national symbolic transitioning. One does feel that the birth of a new republic can emanate wholly as a political implementation by parties; the body culture should be a major player in any such initiative. Maybe it is this realization that saw (what many believed to be) the political commissioning of the song 'The New Republic" (not commercially available) that began to be aired on the first day of 1999: "Yes it's time/Now is time for the new republic ..."

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Long before Barbados can begin exporting cultural products, it must consider the vital relationship that a home-grown product should share with its original habitat and culture. Radio and television must be seen to be critical media for the experiencing of local culture. There are models for projecting cultural products onto the global marketplace. Most of these models suggest that regional products, such as those of Barbados, need to have financial or filial agencies to help project their artists to the world. In the absence of these big brother agencies, it is imperative to consider another option. This option is based on a much more self-reliant series of progressions, building from the local, to the national, to the regional and, finally, to the international scene. Given that Barbados does not have the financial backing to project a performing musical act internationally (it can cost way in excess of Bds$ 1,000,000), 12 the logical process therefore requires, first, the projection of artists locally. As a cultural entity, Barbados is still at this first stage. Its broadcast media still seem indifferent to the creative arts. Even the flagship of the creative arts struggles, calypso, and new hardcore Ringbang creations are not really being projected. It is not an exaggeration that local music constitutes less than 10 percent of the total music output on some FM stations. Programme managers seem to be out of touch with a national project. The extent to which the nation exchanges its sense of cultural difference for a cloned replication of global commodities is best represented by the simultaneous celebration of the birth of Direct TV and the demise of one of the few remaining wireless radio services anywhere in the world: Barbados Rediffusion. The issues of culture, globalization and nations must become of more importance for governments. Through all avenues, greater attempts must be made to reposition the creative arts in Caribbean societies. The creative arts must not be peripheral. They are central to national existence and empowerment. In the global arena of the new millennium, the sphere of confrontation will shift even more significantly towards another site. It is a war that has begun. Increasingly, the creative potential of peoples as expressed through their distinctive culture will position them (favourably) in relation to others who are less well defined. Unless Barbados realizes this soon, in the new technologically and ideologically charged era, then the nation is fated to be culturally cloned by globalization.

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Notes 1.

John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture (London: Routledge, 1992), 23.

2. 3. 4.

Fiske, Popular Culture, 23. Fiske, Popular Culture, 169. Tony Bennett et ol., introduction to Popular Culture: Past and Present, edited by T. Bennett etol. (London: Routledge, 1993), 15. 5. Janet Batsleer et al. (The English Studies Group), "Recent Developments in English Studies at the Centre", in Culture, Media, Language, edited by Stuart Hall etal. (London: Routledge, 1992), 257. 6. Carole Boyce-Davies and E. Fido, eds., Out of the Kumbla (New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1990). 7. Judy Stone, Theatre in the Caribbean (London: Macmillan, 1994). 8. Michael Erlewine et al., eds., All Music Guide (San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books, 1994). 9. From an original presentation made by Al Creighton at an early 1990s conference. A version of this paper appears as 'The Satanic Rehearsals", in Pressures of the Text, edited by Stewart Brown (Birmingham: Centre of West African Studies, 1995), 37^7. 10. Edward Cordle, Overheard (Bridgetown, Barbados 1903). 11.

'ZR' is the name given to privately owned public transport vehicles whose registration plates begin with the letters ZR. 12. Deanne Campbell Robinson et al., eds., Music at the Margins (London: Sage, 1991), 175.

12 Fashioning an Identity The Development of Bajan as a 'Nation' Language

KORAH

BELGRAVE

Introduction In this chapter I look at the Bajan vernacular as an integral part of the Barbadian identity and emphasize the need for Barbadians to recognize and accept the vernacular as an important part of their heritage and thereby empower themselves. A sense of self-respect and self-esteem is vital for any people who aim to recognize and claim their nationhood. Alleyne postulates that speakers of the Creoles or patois have generally accepted and maintained the characterization of their speech as intrinsically inferior to the European languages, and they are thus "naively aiding and abetting the continuation of this main barrier to their empowerment".1 One important step in accepting and recognizing who we are as a nation is acceptance of all the aspects that constitute the whole of our identity. Acceptance, however, depends on knowledge. As Alleyne emphasizes, " 'Knowledge is power'; or rather, from a sociological perspective, it gives power to individuals, groups, nations that possess it."2 Richard Allsopp, in the dedication to the Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage, quotes a Swahili proverb which expounds thus, 256

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The beginning of Wisdom Is Knowing who you are.3

This aptly sums up the need for Barbadians to recognize that part of them that is realized in and through the language they speak. Barbadians need knowledge about their vernacular language variety in order to understand and accept it as linguistically equal to the European language varieties. Part of this knowledge lies in becoming aware of the genesis of the language and of the myriad sources from which it has drawn its material. The local vernacular, usually called Bajan, is a hybrid variety that has drawn not only from African languages but from the European varieties spoken on the island during its early history. Much of the writing on Bajan has concentrated on identifying its African survivals and the features that support its claim to being a Creole. The European contribution has been largely accepted as a contribution to the lexicon. However, there is a need to identify the European contribution in the other areas of phonology and morphosyntax. In this paper, I seek to highlight those areas where survivals, mainly from Scottish and Irish English, may be found in contemporary Bajan. I suggest that, in the process of creolization, those features that the language varieties involved in the contact situation had in common are the features that survived in the Creoles. Therefore, even though they may be found in the African languages, they may have also existed in the European languages in contact.

Language and Nationhood The concept of 'nation' seems to be made up of three important aspects - a particular place that constitutes a country, a people and a language. The language of a people is so closely bound up in the notion of this group constituting an entity called 'nation' that many nations are labelled by the same word or a derivative of the word that names their language. Therefore, the people of Spain are called Spaniards and speak Spanish; people of Greece are Greeks and their language is Greek; the peoples of China are Chinese and their language is also Chinese. Likewise, people who live in Barbados are called Barbadians (or informally Bajans) and

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speak a language variety called Bajan. The language spoken by any group of people is a reflection of who they are; it reflects their beliefs, customs, practices, culture and history. Language therefore acts as a repository of all that constitutes a nation. It has been suggested by linguists, such as Sapir and Whorf, that the language we speak conditions our view of reality and of the world around us. Sapir proposes: Human beings . . . are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society . . . We see, hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.4

Whorf goes further to suggest that the role language plays in our lives goes beyond creating a predisposition to view life in a particular manner. He sees it as being ultimately responsible for the way in which we perceive of the world around us. Whorf theorizes that We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language . . . The world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux. Of impressions which have to be organized by our minds - and this means largely by the linguistic systems on our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it this way - an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified by the patterns of our language.5

This analysis gives us some insight into how important it is for nations to seek a language variety with which to identify as intimately as they identify with the other symbols of nationhood, such as a flag, an anthem and a coat-of-arms. For Barbadians, on the brink of the twenty-first century and contemplating republic status, it is all the more important to have a language variety they can identify as their own; a variety which is distinct from that imposed on them by their colonial masters. Barbadians need to empower themselves by recognizing their language as a viable and important one. This calls for them to re-evaluate their attitudes towards their indigenous language variety. Most Barbadians view their native language as 'broken' English and consider it to be a mishmash of carelessly spoken English words. Nothing could be further from the truth. Bajan is as legitimate a pedigree as is

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English. The establishment of Bajan as a legitimate variety can best be realized through a study of its development within the social and linguistic situation of Barbados.

A Sociolinguistic Profile of Barbados Barbados was a colony of Britain for over three hundred years and never changed hands. Therefore, a language contact situation existed that involved only two language families: English and African. The varieties of English included Irish, Scottish and British while the African languages included varieties of the Twi, Igbo and Ewe families. For this continuous period, English served as the superstrate language and West African languages as the substrate. Loreto Todd postulates that when speakers of a pidgin can no longer use their mother tongue to communicate, this provides the conditions for a Creole to emerge. A Creole arises when the pidgin becomes the mother tongue of the people. A pidgin is defined as a "marginal language which arises to fulfil certain restricted communication needs among people who have no common language". Since the contact is often limited to transaction in the early stages a small vocabulary, restricted syntax and morphology suffices.6 A Creole has native speakers, whereas a pidgin has none. Early Barbados presented the classic Creole situation of a dominant white planter group and a subordinate black slave group with little interaction between them. However, Ian Hancock classifies Bajan as a dialectal form of English rather than as a Creole.7 He further contends that there was a local metropolitan variety of English being spoken in Barbados from as early as 1700. He maintains that this situation developed because the whites outnumbered the blacks in this early period and so played the major role in the development of the language. He argues for an early and rapid crystallization of the language, proposing that it crystallized within the first seventy years. Hancock proposes that by the time blacks outnumbered whites, the dialectal forms would have been firmly established. He uses the writings from a number of authors writing on Barbados to support his thesis.8 John Roy refutes Hancock's argument.9 As noted by Peter Roberts, Roy cites a letter from Barbados to John Winthrop in the first year of coloni-

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zation, 1627, which gives a figure of sixty whites to forty Negroes and Indians. He also notes that by 1650, the Negroes were double the number of whites.10 Niles and Cassidy strongly rejected Hancock's view. In their opinion, creolization did happen when Barbados had become a classic sugar colony with a great number of blacks (80 percent of the population) and the major supplier of slaves for the other Caribbean islands.11 Roy, who pointed out that a basilectal speech variety was still present in an isolated Barbadian fishing village, gives further support for Cassidy's view. Roy uses the verbal system of the variety that he found to classify Bajan as a Creole. Roy also argued that in Barbados creolization had taken place earlier and more completely than elsewhere in the Caribbean.12 Roberts and Rickford and Handler suggest, however, it is highly unlikely that everyone in early Barbados spoke the same variety.13 Based on Alleyne, a much more realistic picture is one in which several varieties basilectal, mesolectal and acrolectal -coexisted.14 During the early formative period African languages interacted with varieties of English, which included mainland English as well as Scottish and Irish English. The language of the whites had considerable impact on the variety that became Bajan. Hilary Beckles points out that the whites on the island were composed in large number of prisoners of war. He estimates that between 1649 and 1655, Barbados received thousands of English, Scots and Irish prisoners.15 Since this was a critical period in the formation of an island variety, it seems logical to conclude that the Irish and Scots also left their legacy in the language we speak. Much research has concentrated on the African survivals in Barbadian speech and little emphasis has been placed on documenting those features that seem to have direct links to the European languages. These features include, but are not limited to, vocabulary items, and they can be classified as phonological, morphosyntactic and lexical.

Phonological Features There are some phonological features of early Bajan that no longer exist is contemporary Bajan. Linda Fields pointed out the presence of epithetic vowels in early Bajan - "she was spoily all her life by poor massa" (she has been spoilt all her life by poor master).16 Fields further suggests that

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this may be due to the fact that Africans were restructuring English words to fit the phonotactics of African languages, since words in African languages tend to end in vowels. The /t/r/ variation, "Wharra for you curse me den?" (Why did you curse me?), and /r/d/ variation, "I no been veddy fond of my sister" (I was not very fond of my sister), were also a part of the early variety. One may still find residues of the epithetic vowels in St Philip, St Lucy, and St Peter. Expressions such as ('micey micey' for 'mouse' and 'looka' for 'look' are still heard in these areas.17 Barbadians speak with a high and consistent level of nasalization (talking though one's nose) and glottalization (ends of the vowels are swallowed). As a result, a sentence such as "I am not going to tell what I am going to do" is heard as [A e g9 te? yu ws? A gs du]. The glottal stop [?], which is such a prominent feature of Bajan speech, has been identified by Aitken as "the most notorious of all Scottish 'vulgarisms', and constantly condemned from 1895 until today".18 Aitken's vulgarisms are those features of Scottish speech that are condemned as 'bad Scots' and are stigmatized as working class speech. Harris points out that the palatization of 'k', 'g', 'n' before front vowels, which is a characteristic feature of Bajan ('kyar', car; 'kyaan', can't; 'gyard', guard; 'nyu', new), is a characteristic feature of Irish English dialects throughout Ireland.19 It is interesting that these forms should be found in Bajan vernacular since their presence seems to confirm the influence of working class Scottish and Irish dialects in Barbados during the creolization period. Barbadians also tend to produce the vowel glide/diphthong [01] where other varieties of English have [ai ] as in 'I', 'my' or 'rice'. Aitken also noted a similar tendency in vernacular Scots and Standard Scottish English. According to him, words such as 'Boyd', 'choice', 'noise', 'boy' and 'joy', which are realized with the vowel [01] in the Scottish vernacular, became [Di] in the Standard English varieties.20 Another prominent feature in Bajan is the use of the post-vocalic /r/ in words such as bird, card, garden, which was also a feature of Irish English. Aitken also notes that the use of /r/ in all environments "is popularly supposed to be characteristically Scottish".21 In contemporary as well as early Bajan, the /th/ sound is replaced by /t/ and /d/. Anglo-Irish speakers also replaced /th/ with /t/ and /d/, since /th/ is not a part of the Irish phonological system.

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Morphosyntactic Features In the area of morphology, early Bajan shows interesting features. Fields noted that nouns are not marked for the plural, "Den, all de head of his servants is cut off" (Then, all the heads of his servants are ait off). In Bajan, as in other Creoles, the third person plural pronoun 'dem' is used as a plural marker, as seen in "Dey no can scape dem iron bar" (They cannot escape the iron bars). Juxtaposition is used to indicate possession - "De white people luck prebail" (The white people's luck prevailed).22 Marking pronouns for case and gender was absent in early Bajan. Fields notes that 'him' was used as an all-purpose pronoun which was caseless, genderless and numberless.23 The use of the pronoun 'mines' to show possession by a first person is characteristic of Bajan. Aitken points out that this was a feature that marked a person's speech as characteristically Scottish.24 In contemporary Bajan, as in other Caribbean English-based Creoles, there are no case or gender distinctions in the pronominal system. The pronominal system has changed over time (see table below). For example, 'mi' as a subject has been replaced by /ai/ and /a/. Contemporary Bajan Pronoun System25

Singular

Nominal

Object

Possessive

1st

ai

mii

mii

2nd

yu

yu

yu

3rd

ii/shi

ii/shi

ii/shi

um

um

um

1st

wi

wi

wi

2nd

wuna

wuna

wuna

3rd

deh/dem

dem

dem

Plural

In parts of St George and Christ Church, /ii/ has been maintained as an all-purpose form; for example, "How is your mother?", "ii ohrait". The neutral pronoun 'om' is commonly used in contrast to the other Creoles, "Wa di chail is?", "Om is a boy" (What is the child? It is a boy).

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Lexical Features Barbadians use three unique exclamations 'bo', 'c'dear' and 'wulloss'. 'Bo' is used at the beginning or at the end of utterances, and in meaning is like Standard English 'alas', expressing disappointment or sorrow or mild fearfulness about the future. 'Bo' has diminutive endearing form, 'bosie'. 'C'dear' expresses sympathy for someone (second or third person) who is suffering in some way. 'Wulloss' is an exclamatory reaction to a disaster. There are also a number of words, expressions and idioms found in Bajan that have their counterparts in either Scots or Irish English. Bliss identifies the following words as Irish words which never seemed to belong to Standard English: 'press' (cupboard) and 'disremember' (forget).26 Among more conservative speakers, Irish words such as 'bonny clabber' and 'smithereens' are commonplace, as are expressions such as "to tell the God's truth", which is usually a form of swearing and is intended to assert the truth of what follows. This expression is also used in contemporary Bajan as an expression of dismay at witnessing an action that is not acceptable behaviour. P.W. Joyce asserts that expressions such as "I'll break your head for you", where for you is used as an emphasizer, is a direct translation of an Irish saying, as is the peculiar use the reflexive pronouns in expressions such as "I was looking about the fair for myself"; just at that moment I happened to be walking by myself. This use of 'by myself to mean alone has its equivalent in the Irish 'tiom fein'. Barbadians are fond of saying 'let me see' to mean 'give me', as in "Let me see the knife" (Give me the knife). Joyce points out that the Irish also used the word 'show' to mean 'give'. For example, "Show me that knife" (Give me that knife). 27 It is now part of vernacular speech to threaten to make someone "smell hell" or to hate something "like the devil hates holy water". These were also current in Irish English. The Irish often expressed strong dislike by saying "I don't like a bone in his body", while Bajan say "I don't like the best bone in his body". In Irish English, very bad slow music is characterized as "the tune the old cow died of". Bajans use this expression to refer to bad singing, or to a song that is slow and mournful as "the tune the old cow died on". A common Irish expression which Joyce notes is a

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translation from English, "single one of them", is also common in Bajan speech. Bajans say "My heart was in my mouth" to express Standard English "You gave me a start", which is closely related to the Irish saying, "My heart jumped into my mouth". Like the Irish, Barbadians use the expression "Put that in your pipe and smoke it" to clinch an argument or to confirm a hard fact that has to be accepted, and they often use the expression "wouldn't know B from a bull's foot" to refer to an illiterate person, which Joyce has also recorded as found in Irish speech. The expression "can't hear my ears" is also used by the Irish, as in "You're making such noise that I can't hear my ears". The expression 'for good' is used to mean 'finally', as in "He left home for good", is noted by Joyce in Irish English and is also common in Barbados. Older Barbadians are often heard to exclaim when hungry, "My stomach wondering if my throat cut", which seems a replica of the expression reported by Joyce of a man who had been left fasting too long complaining, "My stomach will think that my throat is cut".28 The use of 'glebe' to name land specifically connected to a rector's residence is a particularly Irish use of the word, which still survives in modern Barbados. The word 'great' is still used in parishes such as St Peter to refer to having a close friendship with someone. This meaning of the word is also noted by Joyce in Irish English; for example, 'Tom Long and Jack Fogarty are very great". Another area in which similarities can be found between Bajan and Irish English is in that of proverbs. The Irish proverb, "If he had a shilling in his pocket it would burn a hole through it" (often said of a spendthrift) has its counterpart in the Bajan saying "Money does burn a hole in his pocket". The Bajan proverb "Don't send a boy to do a man's job" closely resembles the Irish "No use sending a boy on a man's errand". Joyce writes that Irish have the tendency as Barbadians do to substitute responders, such as 'uhm-hm' for 'yes' and 'no'. In addition, they use at all as an emphatic ending of sentences.29 Irish and Scottish surnames such as Fogarty, Reid, Farrell, Riley, Roach, Herbert, McCollin, McDonald, McAllister and Burke are common names throughout Barbados.

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Conclusion The evidence that there were residual pidgin-like features in early Bajan is strong and lends support to the theory that Bajan probably went through the classical pidgin/creole/decreolization cycle. The process of decreolization was very rapid in Barbados for a number of reasons. First, the island was small in size - only 166 square miles. Second, it had no mountain ranges or rivers to act as natural barriers. Third, the early infrastructural development of the island helped to ensure that no groups remained isolated from the decreolizing influence of the church, commerce, government and education. Such was the interaction among villages that it led to the island being described as a single community.30 There is some regional as well as social variation within contemporary Barbadian speech communities. The regional variation is mainly in the area of accent. It is possible to distinguish a number of regional accents. These accents may be divided into urban and rural, where the varieties spoken in and around the suburbs of Bridgetown may be contrasted with those spoken in the rural parishes of St Lucy, St Philip, St Peter, St Andrew and Christ Church. However, further distinctions can be made between the variety spoken in St Lucy and that spoken in St Philip; or between that spoken in two parishes as close as St Lucy and St Peter, although these may not be easily perceived except by native speakers. Although social stratification is not as marked as it was previously, it is still present to some extent and it is possible to distinguish varieties linked to social class. The differences in social varieties tend to be largely in the areas of pronunciation and vocabulary. It is also possible to recognize some white Barbadians on the basis of their accent, referred to by some locals as the "plantation accent". Syntactic and morphological features found in Creoles suggest that the features retained in the Creoles were those common to all the language varieties in contact and not just those that had a base in the African languages. The processes of accommodation that the Gaelic languages underwent in contact with English seem to parallel those processes that took place during creolization.

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Glossary Acrolect Aspect

The level of speech in a creole-continuum that is said to be close to the standard language. A grammatical notion used to described an action that took place, or a situation that existed before time of speaking or before another action or state being used by the speaker as a point of reference.

Bajan

Term used to refer to Barbadian speech.

Basilect

The level of speech in a creole-continuum that is furthest removed from the standard.

Decreolization

A movement away from Creole forms and towards the norms of the lexically related standard forms.

Lexicon Mesolect

Linguistic term used to refer to the vocabulary of a language. The level of speech in a creole-continuum that is between the acrolect and the basilect.

Morphology

The study of the structure of words.

Phonology

The study of the sounds of a language.

Serialization

Occurrence of two or more verbs in a sentence without any intervening connective words. The study of the grammar of a language.

Syntax

Notes 1.

Mervyn Alleyne, "Language and Empowerment in the Caribbean: Historical Basis and Contemporary Dynamics", in The Critical Tradition of Caribbean Political Economy: The Legacy of George Beckford, edited by Kari Levitt and Michael Witter (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Handle Publishers, 1996), 77.

2. 3.

Alleyne, "Language and Empowerment", 71. Richard Allsopp, Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). Edward Sapir, 'The Status of Linguistics", Language 5 (1950): 207 Benjamin Lee Whorf, quoted in f.B. Carrol, Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf (Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1956), 138-39. Loreto Todd, Pidgins and Creoles (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974), 3.

4. 5.

6.

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7.

Ian Hancock, "Gullah and Barbadian: Origins and Relationships", American Speech 55, no. 1 (1980): 17-35. 8. For example, J. Cruickshank, "Negro English, with Reference Particularly to Barbados", Timehri 3d ser., 1, and Black Talk (Demerara: Argosy, 1916); A. Burns, A History of the British West Indies (London: Allen and Unwin, 1954); R.B. LePage, "General Outlines of Creole English Dialects in the British Caribbean", Orbis 6 and 7 (1957-58); S. Greenfield, English Rustics in Black Skin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966); John Reinecke, "Marginal Languages: A Sociological Survey of the Creole Languages and Trade Jargons" (PhD diss., Yale University, 1937); Peter Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stone Rebellion (New York: Knopf, 1974). 9. John D. Roy, 'The Structure of Tense and Aspect in Barbadian English Creole", in Focus on the Caribbean: Varieties of English Around the World, edited by M. Gorlach and John Holm (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1986). 10. Peter Roberts, 'The Fabric of Barbadian Language" (Paper presented at the Ninth Biennial Conference of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados, 26-29 August 1992). 11. Niles 1980 and Cassidy 1986 cited in Linda Fields, "Early Bajan: Creole or Non-Creole", in The Early Stages of Creolization, edited by Jacques Arends (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1995), 90. 12. Roy, 'The Structure of Tense and Aspect". 13. Roberts, 'The Fabric of Barbadian Language"; John Rickford and Jerome Handler, 'Textual Evidence on the Nature of Barbadian Speech 1627-1887" (Paper presented at the Ninth Biennial Conference of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados, 26-29 August 1992). 14. Mervyn Alleyne, "Acculturation and the Cultural Matrix of Creolization", in Pidginization and Creolization of Languages, edited by Dell Hymes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 169-86. 15. Hilary McD. Beckles, White Servitude, Black Slavery in Barbados 1627-1715 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989). 16. Fields, "Early Bajan". 17. Ibid. 18. A.J. Aitken, "Scottish Accents and Dialects", in Language in the British Isles, edited by Peter Trudgill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 108. 19. John Harris, "English in the North of Ireland", in Language in the British Isles, edited by Peter Trudgill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 118. 20. Aitken, "Scottish Accents", 96-97.

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21. Ibid., 102. 22. Fields, "Early Bajan". 23. Ibid., 95-96. 24. Aitken, "Scottish Accents". 25. Taken from Fields, "Early Bajan". 26. A. Bliss, "English in the South of Ireland", in Language in the British Isles, edited by Peter Trudgill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 141. 27. P.W. Joyce, English as We Speak it in Ireland (London: Longman, Green and Co., 1910), 38. 28. Joyce, English as We Speak it in Ireland. 29. Ibid. 30. David Lowenthal, West Indian Societies (London: Oxford University Press, 1972).

13 Gathering Forces Barbados and the Viability of the National Option

DON

D.

MARSHALL

In the efforts by Barbadian power holders to comprehend globalization, there is an air of melodrama that suggests either that something is happening far beyond the powers of the establishment to recognize it, or that nothing of the moment is occurring. True enough, celebratory and defensive expressions of nationalism have been communicated through displays of objects, symbols and representations. Witness the enactment of an emancipation day, a national heroes' day, the official exoneration of the freedom fighters involved in the 1937 social disturbances, and the planned removal of the statue of Lord Horatio Nelson from the capital.1 However, any satisfaction to be experienced from these developments should not obscure the country's conspicuous problems with restructuring the political economy. The current struggle for (postcolonial) small island-state recognition, mobilized under the banner of nationalism, masks a profound two-way crisis laced with the potential of delegitimizing the ruling power bloc. One aspect of this crisis relates to the unflinching bias towards nontradable investment on the part of the leading economic class. The other has to do with the character of the state itself, largely populist orientated and not developmentally driven despite the free trade challenges of the contem269

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porary world order. These distinctions provide clues to the persistent domination of commerce over production in the Barbadian economy. Far from occupying two airtight spheres, however, the commercial impulse and the populist instinct are imbricated so as to reinforce each other dialectically. Since the Barbadian state apparatus continues to be the instrument of a black petit bourgeois political class that, like merchant capital, is not sited in any production process, developmentalism careens down towards regime-consolidation exigencies and the retention of the status quo. This mode of governance has set in motion pro-consumer, welfare dependent tendencies that, together with the short-term outlook characteristic of banks, politicians and the local wealthy elite, produces a culture that valorizes the ease of commerce over the challenge of industry. Not surprisingly, the energy expended in mounting an effective politicaleconomic response to globalization has not extended beyond the promotion of 'services' as the key to survival in the international system and a rekindling of regionalism. Considerable energy has also been extended across cultural-valuational dimensions, witnessed by the struggle to defend the country's identity, to limit cultural domination and to win recognition as a small-island developing state.2 This activity amounts to a mystification of political theatre. The plain truth is that the adaptive capabilities of the existing social structure appear to be exhausted as the limits of the post-independence dynamic of accumulation have been reached. Conceptually, Barbados is not presumed to be a 'natural' geographical unit, rather, it is a produced space. Territorialization, deterritorialization and reterritorialization of space under capitalism is an ongoing process. Over time, regions pulsate; that is, they expand or contract in scalar terms dependent upon the state of the global political economy, ecological and institutional constraints, and particular relationships between capital and labour. A nation state is, in essence, a constitutive moment within (as opposed to something derivatively constructed by) the dynamics of wealth accumulation and class struggle. It is not a frozen ontological given, as it remains amenable to social (re) construction. This conception is important for liberating us from the more confining language of constitutionalists and realists who fold processes of state formation and dissolution into debates on sovereignty and force a closure on regional consciousness.

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To be sure, this essay extends the dialogue on Caribbean populism by taking a closer look at state posture in Barbados.3 My larger aim, however, is to connect two social problematics: the small-island nation state and regionalism. In what follows, I shall consider the following hypothesis: in a small ex-slave society confronted by limitations in terms of scale and scope, an alliance between the state and merchant capital stymies the developmental process precisely because of the mutually shared shortterm outlook of state managers involved in the politics of regime consolidation, and businessmen committed to low-risk commercial endeavours. This is overlaid by the double jeopardy populist-statism itself poses at different macro levels. It creates a developmental impasse at the state level as it relates to seizing opportunities for deepening the capital accumulation process in the direction of industry. Populist-statism also creates an impasse at the regional level when it comes to economic pressure for enhanced integration. As it currently stands, the state-level developmental impasse is being projected towards the regional level, with the regional level reflecting this impasse back towards the state. This amounts to a self-perpetuating developmental paradox, the nature of which makes the prognosis for the future appear quite grim indeed.

Restructuring Global Capitalism and the Development Debate By global standards, Barbados occupies an important position in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)-based human development index (HDI). In all measures of the HDI, including life expectancy at birth, adult literacy rate, mean years of schooling, educational attainment, real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, Barbados ranks at the top of Caribbean countries, and twenty-ninth overall among all the countries in the world.4 The island's small size, susceptibility to natural disasters, fragile export profile, dependence upon energy imports, and reliance on external sources of finance represent vulnerabilities not yet important enough to dissuade World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials from according it the status of a middle income country. Seemingly, the positive performance and rankings in the vari-

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ables mentioned above should make Barbados an attractive site for productive capital. However, this has not been the case as new technologies and global capitalist intensification are having a flattening effect on the social and political coordinates of Barbados. The geopolitical architecture of our world has changed immensely since 1989. Within sovereign territories today, new flows of communication and information are decentring once sovereign authorities, multiplying operational spaces, dividing ties of belongingness, and mixing zones of rules. Add to this the expanding mobility rights of capital captured in trade liberalization and deregulation imperatives, the increasing power/influence of transnational corporations, and increasing interpenetration of national monetary spaces, and we get a picture of the nationstate system in crisis. Drucker, for example, speaks of "the disempowerment of nation-states", pointing to the combined impact of three related forces: the "transnationalism" of multilateral treaties and suprastatal organizations; the "regionalism" of economic blocs such as the European Union (EU) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA); and the struggle for recognition in modern political conflict, one leading to an increasing emphasis on diversity and identity.5 While it is reasonable to treat such developments as constituting a historical challenge to governmental authority, it is still premature to speak, as some scholars do, of the terminal decline of the state. Leaving aside the question of what constitutes a nation state, given the peculiar configurations history throws up,6 every 'nation' needs, demands or is entitled to a 'state' as the prime form of political representation and power. To speak instead of a transcendence of forms of state and patterns of world order is to recognize the long-run trajectory of statehood. Recent interpretations on the fate of the state point to an irreversible evaporation of authority downward to civil society, sideways to transnational corporations (TNCs) and upward to intergovernmental organizations and international financial institutions (IFIs).7 In these accounts, and those privileging the effects of the new information technologies, there is a tendency to downplay how the balance of socioglobal forces is held together by a single historically contingent factor: namely, the continued hegemony of neoliberal forces and accompanied individuated ideologies.8 At any rate, the terminal state discourse occludes understanding on the politics of ascent and forecloses discussion on strategies for dealing

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with globalization. There are some countries that can benefit from investment and trade creation opportunities rising in the wake of global changes and others that cannot. Such distinctions cry out for nuanced interpretation. Invariably, successful development outcomes are conditioned by the domestic enterprise culture and balance of class forces, state posture, economic fundamentals, historical timing (and sheer luck), and a facilitating world context. The neoliberal fantasy of a greater respect for, and reliance on, selfregulating markets and the 'sovereignty-at-bay' argument employed by some globalization proponents have, however, channelled debates on development on the wrong track. Some states are well and strong, while others are experiencing legitimacy crises. Some countries have ample capacity to decide things while other countries, particularly those deeply in debt, have less choice. Most countries also face trade-offs, say between welfare or equity on one side and growth on the other, and several combinations may possibly be - to use a neoclassical metaphor - on the feasible 'indifferent curve' of constituencies. To be sure, changing technology and free market imperatives force Third World governments to reinvent and refine their comparative advantage function within the restructuring world economy. This task has proven to be politically explosive, as governments have endeavoured to deal simultaneously with political pressure from inside and the need to stay competitive in the post-Cold War order. Certainly there remains no blueprint on how countries with different historical and institutional starting points should proceed with the transition from full-employment capitalist models to ones reflective of a free market format,9 or prepare for a world in which natural resource endowment and cheap abundant labour supplies no longer provide safe pillars for economic viability. In a generic sense countries face three straightforward choices in global capitalism: join, leave or weave through it. Gereffi's identification of the possible responses to globalization echo those mentioned above.10 As he suggests, state power holders of aspirant countries should seek to internationalize national industries (more typical of the East Asian developmental states), pursue integrated international production strategies (more typical of Latin America), or pursue "autarchy". The autarchy or exit option leads to economic marginalization and is therefore not realistic. To join is to simply hitch one's fate to the magic of the market. This is the

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subtext of neoliberal globalization discourse. As the arguments go, 'globalization' looms and countries must prepare themselves accordingly. From this perspective, state management tends to be shifted away from issues surrounding the pursuit of ascent and towards accommodation of and adaptation to the 'new era' of international business. To simply plunk for an integrated international production strategy is to run the risk of creating a bifurcation within the political economy, one where the offshore enterprise is almost delinked from the host economy. To avoid this, the state has to ensure that there is some technology transfer and wider integration of the offshore operation in the local economy.11 To weave through contemporary global capitalism requires a development strategy aimed at boosting/creating an autonomous industrial capacity; internationalizing local industries; customizing the telecommunications, education and training environment; and invigorating research and development capacities. Briefly, there are three competing arguments that dominate broad social science theory relative to the issue of ascent in the world system. These are as follows: (1) classical political economists argue that there are mutual benefits for all to derive in international trading; (2) neorealists caution that the world is still largely power political and this consequently militates against weak actors; (3) structuralists point to unequal exchange dynamics, noting that the global economy does not present enough neutral space for all states to succeed within. In development studies, these arguments are condensed and reflected in a largely two-sided debate, that is, between those that advance an 'inside-out' understanding of development and underdevelopment, and those that proffer 'outsidein' explanations. Neoclassicists emphasize, for example, that development comes about once domestic elites in state and industry pursue the 'correct' application of 'growth-generating policies'. Structuralists, on the other hand, deny that global capitalism provides any ready answer for countries at the periphery. These frameworks seeking to explain development or underdevelopment are false antitheses structuring a split between domestic and international factors. Put another way, we are left with the dichotomization of state and world levels of analysis. There is a need then for an analytical shift away from either nation states or strictly world-scale processes, to one that looks at the governing processes of state and societal transformation.

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In addition, we need to shift the development discourse away from treating the unflattering performance of most Third World countries over the last fifty years as either evidence of poor policy application, or proof of the post-1500 law of 'development of underdevelopment'. These polar extremes neither inspire nor highlight how peripheral countries could pursue a 'third way'; that is, a developmentalist path based on a resolve to exercise state power in more dynamic ways. Such an insight can be partially gleaned from the developmental state perspective currently in vogue, pace the rise of the East Asian newly industrialized countries (NICs).12 The argument is that the 'invisible hand' of markets and good state management accounted for the success of 'late developers'. Onis, for example, argues that the phenomenon of the late developer rests with the strategic role the state played in taming domestic and international forces and harnessing them to national ends.13 Johnson and White have also advanced Friedrich List's idea of dirigisme (that is, state activism) to explain the rise of Japan and the East Asian NICs.14 Wade in turn speaks of the need to focus on the role of the state as "historical animator" in developmentalist "catch-ups", while Jomo, looking at the recent financial crisis in East Asia, attributes the recovery of the first-tier East Asian NICs (Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, along with China) to the sustained developmental character of the state.15 We are reminded, however, by cycles-theorists and world-systems analysts that ascent has never ben a scientific projection of a straight line going up. This is so because, while effective state planning, responsive policy networks, sound fiscal management and high exports do play a part in accumulating wealth, there remain too many forces outside the control of a single country to guarantee sustainable success. Ecological imperatives, social relations, interstate relations and other processes at the global, regional and local levels act either to inhibit or foster social change. Geographic shifts, cycles of core-hegemony, of war, trade and other variables, however, confirm continuous movement in the political economy of the world system. It also confirms that the core-periphery antinomy remains fluid and open to historical and human contingencies. I have argued elsewhere that it is from the aforementioned cycles and processes that a transformative dialectic may present itself to a few countries.16 This translates into a (unique) structural opportunity for an aspirant country to expand and deepen its industrial-commercial base.

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The key has been to manipulate favourable opportunities that may arise at such conjuncturally sensitive moments. Such opportunities may include commodity price hikes; the discovery of new markets, industries or technologies; substantial injections of foreign aid, investment, technology or expertise; special market access pacts (or free trade areas); and such others that may arise from within the designs of the hegemonic strategy of a core state. A sufficient combination of the opportunities named above can act as a stimulus to 'graduation' in the international system. Based on the insights drawn from competing development paradigms, I would suggest that seizing fortuna in the international political economy inheres three basic elements: (1) a structural opportunity; (2) rational comprehension of movement in the world system on the part of political elites; and (3) a historically specific kind of social structure. This social structure must be conducive to developmental planning and strategizing. Indeed, there is considerable evidence that in the medium to longer term, economic development has been associated with developmentalist states bent on encouraging diverse forms of manufacturing enterprise which in itself spawned the proliferation and growth of adjunct 'services'.17 We can thus glean from the extant literature discussed above that those elements making for a catalytic social structure include the following: 1. The state must have the capacity to implement policy measures with the compliance of different social strata. 2. Traditional aristocracies must represent a compliant or subordinate faction within the newly configuring power elite in aspirant countries. This is because old capitalist classes (that is, landlords and merchants) tend to respond to a conservative impulse and would clamour for state power to be used "in traditional fashion to protect social privilege rather than foster growth".18 In Barbados, the psychology and social identity of the wealthy bourgeoisie is that of a businessman, not that of a captain of industry. 3. A fairly high degree of bureaucratic and institutional competence must be in place. 4. A predominant 'entrepreneurial' culture must exist. This entrepreneurial culture is reflected in the "mental software" of the society - that is, prevailing attitudes, values, beliefs - and is the outcome of a "social system that places high value on the formation of new ventures" and economic expansionism.19 Entrepreneurship is

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thus expressed by "an overwhelming zeal to create, to succeed, to build, to make things happen".20 If the seizure of structural opportunities at sensitive historical moments is key to ascent or economic renewal, this calls for a degree of cognition on the part of elites with the inclination, capacity and network influence to encourage shifts in policy and sectors, and it requires compliance among societal actors. This beckons an analysis of the social composition of the state and its relationship to or effect on developmental processes. The commercial circuit gives Barbados its character and its low-risk profile. Real estate and property development, insurance, finance and banking, transport and communications, import-trading, and construction predominate in the Barbadian economy with tourism serving as the main foreign exchange earner, and the state the biggest employer. Agriculture and manufacturing lag behind not only in terms of their respective contributions to the GDP but at the intersection of global and hemispheric imperatives as well. Merchant capitalists are not so much part of the ruling class as they are society's leading class. Their characteristics, social position, values and expectations register deeply into material society. Over time the class configurations of the state and society would produce a distorted mirror of contradictions. State provision of populist measures, such as free education, health care and subsidized transport, has fostered the expansion of a middle class, allowed for a quality of life unmatched in the country's history, guaranteed some measure of political stability, inflated social expectation, and increased the allure of Barbados to the foreign visitor and investor alike. This expanded middle class could reproduce itself largely through job opportunities available in the professions and the civil service, but, after some thirty-three years, no new economic class has emerged from within this group to displace the traditional merchant capitalist elite. Indeed, the shared questions and feelings, abortive procedures, and mock dead ends associated with the debate on the fluctuating fortunes of 'small black businesses' miss the point of the overwhelming commercial bias of these enterprises in an economy where established commercial-dealing capitalists predominate. Where once the hegemony of commerce over production could be offset by the logic of the Cold War alliance system, easy lines of international credit, preferential market access arrangements and

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rising tourism, the closing years of the twentieth century would come to shatter these arrangements and expose the contradictions of the local economy. As the state continues to reduce trade barriers on commodity goods in accordance with international agreements, buying and selling continue to take precedence over production and investment. This is leading to chronic excess demand, one fostering a cultural incoherence of the most destructive sort - a society that privileges consumption at the same time that it shuns local production.

State Posture in the Barbadian Context In order to appreciate the concept of a ruling power bloc, it is not enough to identify political class forces, leading economic groups and influential organs of civil society. It is well worth illuminating the temporary thought that binds these forces into a power structure; that is, the ideas, logic and processes of legitimation. When state power was transferred to Barbadian hands by Britain in 1966, the new political class, largely comprising a black middle strata, faced a myriad of problems and challenges, among them high unemployment; militant trade unions; high social expectation; influential landed elites and merchants; the absence of modern technology; a savings gap; and the question of their own social reproduction. These were hardly the objective conditions upon which a developmentalist programme could flourish, unless the state was willing to apply an element of 'compulsion' in order to structurally transform the agro-commercial model of capital accumulation. To do so meant toppling the mercantile elite, the trade unions and opposition groups, with the hope that the new form of political order would attract foreign investors and sustain economic processes set in motion under colonial rule. These were difficult options facing the new political class, helped none by the retreat of some (merchant) capitalists and their families to England, Australia and New Zealand at the time of independence (1960s). Under these circumstances, the task of devising appropriate strategies for social mobility and change did not venture outside the largely agro-commercial and mercantile framework. The new independence order, to be sure, had a 'reproduction requirement' that was difficult to overcome. No regime (circa 1960) could hope

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to provide instant relief to the 'people' and redynamize the economy if whites took their capital outside or themselves left the country. State managers and the old commercial oligarchy eventually became united by a lowest common denominator interest: that is, to reap and extend the benefits of the status quo. 'Business-as-usual' thus became a simple solution grounded in the need to placate the fears of the elite, while providing governments with the incomes to improve infrastructure and to distribute patronage. Import trading and an increased role for government in the economy consequently went towards satisfying status quo retention and regime consolidation. The former (that is, import trading) garnered high revenue yields for governments in the form of taxes on imports; and the latter (that is, etatisme) became a flag of convenience for expanding the reservoir of patronage resources to governments. The postcolonial Barbadian state was thus remade in the likeness of both the insecure petit bourgeois class and the complacent mercantile elite. A populist strategy of capital accumulation was undertaken (or at least aspired to), with the chief ingredients being the promotion of basic needs strategies, appropriate technologies, small local economies, and political cooperation among the Barbados Labour Party (BLP), the Democratic Labour Party (DLP), the trade unions, the white minority ensconced in the commanding heights of the economy, and the black working majority. Over the years, the state would manage the contradictory demands across the class, ethnic, race and gender spectrum by decoupling issues linked to social inequality and gender oppression from issues of democracy and rights. Currently, a 'common sense pragmatism' and social harmony appeals take precedence over discussion on the negative sociability of class society. From the early 1960s, the state, capital and organized labour orchestrated a social peace under the norms of a Keynesian strategy that valorized redistribution as just reward for worker cooperation in accumulation schemes. This merged well with the grammar of political claims making that held the central problem of justice to be redistribution. The provision of welfare was, and still is, used for the dual purpose of mediating social contradictions and reproducing legitimacy of the state. The Errol Barrow administration (1961-76) intensified the development of social infrastructures of commercial capitalism through the expansion of education, health, labour development and transportation, and by

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allocating 'social capital' in the form of government contracts. Subsequent administrations have followed suit deploying fiscal policies to foster the development of a white-collar working class partly through the expansion of the public bureaucracy. Overall, these measures have led to the expansion of the independent professions and new skills and trades, leading to the growth of a petit bourgeoisie positioned to prosper from the corporate expansion of the economy and the periodic upsurges in construction. It must be noted, however, that within this populist strategy society and economy were not geared towards rapid capital accumulation based on aggressive export orientation. Instead under the idea of import substitution-industrialization, home markets were encouraged; North American and British companies were invited to invest in the emergent industrial parks promising cheaper factors of production; and foreign capital was secured to aid in the construction of a tourist industry and overall infrastructural development. The upshot of this is that the independence option -the way it operated with the character of the Barbadian political economy - did not lead to the rise of industry or an export-industrial base. The hegemony of commerce over production prevailed. Regime-consolidation dynamics were largely responsible for this. To be sure, regime consolidation is a process of gathering, organizing and reproducing power. This happens within and through the state apparatuses. The Barbadian political formula has been to pursue the above-mentioned populist strategy of accumulation in order to coalesce the different social strata within the matrices of the state. The brief was simple: since the traditional elite did not wish to divert their capital to industry, the state should move to activate the masses to produce for consumption rather than for accumulation. Import traders soon saw a space for their own social reproduction within strategies that promised an expansion of consumption. Retail outlets, supermarket chains and hardware stores soon filled the capital and suburban areas. In the interim, a culture has been shaped out of the circulationism of merchant capital. Barbadian consumers tend to believe in the innate superiority of foreign goods and entrepreneurship over local equivalents. And, while it is fair to acknowledge that statism in the period from 1960 to 1980 spawned infrastructural expansion, personal material improvement and educational advances, it must be borne in mind that no real transformation of the mercantile character of the local economy took

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place. In this sense, the postwar structural opportunity that was offered nonreciprocal access to European and North American markets, easy lines of international credit, and the Cold War alliance system - was not used to encourage local firms and fledgling industrial entrepreneurs to treat the world market as their frame of reference. This populist strategy has now run its course in the new world order and has come up against its structural limits. The empirical evidence presented below on commercial bank lending from 1990 to 1997 is meant to shed light on continued overinvestment in nontradable sectors and increases in consumption patterns, features that speak to Barbados' high capacity for indebtedness.21 Reports from the Central Bank of Barbados reveal that the tourism-led growth of the Barbadian economy since 1994 has been followed by a construction and property boom, fuelled by financial sectors favouring such 'short-termist' investments - involving loans with collateral, which bankers like - over more productive, but more often risky, investments in manufacturing and agriculture. While the spectacular increase in the purchase of motor vehicles and the popular use of credit cards exacerbates current account trade deficits, the particularly strong property-finance nexus in Barbados can lead to a bursting of the bubble. • 1991: The Central Bank of Barbados reported that lending to the distributive sector grew by Bds$32.4 million over the 1990 period. Other recipients of new credit, but of lesser amounts, were public utilities and professional services. Credit to the tourism sector fell. • 1992: Central Bank officials spoke of the balance-of-payments crisis of 1991 and the weakened tax base. • 1993: Bank credit to the personal sector rose rapidly by Bds$31 million, partly to finance land and housing-related activities, new car purchases and debt consolidation. Lending by nonbank financial institutions rose by Bds$35.3 million. Residential mortgages accounted for Bds$19.2 million of this amount. • 1994: Commercial bank credit to the private sector increased by 12.5 percent (Bds$ 142.4 million), the largest since 1989. Manufacturing was negligible as tourism accounted for Bds$57.6 million, distribution Bds$30.4 million, and the personal sector Bds$33 million.

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• 1995: According to officials at the Central Bank, commercial bank lending to the personal sector soared from around Bds$47 million in 1993 and 1994 to Bds$78.1 million. This was reflected in expenditure on new motor cars, home improvements, real estate and credit cards. Loans to the tourism sector rose by Bds$36.5 million for refurbishments and construction. The distributive sector borrowed an additional Bds$35.5 million, while loans for professional and other services rose by Bds$14.7 million. Manufacturing borrowed a mere Bds$7.8 million. • 1996: Credit to the distributive sector fell by Bds$ 77.2 million over the 1995 amount. Bank authorities attributed this to lower demand occasioned by the destocking of the business firms in the run-up to the introduction of the value added tax (VAT). The personal sector increased its borrowing by Bds$89.3 million compared to an annual average increase of Bds$57.8 million for the previous three years. A marginal increase in loans to agriculture, manufacturing, professional and other services were recorded. • 1997: Central Bank authorities observed that construction had been experiencing a 4.4 percent growth average annually since 1993. This was largely due to public infrastructure projects - road works, the South Coast Sewerage Project, housing activities - and private sector work as well - residential construction, and tourism-related refurbishments. A surge in credit was again noted with the personal sector recording a Bds$118.2 million increase in new lending, the tourism sector, Bds$26.6 million; professional and other services Bds$31.3 million; and distributive entities Bds$5.9 million.

Contemporary Barbados (circa 2000) Barbados faces a number of problems that require appropriate technical, administrative and transformative measures to eliminate the country's perennial fiscal deficit, to restore and stabilize its foreign exchange stock and resolve problems linked to public sector employment, wages benefits and other social issues. Confronted by difficulties associated with new trading rules and what this portends for local distributors, manufacturers and services providers, the Owen Arthur administration (1994-present)

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has pursued a number of local and regional initiatives aimed at consolidating confidence among investors and the public alike.22 These range from promoting further development of the offshore services sector (particularly in the area of international business and software development), education reform with an emphasis on information technology, to encouraging the rejuvenation of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), of which Barbados could be a part and free movement of labour and capital can be a feature.23 As indicated below, these initiatives have not yet curbed private sector risk aversion that encourages short termism. Faced with the possibility of a shortfall in internal revenues following the international agreement in 1994 on annual reductions of tariffs and duties on goods and services,24 the DIP government of 1991-94 and later the new BLP government of 1994, reformed the taxation system introducing a VAT to be applied to consumer goods and services at the point of sale. A tripartite arrangement, or an accord, was established in 1993 involving trade union bosses, the head of the Barbados Employers' Confederation, the prime minister and senior cabinet ministers. Newspaper and press reports on the proceedings of negotiations under the accord point primarily to the Prices and Incomes Protocols, as well as to a number of issues given address ranging from wage restraint, skill enhancement and improved working conditions, to public sector reform. In addition, Prime Minister Arthur has placed on the agenda the need for the private sector to build up its technical and research and development capacity.25 Most commentators on the institutionalist understandings of state-economy relations showcase tripartism Barbados-style as an example of interest group struggles and coalition politics suggestive of an open, modern society. Here, the state is depicted as playing a kind of 'broker' role among the social groups. This is the pluralist account, one tacked onto a societycentred model of politics where the arrows of political causation flow from society to state and not the other way round. This kind of analysis fails to recognize the way in which political outcomes are shaped by broader and more anonymous structural influences. There are fundamental forms of structural power that impinge on tripartite arrangements that need to be recognized. Take the Barbadian experience at tripartism or formal social partnerships, for instance. Between 1986 and 1988, the union and government partners engineered an unprecedented transfer of national income to business, a move

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designed to induce business confidence and investment. Workers earning less than Bds$ 15,000 a year were relieved of direct taxation, and cuts in utility rates were implemented. By 1988 the then prime minister, Erskine Sandiford, reversed some of the concessions to business, claiming that these achieved little as the mercantile elite ploughed their gains back into nontradable ventures.26 Since 1992, practices and debates within industrial relations were transformed under the accord (via the Prices and Incomes Protocol), so much so that the unions now largely accept fundamental business precepts regarding the primacy of profits, labour market flexibility, union discipline, and the need to focus on productivity issues. The critical aspects of the politics of the accord are largely implicit: government and union concessions are granted in return for (the hope of) business investment. The structural location and power of business, more precisely merchant capital, enabled it to stand aloof from the constant negotiations and exhausting politics of the 1970s and 1980s between the government and trade unions and yet gain these substantial benefits. The unproductive and speculative character of much of the business investment in the 1990s is a source of concern for both unions and government. Yet, because of the underlying structure of power, there is no way of holding business responsible for the level and type of investment that the accord partners expect. In liberal, populist states such as Barbados, business cannot be commanded to perform, it can only be induced to perform. In this way the power of merchant capital is insulated from the politics of tripartism.

The Services Option: Information Technology and Export Processing Zones Elite planners in Barbados target offshore services and information technology (IT) as potential areas for sustainable growth well into the next century. Framed against the perception of an inevitable globalization process underway, with limitations posed to the industrial development option, power holders have sought to concentrate on the promotion of 'services' as a viable cover against new international developments. To be sure, this logic has penetrated to the core of the society as the message has gone out that, given the country's small size and economic scale, its

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relatively modern telecommunications and tourism infrastructure, its political, social and fiscal stability, and its high ratio of graduates, the developmental future of the country rests with the promotion of offshore services and IT. Trade negotiations are to be structured along these lines, although a major realignment of the interests and coalitions that can inform government about these sectors has not yet occurred. Financiers, intellectuals and specialists, major users of IT, such as banks and insurance companies, and representatives of subsidiaries and affiliates of major electronic producers remain isolated in their respective spheres of endeavour, and they are insufficiently stimulated to share or influence trade policy. For the moment, at least, the political alignment remains with traditional services: tourism, construction, real estate prospecting, and import trading. But the instinct is to ask what is this that we call a 'services model of development'? Is it a vision of a nation of services providers linked to regional production networks? Is it perpetual underemployment for workers subcontracting out to flexibly specialized hollow corporations as 'permanent temporaries'? Is it coping with unemployment in lowwage, low-skill jobs centred upon data entry, word processing, boilerplate code writing? The consensus among Barbadian elites on the viability of a 'services development strategy' is problematic on a number of fronts. Their position reveals a lack of awareness of the complexities associated with docking onto an IT strategy; a particular shortsightedness with regards to the longevity of offshore financial services given current reregulation trends; a historical blindness and misreading of, say, Hong Kong's export-services profile and how this is interlinked with mainland Chinese industrial processes; and a lack of sociological perspective on the impact of 'services' on the labour market. Space does not permit a full exploration of these issues but, for one thing, it does appear that ruling elites are clearly pinning their hopes for the sustainability of the Barbadian economy on a high-tech, information-based economy. The dubious claim is that high technology will be a central source of new jobs in the early years of the twenty-first century. However, what is the factual basis for their beliefs? Two fallacies are seemingly at work. The first assumes that the fastest growing job categories in the core economies are in high-tech industries. Levin, in a study forecasting the impact of new technologies on the future job market in the United States, charges that the impact of high-tech

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industries and occupations has been oversold.27 Not only will high-tech industries employ only a fraction of the nation's workers, he surmises, but many of the jobs they do provide require little or no knowledge of high technology. His statistical projections of future employment in the United States reveal that future job growth will favour service and clerical jobs that require little or no postsecondary schooling and that pay below-average wages.28 The second fallacy equates high-technology industries with jobs that require advanced education and highly complex job skills. In much the same way that cashiers no longer need to have mathematical skills because modern cash registers carry out all of the necessary computations, Levin notes a reduction in the skills needed by computer programmers, workers in auto repair, industrial design, architectural drafting, and other related occupations. A few additional comments are made before turning to how Barbados fares in the area of IT. The growth of services in Barbados as part of a labour intensive development strategy has not resulted, thus far, in a rapid expansion of employment. Tourism is, to be sure, responsible for more than 20 percent of total employment, contributes 12 percent of GDP and accounts for 60 percent of export earnings.29 Throughout the 1980s, competition from other Caribbean tourist destinations, aided by pricevalue distortions, has led to Barbados losing its share of Caribbean tourism stay-over arrivals.30 The tourism sector in the 1990s faced the negative impact of environmental degradation and strain on existing natural resources, a lag in refurbishing and renovation, and greater competition from new players in the hemisphere: Canain in Mexico, Cuba and South America. The offshore financial outlay of Barbados includes offshore banks, foreign sales corporations (FSCs), exempt insurance companies, and international business companies (IBCs). During the period from 1988 to 1994, FSCs increased from 250 to 975, while IBCs soared from 335 to 1,225.31 While tax income is not significant, fees and taxes contribute useful revenue for Barbados. In 1995, over Bds$4 million in taxes and fees went to government. But the employment record is unflattering. Most of the offshore banks, for example, are 'shells' employing only a few accountants and professionals and requiring very little clerical support. The bulk of the FSCs and the thirty-nine trust companies in Barbados do not appear to hire anyone. The future of this sector is at risk, given the regulatory

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changes occurring in onshore environments to reduce the regulatory bias in favour of offshore banking;32 increasing competition from other offshore financial centres; approaching international rules;33 and the efforts of the United States to obtain security compliance in monitoring fund flows (read 'money laundering') into and within the Caribbean Basin. Next we turn to developments in IT. IT is a giant and critical sector that extends from semiconductors, through electronic devices, such as computers and peripherals, software, and telecommunications equipment and services. It constitutes the digitized information processing, storage and transmission sector that is the emblem of modern technology. Users of IT in both Europe and North America rely heavily on this sector for increasing competitiveness and efficiency in their respective operations.34 Indeed, changes in the organization of production and in the dynamics of competition have blurred the distinction between users and producers, creating a radical realignment of interests. The most conspicuous outcome, as well as the most significant evidence of realignment, is the Information Technology Agreement (ITA), negotiated late in 1996 between Europe and the United States and then quickly signed by Canada, Japan and most other electronics producing nations (eventually accounting for over 92 percent of global IT production) . Conscious of the need for cheaper communications technologies to gird burgeoning cross-border networks amongst companies, other countries have been encouraged also to sign onto this transatlantic initiative. India signed on in early 1997 and, on the occasion of President Jiang Zemin's October 1997 visit to the United States, China announced that it too would sign the ITA - but no specific timetable has been established. The ITA radically speeds up the elimination of tariffs on IT goods. Under the terms of the agreement, the signatory countries are scheduled to eliminate tariffs on most IT goods by the year 2000. In addition, the agreement defines procedures for the inclusion of new products and sets out measures for the elimination of nontariff barriers.35 The circumstances that led to the need for an ITA relate to shifting dynamics in the organization of production. During the decade of the 1980s, US firms reorganized production away from traditional vertical integration to network forms of organization - especially, cross-national production networks (CPNs) centred in Asia. Companies in the United States divided their value chain into finer and finer pieces. Those constitu-

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ent elements were parcelled out across national borders to highly specialized independent producers. Companies in Thailand and China assembled printed circuit boards; software was written in India's Bangalore or Puna; Malaysian and Philippine companies assembled components; and Taiwan and Korea specialized in higher value-added services and products, such as digital design services and semiconductor memory. In electronics, networked production, especially in CPN form, has developed in a few short years to such an extent that it is quite reasonable to consider it as a likely candidate for the dominant organizational form. World-leading, integrated producers such as Hewlett Packard, International Business Machines (IBM) and Ericsson increasingly outsource one formerly core function after another. Hewlett Packard now sources assembly of half of their twenty million circuit boards to contract manufacturers, and every day there is an announcement of a major firm turning over major plants, in core businesses, to such firms. Newer and very successful firms, such as Dell (in personal computers), Silicon Graphics (advanced workstations), Cisco Systems (networking equipment), Diebold (automatic teller machines), Octel (telecommunications) or LAM Research (equipment), have little in the way of manufacturing facilities of their own.36 It is important to note that a key characteristic of CPNs or international production networks is that they are in constant flux and are constantly being jiggered and reorchestrated. Production and responsibility are moved from place to place.37 Innovation becomes crucial within local nodes as particular producers or service providers must absorb technology and skills to alter in any meaningful way their position in the chain of value.38 Barbados and the English-speaking Caribbean do not feature in this shifting geography of production and capabilities. Moreover, there is very little evidence within relevant ministries and units of a strategy for lodging Barbados anywhere on the value chain of CPNs. Thus far, European, North American and Asian companies constitute these networks. For quite some time, in industries such as garments, footwear, furniture and toys, it was established practice for 'brand name' companies to depend on contract suppliers for essentially all of their manufacturing requirements. The emergence of contract production and regional arrangements in consumer durable sectors, such as electronics, turns the phenomenon away from one essentially confined to labour-intensive, low- and middleskilled locales to those with semiautomated driven infrastructures and

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cheap, skilled labour. If Barbados hopes to progress beyond marginal participation in services at the level of 'back-office' work, the enterprising culture will also have to be transformed. Recently, Prime Minister Arthur pointed to the need for the private sector in Barbados to "correct deficiencies [that include the] absence of research departments, indeed the lack of economists and similarly trained, and [failure] on the part o f . . . major corporations to seek scientific forecasting as a normal part of business".39 But there is more to this. The business culture, the relationship between business and the state, and the power of commerce in the political economy conspire to stymie an export production ethos and, by extension, the innovative and entrepreneurial capacities needed for local nodes in an international production network. Indeed, it is not the norm for public sector technocrats to possess expert knowledge, direct technical training or scientific talent in research and development, engineering, or manufacturing technology. The private sector world is also devoid of knowledge gleaned from experience in modern science and technological innovation. Under these circumstances, therefore, it is not surprising that, rhetoric aside, the announced turn towards a 'services' strategy, rather than one in pursuit of location in burgeoning CPNs, amounts only to an intensified effort at attracting international financial services companies, IBCs and other related offshore business.40 Turning to export processing, for most of the 1980s, export processing zones (EPZs) in the Caribbean41 have enhanced the participation of the region in the global production process and improved job prospects for lower-skilled, primarily female, workers. In Barbados, EPZs have contributed more than 50 percent to manufacturing activity, providing jobs mainly in the area of garment making, data processing and electronic components assembly. But the changing face of transnationalized production processes beckon a restructuring exercise in Barbados itself. Motivated by the need to solve protracted high unemployment, Barbadian state managers in the 1960s moved to promote the country as a cheap-labour destination for subsidiary operations allied to transnational production companies.42 These companies were offered a range of incentives and social guarantees that ranged from the provision of tax breaks, cheap factory space and infrastructure such as roads and public utilities, and discouragement of trade union activity in this sector, to maintenance of lax environmental regulations and gender structuring norms relative

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to the division of work and differential wage rates for men and women. However, in the interim, little was done to expand technology beyond telecommunications improvements. Over time Barbadian policy makers would lament the disjuncture between branch-plant activity and local supply networks,43 the 'footloose' nature of TNCs, and the downward pressure on wages created in the wake of fierce competition between countries seeking to attract such business. Missing was any sense of how changes occurring in the industrial base of the world economy combined to undermine an EPZ policy guided by notions about the inherent advantage of factor endowments. Computer-integrated manufacturing and innovation-mediated production practices are reshaping the character of manufacturing work, services and the measurement of time in firms in advanced countries. Routine workers and middle management personnel are being sacrificed for knowledge workers. As cost per unit output declines in the wake of increasing automation, low-technology industries, such as labour-intensive electronics and garment assembly firms have begun to lose out in price, diversity and quality competitiveness. Such firms have been forced to restructure or close operations. Watson indeed attributes the increase in international offshore business activity (read information services) in Barbados in the early 1990s to restructuring activity underway in North American firms.44 Officials of the Barbados Investment and Development Corporation (BIDC) boast that the country possesses the labour resources and business infrastructure to support data processing activity. They also claim that Barbados provides "significant savings in the major cost categories: direct and indirect labour, factory rental, [and] labour turnover".45 Attention must be paid, however, to how the new information technologies continue to produce organizational consequences for the major companies reliant on multiple layers of bureaucracy and routine workers. Hoffman and Kaplinsky broadly explain that the replacement of unskilled labour at the low-tech end of the manufacturing assembly process and services infrastructure not only impacts negatively on workers in the core, but it is a situation that will confront workers in the developing world for the new automation and management technologies erode the Ricardian idea of the inherent advantage of cheap labour abundance,46 The restructuring strategy of the United States rests in a very heterogeneous, flexible division

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of labour in which Barbados and the rest of the region participate at the low end of the spectrum of the global production of goods and services. The export of back office jobs from the United States to the Caribbean mirrors the deskilling of various layers of employment in the services sector in the United States to make room for the development of a more complex techno-industrial base that might render nugatory the very mundane tasks assigned to the region. The industrial parks and sites in Barbados that host subsidiary data entry and garment making operations are mass or batch production operations that use a combination of primitive Taylorism and low-level electromechanical techniques no longer required in advanced economies. By preparing the Barbadian economy to receive those deskilled jobs, the state is also intensifying its own contingency within the new world order. In light of the above, Barbadian state power holders must seek to delimit the country's scope for importing 'back-office' jobs in the area of data entry and instead pursue new and emergent investment in value-added niche areas within information services.

Going Regional Since the early 1980s, successive administrations have been attempting to restructure the productive base of Barbados away from traditional (factor advantage) competition, given the futility of trying to compete with low wage areas in the developing world, and in light of developments tending in the direction of trade liberalization and deregulation. IMF and World Bank structural adjustment measures in 1983 and 1991 served to reinforce and upgrade market reforms. Tourism, offshore financial services, data processing and subsidiary components production constitute those sectors deemed crucial for sustainable development. The present Arthur administration has been seeking to build consensus and cooperation for collective global ends among his counterparts in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). Prime Minister Arthur himself has issued a call for greater unity and cooperation between Barbados and the countries that make up the OECS. He has also publicly acknowledged his enthusiasm for the formation of a CARICOM single market and economy by the year 2000. The official view is that it will be more logical to organize

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constituencies according to common interests derived from similarities of size and economic structures, and to reflect these groupings in their hemispheric and international negotiations.47 As the logic goes, if it is that, each of the Eastern Caribbean and CARICOM governments are moving in the direction of offshore services; their developmental interests will be better served by sharing expertise, pooling bargaining skills, harmonizing regulation, and effecting a regional economy of scale to allow for greater diversification. This position is also shared by regional technocrats and other elite organizations such as the Association of Caribbean Economists and the Caribbean Association of Industry and Commerce (CAIC). The position of the region's private sector organization (that is, the CAIC) is that regional governments should seek to move expeditiously in implementing the protocols that relate to the establishment of a single market and economy. The CAIC also recommends the establishment of a regional regulatory body to promote competition and to harmonize telecommunications policy for the Caribbean. The CAIC argues that this "is necessary if the services sector in the region is to play a catalytic role in transforming the Caribbean economies, with a view to enhancing their readiness for international competition".48 On the global and regional front, the case has been made by Prime Minister Arthur for technical assistance to help lesser developed countries develop their export capacities. Only recently, the Caribbean Development Bank was urged to take the lead in financing a Bds$ 1 billion facility to finance the reconstruction of a new Caribbean economy. The failure to do so, Arthur grimly noted, could see the region become "the newest and most tragic species of failed societies known to man".49 The EU has also been urged to continue honouring commitments taken under previous Lome agreements.50 The problem, of course, is that there is no robust producer class in Barbados poised to capture emerging markets in commodity trade. Closely connected is the question of the nature of the productive base of the island. There are no semiautomation-driven production infrastructures suitable for attracting modern assembly operations, and research and development capacities are thin. Elites in the political parties and other policy makers in Barbados, therefore, face a persistent quandary. As a political class they see the necessity of taking a measure of remedial action to stimulate export

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orientation, but they must preserve the interests of the old bourgeoisie one partly responsible for and rooted in the commercial circuit that integrates the national economy. Maintaining the status quo works well to block deeper regionalist initiatives that threaten to undermine the logic of the island-national development project, one that provides them (read state managers) with a social and material power base. To broach the subject of regional integration beyond mere functional cooperation is to let loose an upsurge in interest in regional developmentalism - that is, those debates on political integration and cross-sectoral linkages -where these had trailed off into silence in the celebratory period of decolonization.51 Twenty-five years of CARICOM have not produced a customs union, a coordinated foreign policy, or a framework for regional negotiations with hemispheric and global actors.52 The record thus far towards the creation of a single market and economy has not been encouraging either. Marker suggests that since politicians in the region are not required to devolve much authority to the central institutions of the community, they feel neither compelled nor motivated to follow up on the regional plan of action towards a single economy.53 Altogether, the Caribbean reveals the signs of cyclical retrogression and deja vu.

Summary This essay sought to approach Barbadian nationhood fully cognizant that, for the present, at least, no new comprehensive progressive vision of a developmentalist but just society has emerged to replace that configured by merchant capital and populist governance. Proposals to elevate 'republicanism' and 'participatory democracy' to that status express the desire, in some quarters, for such a vision. But they lack the power to convince, I contend, because they bracket the question of political economy. The same holds for the still more anemic notions of 'good governance' and 'sustainable development around services'. True enough, debates on development in Barbados take the form of a broad discussion on economic and cultural injustice. But these are not mutually exclusive issues, this matter of remedying injustice and encouraging the rise of new industrial entrepreneurs. Government efforts at upwardly revaluing disrespected identities and the cultural products and contribution of ma-

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ligned historical figures (for example, Bussa, Clement Payne, Sir Garfield Sobers, Sarah Ann Gill) constitute an attempt to provide a remedy for cultural injustice. The remedy for economic injustice in Barbados is political-economic restructuring of some sort. Recall that decolonization left behind some unfinished business - the transition in political hegemony from 'traditional' elites to 'modern' elites. The overlapping realities of populist-statism and chronic excess demand are not only proliferating but cancelling each other out as the exigencies of free trade beckon a social transformation that radically challenges the present nomenclature. Such a transition from traditional to modern elites must be underway before the new trade rules come into full force, less Barbados evolves itself into a historical cul-de-sac. This would require a state willing to champion industrial transformation, and a turn towards a regionalist solution.

Notes 1.

2.

3.

Lord Nelson was a celebrated British admiral involved in defending the colonies against French excursions. Erected since 1813, his imposing statue at the top of Broad Street serves as a reminder of empire, Englishness and colonial subordination. On 28 April 1999, National Heroes' Day, Prime Minister Owen Arthur announced that the statue will be relocated as the entire area is to be renamed National Heroes Square. A number of initiatives and events throughout the 1990s can speak to this point on the defence of Barbadian sovereignty and pride, beginning with the 1991 rejection by the then ruling Erskine Sandiford administration of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) recommendation to devalue the Barbados dollar. Between 1996 and 1999, the current Owen Arthur administration has had to: (1) reject a model Shiprider Agreement conceived solely in Washington to counteract illicit maritime trade in narcotics but hampered by incongruities relative to the recognition of Barbadian sovereignty and compatibility with basic principles of international law; (2) pursue the matter of establishing within international financial institutions and the European Union formal recognition of the vulnerabilities small-island developing states confront; and (3) encourage the rekindling of the Little Eight, that is, the countries that make up the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). See A. Payne and P. Sutton, eds., Modern Caribbean Politics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); C. Stone, Democracy and Clientelism (New

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7.

8.

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Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1980); C. Stone, Class, State and Democracy in Jamaica (New York: Praeger, 1986); C.Y. Thomas, The Poor and the Powerless (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1988); and K. Levitt and M. Witter, eds., The Critical Tradition of Caribbean Political Economy: The Legacy of George Beckford (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Handle Publishers, 1996). See United Nations Development Program Human Development Report 1999 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 53. See P. Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society (New York: Harper and Row, 1993). While most countries have been granted juridical statehood, and have thereby joined the interstate system, there are some that lack the capabilities needed to carry out the government functions historically associated with statehood. Moreover, the term 'nation state' remains imprecise. Among the most successful states of the East Asian region, for example, only Japan, the largest, might be considered a nation state. But regionally and globally Japan is still a US military protectorate, perhaps a 'semi-sovereign state'. South Korea and Taiwan, the two states of intermediate size, are also US military protectorates. Neither of them is a nation state in the full sense, as South Korea could reunite with its other northern half and Taiwan could mutate back to mainland China. Hong Kong and Singapore, the two smallest, are not nation states but city states, exercising functions in the region not altogether different from those performed by Genoa and Venice in early modern Europe - the commercial-industrial entrepot functions exercised by Singapore resembling Venice, and the commercial-financial entrepot functions exercised by Hong Kong resembling Genoa. For more on this depiction, see J. Stopford and S. Strange (with J.S. Henley), Rival States, Rival Firms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); and S. Strange 'The Defective State", Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 124, no. 2 (1995): 55-74. The ideology of individualism -that we all ought to think and feel as individuated individuals - is the mental complement to liberalism. It is germane to any attempt to apply liberalism to the polity and economy that liberals perceive as dichotomous domains. Liberalism is, to be sure, the ideology of personal freedom, of self-actualization, and any such doctrine is predicated on the appropriate sense of self - one that is rational, discrete and, as such, perfectible.

9.

As one scholar remarks, "by the end of the 1980s the only development policy that was officially approved was not having one - leaving it to the market to allocate resources, not the state". See C. Leys, 'The 'Crisis' in Development Theory", New Political Economy 1, no. 1 (1996): 42.

10.

See G. Gereffi, "Latin America in the Global Economy: Running Faster to Stay in Place", NACLA Report on the Americas 29, no. 4, (January-February 1996).

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11.

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See Gereffi, "Latin America", as well as P. Martin, Trade and Migration: NAFTA and Agriculture (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1996).

12. Throughout this essay I take 'development' to mean the transformation away from a low-accumulation based economy (that is, based on raw material and cash crop exports) to a high-accumulation one (that is, one predominantly based on cutting-edge industrial exports and processes). 13.

See Z. Onis, 'The Logic of the Developmental State", Comparative Politics 24, no. 1 (1991): 109-21.

14.

See C. Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1982); G. White, "Developmental States and Socialist Industrialization in the Third World", Journal of Development Studies 21, no. 1 (1984): 97-120; and F. List, The National System of Political Economy (London: Longman, 1964).

15.

See R. Wade, Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialization (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); and S.K. Jomo, "Introduction: Financial Governance, Liberalisation and Crises in East Asia", in Tigers in Trouble, edited by S.K. Jomo (London: Zed Books, 1998), 1-32. As Jomo points out, in the face of neoliberal pressures, the political elite in the first-tier newly industrialized countries (NICs) continued to guide and reward successful exporters, allied industrial policy to new thrusts in research and development, selectively liberalized their markets and capital accounts, and monitored foreign exchange reserves. An accelerated policy of liberalization and globalization on the part of the second-tier NICs (Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia) led to the proliferation of "integrated international production" networks not fruitfully linked to the host economy, overexposure of national industries to regional and global competition, and a consequent dwindling of foreign reserves. South Korea deserves special mention as it is one of the first-tier NICs that rapidly liberalized after 1992 in order to enhance its image in the league of liberal democratic First World states. By relenting on traditional statist principles, South Korea could not stave off the worst effects of the shock when the financial crisis loomed.

16.

See D.D. Marshall, Caribbean Political Economy at the Crossroads: NAFTA and Regional Developmentalism (London: Macmillan, 1998).

17. The most recent affirmation of this view can be found in R.F. Doner and D. Unger, 'Thailand: Economic and Political Gradualism", in Democracy, Political Liberalization and Economic Adjustments, edited by S. Haggard and S.B. Webb (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 18.

See B. Cumings, 'The Origins and Development of the Northeast Asian Political Economy", in The Political Economy of the New Asian Industrialism, edited by F.C. Deyo (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 66.

Gathering Forces 19.

297

See P. Davidson, "Culture, Structure and Regional Levels of Entrepreneurship", Entrepreneurship and Regional Development 7, no. 1 (1995): 41-62. Quote is taken from page 42. 20. See E. Schein, "Commentary: What Is an Entrepreneur?", Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice 19, no. 2 (1994): 87-88. Quote is taken from page 87. 21. The information presented was drawn from various issues of the Central Bank of Barbados Annual Report (Bridgetown, Barbados: Central Bank of Barbados, 199097). 22. I give the more important measures greater address, but, for clarity, the post 1991 structural adjustment programme included an 8 percent cut in salaries for 18 months duration and the dismantling of price controls and import licensing regimes. Gradual financial liberalization has been ongoing with the lowering of cash and securities requirements for banks, the abolition of selective credit controls as well as limits on the average lending rate of commercial banks and mortgage rates charged by financial institutions. There has also been a devolution of responsibility with respect to the authorization of foreign exchange transactions and requests. Once under the purview of the Exchange Control department in the Central Bank of Barbados, most daily transactions are processed by commercial banks. 23. Driven by the urgent need to create economies of scale and to pool bargaining strength in the many hemispheric and global negotiations, Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean have been contemplating a closer union since January 1998. Thus far, while the leadership in Barbados and St Lucia are clearly enthusiastic, a lack of commitment, strategy and budget at any level in other territories is jeopardizing this initiative. (The author is a member on the joint task force on Barbados/OECS Union.) 24. I refer to the Generalized Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) signed in 1994 seen as the working code of the World Trade Organization (WTO) established in 1995. 25. In his 1997 address to the Barbados Chamber of Commerce, Arthur alluded to the technical inefficiencies of the private sector that inhibit the growth of a genuine market economy. In the passage below, it is possible to read a degree of frustration and urgency in the prime minister's remarks: "too much time of Government officials is wasted by having to consider representations by private sector entities that have not properly been researched, have not been properly costed, sometimes bearing no relationship to reality, exhibit no familiarity with existing law nor regulations, nor show any appreciation to what is happening in the global economy . . . I must today underscore that it is vital that the private sector of Barbados comes to understand the WTO and its operation, the intrica-

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26. 27. 28. 29.

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cies of our pending negotiations to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by the year 2005, and the need to develop in-house capabilities in the private sector to effectively participate in these developments." See Rt Hon Owen Arthur, "Structural Adjustment: Phase Two" (Address to the Barbados Chamber of Commerce, Barbados Hilton Hotel, Bridgetown, 8 October 1997). See the text of the 1988 Financial Statement and Budget Proposals delivered by L. Erskine Sandiford. See H.M. Levin, "Jobs: A Changing Workforce, A Changing Education?", Change 16, no. 7 (1984): 28-53. Ibid., 33 See Barbados Requirements for Sustained Development, Country Department 111, Latin America and the Caribbean Region, (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 1991).

30.

See Maxwell Stamp PLC, "Export Competitiveness and Marketing Study in Barbados" (Final report, executive summary, prepared for the Government of Barbados, 1991). 31. The information here is drawn entirely from Don Marshall, Caribbean Political Economy at the Crossroads: NAFTA and Regional Developmentalism (London: Macmillan, 1998). 32.

See the 1989 Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act passed in the USA to permit US banks to compete openly and directly in the Eurocurrency markets from onshore US offices without having to set up foreign subsidiaries. Also note the updating of legislation in Canada in June 1992, namely, the Bank Act, the Trust and Loans Companies Act, and the Cooperative Credit Associations Act. Both Vancouver and Montreal were declared international banking cities in the wake of another piece of legislation, the International Financial Business (Tax Refund and Corporate Exemption) Act. 33. These are likely to be initiated or promoted by the Bank for International Settlements. Reregulation stipulates may proceed in the wake of banking failures that extend back to the 19 74 collapse of Bankhaus Herstatt, through to the 1990s with the failure of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, Barings International and the spate of bank closures that followed the East Asian financial meltdown.

34. 35.

Here I am referring to big users; for example, banks and insurance companies, automobile, chemical and oil companies, and even retailers. The Ministerial Declaration on Trade in Information Technology Products (ITA) was signed on 13 December 1996 in Singapore by 28 governments at the conclusion of the first WTO ministerial conference. It provides for the elimination of customs duties and other charges on information technology products through

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equal annual reductions beginning on 1 July 1997 and concluding on 1 January 2000. The ITA covers five main categories of products: computers (including printers, scanners, monitors, hard disk drives, power supplies, and the like), telecommunications products (including telephone sets, fax machines, modems, pagers, and the like), semiconductors (including chips and wafers), semiconductor manufacturing equipment, software (for example, diskettes and CD-ROMs) and scientific instruments. 36. See Michael Borrus and John Zysman, Globalization with Borders: The Rise of Wintelism as the Future of Global Competition, Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy (BRIE) Working Paper 96B (Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley, 1997). 37. See Thomas J. Peters, Liberation Management: Necessary Disorganization for the Nanosecond Nineties (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1992). 38. A point emphasized by H.A. Watson in his article, "Global Change: Restructuring the Enterprise Culture and Power in contemporary Barbados", Journal of Eastern Caribbean Studies 22, no. 3 (September 1997): 1-47. 39. 40.

41. 42.

See Arthur, "Structural Adjustment: Phase Two". This is certainly the case if one analyses the Barbados Advocate editorial, 'Trade Block: The Future is in Our Hands", 15 May 1999: "International business has the potential to propel the country forward at a pace which no other sector of the economy can match. Most now recognize that the growth potential of tourism is limited by environmental and sociological constraints; of manufacturing by the realities of open market competition; of agriculture by the amount of land available. No such constraints apply to international business, where the level of foreign exchange earnings and quality employment for a highly educated people can increase dramatically without any negative impact on our environment or society" (8). I refer to Puerto Rico, Haiti, Barbados, the Dominican Republic, St Lucia and Jamaica. For more on this, see Leading the Way for Forty Years: The BIDC Story (Bridgetown, Barbados: Barbados Investment and Development Corporation, 1996).

43.

This is captured in rules about duty free entry under conditions where components are sourced from the country receiving the exported product.

44.

See H. Watson, "Global Change: Restructuring the Enterprise Culture and Power in Contemporary Barbados", Journal of Eastern Caribbean Studies 22, no. 3 (1997): 1^7.

45.

See 'The Action Centre for Information Services for the 1990s and Beyond" (Report produced by the Barbados Investment and Development Corporation, 1993), 14.

300

46.

47.

48. 49.

50.

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See K. Hoffman and R. Kaplinsky, Driving Force: The Global Restructuring of Technology, Labour and Investment in the Automobile and Components Industries, UNCTC Study (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988); and B. Jessop, K. Nielsen, H. Kastendiek and O.K. Pedersen, eds., The Politics of Flexibility: Restructuring State and Industry in Britain, Germany and Scandinavia (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1991). Gleaned from a number of speeches, primary reports and official documents brought to the attention of this author in his capacity as special advisor to the prime minister on Barbados-OECS Closer Cooperation. Most of the information here is sensitive or labelled "restricted", but some of the sources include the following: Rt Hon Owen Arthur, "Prospects for Caribbean Political Unity" (Address to the symposium by the Clement Payne Movement on Caribbean Unity, Pommarine Hotel, Barbados, 24 April 1998); and an address by Arthur to the opening ceremony of the Twenty-third Meeting of the ACP-EC Council of Ministers, Sherbourne Conference Centre, Barbados, 7 May 1998. See the news report, "Unite Caribbean Now", Advocate, 14 July 1998, 20. See the editorial, "Arthur's Call to Action", Sunday Sun, 16 May 1999. Reference is made to an address by Prime Minister Arthur in his capacity as chairman of the Caribbean Development Bank's twenty-ninth Annual Board of Governors meeting, Sam Lord's Castle, Barbados, 14 May 1999.

See the commission's press release, Twenty-third Meeting of the ACP-EU Council of Ministers, Bridgetown, Barbados, 7-8 May 1998. 51. One debate grafted onto ideas of nation, nationality, national belonging and nationalism not far away from cultural insiderism. 52. Indeed, after agreement by Heads of Government and regional private sector bodies in 1997 on the need to collectively finance the work of the then created Regional Negotiating Machinery, Prime Minister Arthur of Barbados, on the occasion of receiving a grant of Bds$4.5 million from the British government to assist the negotiating machinery, was forced to issue a reminder: "While Barbados cannot demand that other countries waive taxes and grant other concessions, I would like to see a larger outpouring from the regional private sector. Regional governments must also play their part." See "Arthur Wants More Support", Daily Nation, 18 May 1999. 53. See T. Harker, "Caribbean Economic Performance in the 1990s: Implications for Future Policy", in The Caribbean in the Global Political Economy, edited by H. Watson (Boulder: Lynne Rienner; Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 1994).

14 Roots A Genealogy of the 'Barbadian Personality'

RICHARD

L.W.

CLARKE

[T]he human mind - one of those ideas we believe to be innate - originated and slowly developed over many centuries and through numerous vicissitudes. So that even today it is still imprecise, delicate and fragile, one requiring further elaboration. This is the idea of person (personne), the idea of 'self (mo/). - Marcel Mauss The question - who am I? - cannot even be properly formulated because the framework of values that may offer an answer is still a second-hand bundle of ideas and attitude, imposed at first and now voluntarily accepted on hire. - George Lamming The concept of a people is not 'given', as an essential, class-determined, unitary, homogeneous part of society prior to a politics; 'the people' are there as a process of political articulation and political negotiation across a whole range of contradictory social sites. The people' always exist as a multiple form of identification, waiting to be created and constructed. - Homi Bhabha "What kind of mirror image do you have of yourself?" is the rhetorical question repeatedly asked by the revered Barbadian statesman Errol Barrow in a highly touted campaign speech in 1986.1 Barrow nowhere 301

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answers his own question precisely because his speech is predicated upon the assumption that his audience is fully familiar with what it means to be a Barbadian. Barrow's main goal here is to underscore that many Barbadians have betrayed, or at the very least forgotten, in the course of the opposing party's two terms in office, the high ideals synonymous with being a Barbadian. These ideals are perhaps summed up in the national motto, which Barrow himself chose at the moment of independence, "Pride and industry", a motto clearly both recuperative and exhortatory in thrust. Utilizing an almost Faustian rhetoric, Barrow repeatedly suggests that the Barbadian electorate has sold its very soul to the devil in the form of his political opponents. Barrow's rhetorical question has, notwithstanding its partisan context and function, become something of a touchstone in contemporary discussions of Barbadian identity that transcend party lines. Time and again, interested commentators have referred to Barrow's so-called mirror image speech, rehearsing Barrow's assumption that there is a definable Barbadian national identity that needs no elucidation. For example, the current prime minister, Owen Arthur, who, some would argue, in openly assuming Barrow's mantle has 'out-Barrowed' the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) in order to achieve the largest electoral victory in the political history of Barbados. Arthur did not hesitate recently to refer to Barrow's 'mirror image' speech in the ongoing controversy over the removal of Nelson's statue, in order to buttress his contention that "it is not possible for Barbados to develop cohesively" if there is "absent a sense of dignity, confidence and a conviction that" what he describes as the "Barbadian personality" is "nothing to be ashamed of".2 He too takes for granted that the "Barbadian personality" is a given to which all in the know, presumably Barbadians, can relate. The notion that Barbadians may have a unique and determinate collective identity represents something of a relatively recent development, one that has at least only crystallized in the period since political independence from Great Britain. Such a concept was initially given great impetus by the founding of the National Cultural Foundation in the 1970s with its overt mission to foster a sense of Barbadian identity by promoting national cultural expression. More recently, under the tutelage of the minister of education and culture, Mia Mottley, and inspired by the corpus of thought emanating from celebrated centres of African American learn-

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ing that has named itself Afrocentrism, this process has been accelerated. (By 'Afrocentrism', I have in mind Molefi Asante's definition of Afrocentricity as a "frame of reference wherein phenomena are viewed from the perspective of the African personality. The Afrocentric approach seeks in every situation the appropriate centrality of the African person.")3 Great emphasis has been placed upon the importance of recuperating the long neglected African roots of Barbadian identity. This project has taken a variety of forms, the most significant including the piloting of so-called black or African studies programmes in the secondary school system, the proposal to set up a Centre for African Studies at the Cave Hill campus of the Universtiy of the West Indies (UWI), the formation of a commission on pan-African affairs, the naming of a pantheon of national heroes, the removal of the statue of Lord Nelson from where it presently stands in Trafalgar Square, and the renaming of the latter as National Heroes Square. The removal of Nelson's statue has excited great controversy recently because it is an important continuation of disagreements over the composition of the pantheon of national heroes and, by extension, the ongoing debate over what it means to be a Barbadian. It is important to point out that the government has nowhere officially excluded persons of European descent from being elevated to the status of national hero. Indeed, Arthur has pointedly stressed that the inclusion of a hero or heroine solely on the grounds that he or she is white would itself be a form of " 'subtle racism' at play" because "colour, race and class could not be considerations of heroism".4 He has, in turn, lambasted white critics of the removal of Nelson's statue, such as Sir John Stanley Goddard, for alleged "latent racism".5 Arthur adopts this line of attack because he has openly opted to define Nelson's identity in nationalist or anticolonial rather than racialist terms.6 His ostensible point is that it is less important that Nelson was white than that he was British and, as such, an object of veneration suitable for the British people alone. Whether such a distinction between race and nation is in fact a tenable one, however, is open to dispute, as I shall argue later, in the light of Walker Connor's influential work on the ethnic basis of nationalism.7 Race may very well be an unspoken factor (one, some might argue, that should never be disavowed) in the ongoing deliberation on Barbadian national identity.

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One of the admitted criteria of inclusion that unites all current members of the pantheon of national heroes is, in addition to anything that they might have contributed to the economic, social and political development of Barbados, their 'representativeness'. Arthur would seem to have in mind precisely this in deciding to move Nelson's statue. At a time when Barbados is being "bombarded night and day with images which have nothing to do with what is Barbadian", Arthur argues that it is essential to move the statue from the very heart of Bridgetown because Nelson is "not a person the government" wishes to "hold up before young Barbadians as a representative of Barbadian excellence".8 This raises the following question, therefore: What is it exactly that determines this 'representativeness'? Is it the common 'Barbadianness' of the heroes chosen? If so, what precisely constitutes this 'Barbadianness'? Does it consist in the affinity of the individual in question with the majority of the Barbadian population? And how should this affinity be defined, in terms of class or race or both? Is 'Barbadianness' restricted to a particular race or class? (Prime Minister Arthur is explicit, of course, that race, colour [he distinguishes between these two] or class cannot be criteria for selection.) Is it therefore a matter of service, of deeds, of contributions made to Barbadian development? If so, how are these deeds to be defined? Might these be restricted, for example, to participation in the class struggle or contributions to the labour movement? Indeed, what exactly does the government have in mind by 'Barbadian development'? The government has never taken the time to spell out in detail its criteria, that is, to address the premisses informing its decisions in this regard, perhaps because it assumes that these ought to be self-evident to the majority of Barbadians. In this essay, I hope to answer some of the questions posed above by providing a brief overview of the way in which the idea of a cohesive Barbadian national identity is in the process of being constituted as the object of the postindependence discourse of Barbadian nationalism.9 Such a subject is 'in process' because Barbados is in the throes of a discursive shift; that is, in the midst of a transition from what Raymond Williams might call the hegemony of Eurocentrism to an emergent Afrocentric perspective struggling to attain dominance, all the while incorporating certain residual ideologies (principally fundamentalist Christianity) .10 My approach here is not an economistic one; that is, my intention is not to reduce Barbadian identity to those political, social and economic factors

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whose role has undoubtedly been indispensable in its formation. Many others have sought to understand Barbadian identity in those terms. My goal here, rather, is to examine the way in which the very structure of the discursive formation of Barbadian nationalism has produced a conception of Barbadian identity that follows inevitably from a certain logic inherent in that discourse. This logic manifests itself in the way in which specifiable controlling metaphors, notions and categories conspire to give rise to a specific conception of subjectivity as pre-given, autonomous and unified. Needless to say, one of the most important effects of such a problematic is the prohibition of, indeed, active resistance to the conceptualization of alternative models of subjectivity.11 I call this undertaking a genealogy in deference to thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault and Cornel West, because I am interested in the intellectual trajectory (herkunft) that has eventuated in the emergence (entstehung) of the idea of a national Barbadian identity within postindependence discourse.12 This genealogy seeks to pose questions such as the following: What are the discursive conditions that permit the possibility of the intelligibility and legitimacy of the idea of a coherent and autonomous Barbadian identity? How is this idea constituted within the problematic of postindependence Barbadian discourse? What is the complex configuration of metaphors, notions, categories and norms that has conspired to produce such an object of discourse? How do these factors function together to define in the final analysis a 'representative' Barbadian? Genealogies such as this derive from Foucault's view that the "development of humanity" is a "series of interpretations", as a result of which the role of genealogy is to "record . . . the history of morals, ideals, and metaphysical concepts".13 It is precisely because all such concepts represent the "emergence of different interpretations" that they "must be made to appear as events on the stage of historical process".14 Barbadian identity is, from this point of view, not an immutable form or essence that can be rediscovered by an act akin to archaeology. It is, rather, a metaphysical concept that can be shown to be historically derived and promoted as fact. It is the trajectory of derivation that this essay attempts to trace. I think that such an undertaking is an important one. At a time when the Eurocentric premises inherent in traditional conceptions of the 'self and 'nationalism' are under increasing interrogation in academic institu-

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tions worldwide, it is perhaps ironic that these very concepts should have come to form an indelible part of the Barbadian collective (un) conscious and even Barbadian academe. This is reflected in the fact that this essay may very well be the only one in an entire book devoted to the process of nation building in Barbados that sounds what is in effect a dissident note by seeking to question those paradigms that inform such notions as nationalism. Perhaps my most important argument here may consist, therefore, in the contention that the ostensibly radical discourse informing contemporary conceptualizations of Barbadian identity may well merely regurgitate, ironically, many of the most conservative and essentialist assumptions informing the very Eurocentrism from which spokespersons for Afrocentrism, such as Asante, seek to distance themselves. These assumptions in particular, of which I speak, are those crystallized in the early nineteenth century in the discourse of Romanticism, and which have subsequently proved to be so influential for concepts of the nation everywhere. My point is, in short, that the Romantic cast of the postindependence discourse on national identity in Barbados is, together with all its inherent limitations, unmistakable. It is with this in mind that I offer this essay in the spirit of healthy and constructive critique.

Structures of Barbadian Feeling Popular culture is, more often than not, as Williams argues in Marxism and Literature, an important index of those informal 'structures of feeling', often not fully thought out or articulated, that are in the process of becoming hegemonic.15 That a proud sense of what it means to be Barbadian is in the process of being fabricated is evident in the fact that Barbadian identity is a hot topic in songs such as "Barabajan" by the last incarnation of the now defunct group Spice, the main chorus of which repeatedly and assertively proclaims "I am a Barabajan". The Barbadian personality, to use Prime Minister Arthur's terminology, is conceptualized by means of a number of widely disseminated and what I would suggest are interrelated metaphors. One such is organic and is summed up in the widely disseminated phrase "roots and culture". The prevalence of metaphors of rootedness (as well as its inverse, 'rootlessness', which is evidently used to connote the psychopathology, as Fanon would term it, that afflicts

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postslavery Antillean society) can be glimpsed in a variety of fora.16 These range from events such as the Mr and Miss Roots Experience show to songs written and performed by popular Barbadian bands of the moment such as Krosfyah and Square One. Other important tropes in relation to which (Afro-) Barbadian identity is frequently conceptualized include the largely Biblical one of exodus (diaspora) and return, the recuperation of a denigrated African heritage, and the quest for an originary identity only temporarily repressed, not lost. These principal metaphors may be glimpsed in a recently published collection of Barbadian poetry (and, to a lesser degree, prose) entitled Voices.17 The continuous thread linking Africa to its progeny in the New World, the persistence of an African essence in the face of servitude, trauma and repression, these are the themes of Adisa Andwele's "Antiquity", for example. He writes that uh could feel de black presence of muh past leh muh reach fuh de memory so uh could be wid de African spirits that sing down in my soul.18 His desire is to dance back pass de horror de torture de ship de whip de licks

in order to "leh de memory / possess muh body" and "choreograph / de heritage of muh people / inside of me".19 The repressed African inheritance of which the persona speaks is one that seems to be largely a mental or cultural phenomenon rather than a genetic or racial one. What appears

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to be at stake is a matter more of anamnesia than DNA, of restored memory rather than genes. The persona is keen to consciously recognize what has long been retained only in latent or unconscious form via the medium of language: you are here fun yuh never went nuh way yuh stayed hiding under de talk of massa tonque [sic] disguising yuhself all along yes yuh never left.20

The recovery of this African heritage is tantamount to a surpassing of the false consciousness inspired by the forces of Eurocentric acculturation: it "was uh lost / comin cross" but now i am here wid uh memory that survive that is carry muh back pass brainwash illusions an' views back to antiquity back to de black ancestral regions of muh mind.21

Nailah Folami Imoja's "Welcome to Shashamene" utilizes the trope of exodus from and return to an original homeland. Shashamene is the "promised land" that paradoxically "lies within me" and to which "some fine day", Imoja writes, "i shall go".22 It is, as such, an odyssey likely to be less physical than spiritual. Shashamene, importantly, represents the antithesis of the present condition of her "soul" which she variously describes as "dressed in black", "adorned with dread" and "tormented".23 The soul in such a state, she contends, "deserves a home of her own / some cold ground as a bed / some rock stone as a pillow".24 The soul

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needs the pulsing red river to stain her black soil and feed her waves of gold and green.25

Elizabeth 'Elisheba' Best's "Broken Branch" uses a plethora of organic metaphors, all of which, in ways analogous to the trope of rootlessness, connote a sense of self severed from origin and, thus, split rather than whole. The persona describes herself, for example, as a "broken branch / quivering in the stem": "torn from the mother trunk, / I hang".26 Denying that I waltz in coy response to the tremulous caress of sympathetic breezes,

she avers that "I jive in tune / to the deeper quake / of self severed from self; sap stemmed at the source".27 The persona defiantly predicts that, although the "breach won't mend" and this "branch shall fall", it shall "in the wake of its demise . . . root / and rise".28 Hubris, figured in terms of heliotropism, is no sin for a persona not reluctant to try where Icarus failed: although it may be "scarred", yet it is "not scared to branch too close to the sun".29

Barbadian Philosophical Precursors The inspiration to this young generation of writers of their most important Barbadian poetic and, more significantly, philosophical precursor Kamau Brathwaite ought to be clear. They all, to use Bloom's term, 'creatively misread' Brathwaite.30 The indispensability to Brathwaite's world view of diasporic, primordial and organic tropes is evident in the essay "Timehri" (written in 1974) which explores the deracination of the victims of the African diaspora. He laments the pervasive "sense of rootlessness" in the Caribbean which is, he argues, the "most significant feature of West Indian life and imagination": to wit, the feeling "of not belonging to the landscape".31 Employing a culturalist model of identity, he contends that

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the precise cause of this dissociation is the "fragmented culture" of the region arising from "creolization", the process of "interculturation" which occurred historically between the four "main culture-carriers of the region: Amerindian, European, African and East Indian" and led to a "plural society, a plural vision".32 The result is the absence of a "sense of wholeness" due to the synthesis of different cultures that formed Caribbean identity.33 Deracination and division are two sides of the same coin. "Disillusion with the fragmentation", Brathwaite writes, "leads to a sense of rootlessness" and eventuates in a "dissociation of sensibility".34 What Brathwaite has in mind here is not the division between thought and feeling that, T.S. Eliot theorized, has afflicted all English literature written since Milton but a "dissociation . . . of art from act of living".35 He has in mind, too, the split psyche of the black Antillean theorized by Fanon, which arises from the "inherited non-African consciousness of educated West Indian society".36 In a classic statement on the indispensability of Afrocentricity in the Caribbean in the face of the economic, political and cultural forces of Eurocentrism, Brathwaite stresses that "the central force of our life of awareness is African. As black people in the Caribbean, that is how we feel it should be."37 Much of the essay is also devoted to Brathwaite's personal odyssey to recapture long denigrated 'roots'. By his own admission a "potential AfroSaxon" from young due to his formal education, perhaps the single most important event in his life was, he believes, his trip to West Africa where he rediscovered the cultural 'roots' from which he and other members of the African diaspora were brutally severed.38 Brathwaite explicitly emphasizes that it is a common culture or history rather than race - the bond of mind, as it were - that unites persons with the same skin colour: I ended up in a village in Ghana. It was my beginning . . . Slowly but surely . . . I was coming to an awareness and understanding of community, of cultural wholeness, of the place of the individual within the tribe, in society. Slowly . . . I came to a sense of identification of myself with these people, my living diviners. I came to connect my history with theirs, the bridge of my mind now linking Atlantic and ancestor, homeland and heartland. When I turned to leave, I was no longer a lonely individual talent. . . And I came home to find that I had not really left. That it was still Africa; Africa in the Caribbean . . . The connection between my lived, but unheeded non-middle class boyhood, and its Great Tradition on the eastern mainland had been made.39

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Brathwaite writes movingly of the paradoxes that inhere in his discovery, that is, of finding his origins at the end of an odyssey, of coming to understand the dialectical interrelationship that exists between self and community, and of the presence of Africa in the Caribbean. Hence, his stress on the importance of the "primordial nature" of both Amerindian and African culture and the "potent spiritual and artistic connections between them and the present".40 In the Caribbean, he writes, the recognition of an ancestral relationship with the folk or aboriginal culture involves the artist... in a journey into the past and hinterland which is at the same time a movement of possession into present and future. Through this movement of possession we become ourselves, truly our own creators.41

A return to the past is the route, paradoxically, to the future. Reunion with the ancestors culminates, for Brathwaite, in the possession of self. A rediscovery of origins is the essential foundation of life in the present. In an attempt to show how this heritage could be passed on by other than genetic means, Brathwaite contends, in a manner undoubtedly indebted to Melville Herskovitz's seminal work on African Americanisms, that perhaps the most important medium thereof is linguistic.42 Brathwaite argues in "Nation Language" (an extract from a larger essay first aired in 1979) that the contributions made to the linguistic syntheses or 'Creoles' of the region by the African languages the slaves brought with them on the Middle Passage have historically been ignored.43 English, Spanish, French and Dutch, through processes of transference and adaptation, were necessarily "influenced by the underground language [s]" spoken by the slaves.44 By the same token, the"submerged language" of the slaves was itself "constantly transforming itself into new forms", "moving from a purely African form to a form which was African but which was adapted to the new environment and adapted to the cultural imperatives of the European languages".45 The name Brathwaite gives to the creolized languages that resulted from this "interculturative" process is "nation language".46 What is important here is that Brathwaite employs an essentially expressivist model of language (as evidenced by his use of terms such as 'culture-carriers'): his point is that these nation languages necessarily express not only the Eurocentric aspects of the forces of acculturation that have moulded our consciousness but also the historically "submerged area" of the consciousness of Caribbean peoples, that

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repressed or unconscious dimension of our identity which is "more closely allied" to the "African aspect of our New World/Caribbean heritage".47 Arguing similarly, along implicitly Freudian lines, George Lamming argues in "Caribbean Literature: The Black Rock of Africa" (written in 1966) that "Africa has remained a blank": the "concept of Africa . . . has not percolated through the vital layers of the West Indian consciousness", resulting in the "fracture of personality" and "fear of the Africa thing".48 Consequently, wherever "African horizons appeared, then negation became a principle".49 In an effort to understand the reasons for this repression of all things African, Lamming is at pains to underscore the difference between the colonial situation in the West Indies and that which obtains on the African continent itself. It is the deracination that results from diaspora that constitutes the crux of the "dilemma that has fertilized the West Indian imagination".50 If the colonial situation in Africa revolves around an "encounter between a traditional, indigenous culture and a colonizing power", the West Indian situation must be understood in terms of the interaction of what he describes as a "triplicity of cultural strains - Africa, Europe, and Asia", and as a result of which the local populations "can claim no ancestral roots in the soil that was to become their home".51 The "ambiguity set up by the presence of the past and its origin in another landscape, whether it be Africa, Asia, or Europe", has produced a "very special awareness of exile combined with the peculiar restlessness and detachment that accompany it", Lamming argues.52 Hence, Lamming notes, the "resonant concern to explore the root and origin of their contemporary reality" on the part of Caribbean persons as well as the "need, conscious or unconscious, to forge from the cultural miscegenation of Africa, India, and Europe . . . an image that is distinctly West Indian".53 The widespread solution to this "crisis of identity" that Lamming identifies is precisely that advanced by Brathwaite.54 When people who are exiled in this way from the native soil of their ancestors set out to "make a break with the [immediate] past", they return to the very past they may have rejected, return in order to seize it consciously, to disentangle it from the myths and fears that once made it menacing. They return because this urgency to discover who and what they are demands that the past be restored to its proper perspective, that it be put on their

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list of proper possessions. They want to be able to say without regret or shame or guilt or inordinate pride: 'This belongs to me. What I am comes out of this."55

Interestingly, the lack of the first person pronoun (so prevalent, by contrast, in Brathwaite's quasi-autobiography) as well as a contrasting stress on 'they' would seem to betray that Lamming distances himself, at least to some degree, from the project described above. Indeed, the recovery of the past seems to be depicted here by Lamming as a something of a recuperative strategy, rather than mere rediscovery. He appears, moreover, to have serious doubts about the possibility of ever simply rediscovering a transcendental African essence, speaking merely of the desire to "attribute to an African soul. . . some of that original ground of being which exposes and reveals the essential lack" (my emphasis) at the core of identity.56 In so doing, Lamming would seem to anticipate later postcolonial emphases on the political usefulness of a strategic, but always provisional, essentialism.

The Negritude Movement The Negritude movement of the 1930s and 1940s was evidently an important influence upon both Brathwaite and Lamming. Its leading spokespersons, Aime Cesaire and Leopold Sedar Senghor, clearly utilize, in similar ways to Brathwaite and Lamming, organic, primordial and diasporic tropes to conceptualize Caribbean and African identity. For example, as both Brathwaite and Lamming have done, Cesaire offers a culturalist definition of identity. He is adamant here that "negritude is not essentially of a biological nature": beyond immediate biology, it obviously refers to something deeper; more precisely, to a sum of lived experiences which have defined and characterized one of the forms of human condition made by history. Its common denominator is not skin color as such but the fact that we all belong in one way or another to a people who has suffered and continues to suffer, a people who is marginalized and oppressed.57 Arguing that Negritude is "not a metaphysics", Cesaire contends that it is a "way of living a history within history", an "unparalleled" one consisting of "population deportations", "forced migrations", "slaugh-

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tered cultures" and "long forgotten beliefs".58 He is at pains to stress that such a "coherence" of lived experiences, rather than biological factors, is what necessarily constitutes a "specific heritage".59 "What more is needed to create an identity?" he asks: Who cares about chromosomes? I believe in archetypes. I believe in the value of all that is buried in the collective memory and even in the collective unconsciousness. I don't believe that we come into the world with an empty brain in the same way that we come with empty hands . . . I believe in the virtue of accumulated and secular experiences conveyed by cultures.60

Cesaire is evidently gesturing towards Fanon's seminal Black Skin White Masks where, in turn 'misreading' Carl Jung, Fanon argues that Antillean Negroes share a collective unconscious.61 The purpose of Ce"saire's gesture ought to be evident: Fanon clearly views the archetypes that constitute this collective unconscious, and through which the traumatic experiences of colonialism, enslavement and racism are bequeathed to subsequent generations, as not genetically perpetuated (as in Jung's scheme of things) but culturally acquired (through the books that we read, and the like). Cesaire evidently also believes that the collective unconscious of the Antillean Negro is also the repository of all the archetypes that link the peoples of the region to Africa. Preferring the term "identity" over "ethnicity", Cesaire contends that Negritude has led the man and woman of African descent "to ourselves".62 A sense of our true identity is the necessary prerequisite of political and social reform, he writes, because it is "that which is fundamental, that on which all the rest is built; the hard and irreducible core; that which gives a man, a culture, a civilization its own shape, its style and its irreducible singularity".63 Ce"saire's map of the route towards what he terms "our collective personality" is, like Brathwaite's, a paradoxical one: the way forward towards "our potential being" must take place via a journey back into the past: negritude has spawned the rehabilitation of our values by ourselves; the plumbing of the depths of our past by ourselves; of our own re-rooting in a history, a geography and a culture; the whole given meaning not by an archaic dwelling on the past but by a reactivation of the past in order to leave it behind, (my emphasis)64

The future is prepared by seizing the present in order to "better re-evaluate the past".65

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The American Black Arts/Cultural Nationalist Movement It was, by Cesaire's own admission, "in the United States that negritude was born".66 Clearly, another major influence on Brathwaite and Lamming is evidently the black arts/cultural nationalist movement in the United States of the 1960s where 'roots' and other related metaphors are also frequently used to conceptualize the nature of African American identity. Martin Luther King, for example, employs arborescent metaphors in order to write of the dehumanizing effects of slavery: "Out of the soil of slavery came the psychological roots of the Black Power movement."57 Contending that everyone "must confront the question, 'Who am l?'";68 King's answer is not dissimilar to that of Brathwaite or Lamming in this regard: he contends that the black American is the product of two cultures, Africa and America. Arguing that slavery and racism "have scarred the soul and wounded the spirit of the black man", he stresses, accordingly, the widespread "determination to glory in blackness and to resurrect joyously the African past".69 Any rejection of this African heritage leads, he argues, to persons "without cultural roots".70 The problem, however, is that in the "search for wholeness", too many, under the spell of the Black Power movement, embrace only one side of this dual heritage.71 The "old Hegelian synthesis", King contends, "still offers the best answer to many of life's dilemmas. The American Negro is neither totally African nor totally Western. He is Afro-American, a true hybrid, a combination of two cultures."72 Although as an advocate of Black Power, Stokeley Carmichael's emphasis in "Pan-Africanism: Land and Power" is on autonomy rather than the integration envisioned by King, he also utilizes the 'roots' metaphor and, not insignificantly, gestures towards autochthony.73 (Indeed, arborescent metaphors frequently blur into tropes of autochthony to the point where they are sometimes used almost interchangeably.) He argues that one of the most insidious effects of American slavery and racism was the destruction of the Negro's "culture, his language, his history, his identification, his total humanity".74 A key strategy in this regard was one of differentiation: "Europe took its time to divide us carefully . . . [T]hey gave us different names so that we could never . . . refer to ourselves by

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the same name."75 The solution? Pan-Africanism, by which he means not merely cultural nationalism but political, social and economic autonomy. "One of the most important things we must begin to do", he argues, "is to call ourselves 'African.' No matter where we are from, we are first and finally Africans."76 All black people are "African. That's the roots, and that's where we all have to come from."77 Contending that he understands what he describes as the "ancestral roots of the problem", Carmichael writes that the parable of Antaeus, says Plato, shows that the philosopher king has come up out of the earth, that the people grew out of the earth. They were asking "Where are we from?" Plato says that you must always answer that question: "Where are we from?" In his book he says that the people come out of the earth, have grown up there, so that they always fight for that earth; and for the ideas that come out of that earth. And they always will. So black people (us) come out of that earth, and we always will . . . If black people in the States say "where are we from?" they must wind up at Africa. One must know one's beginning, who one is, before one knows where one is going.78

We black people, he contends, "have to have our theory of Antaeus".79 To this end, "We need a land base . . . The best place, it seems to me, and the quickest place that we can obtain land is Africa."80 Carmichael's allusion to Antaeus repeats similar gestures to be found in earlier seminal discourses on African American identity such as Alain Locke's 'The Negro in American Culture". It was in this essay that Locke noted, as early as 1929, the "spiritual espousal of Africa" among the 'new negroes' whom he noticed around him.81 He defined this espousal as a "conscious and deliberate threading back of the historic sense of group tradition to the cultural backgrounds of Africa".82 The "moods of Africa, the old substances of primitive life, are for this growing school of thought a precious heritage, acceptable as a new artistic foundation;... a source of new inspiration in the old Antaean strength".83 It is, however, W.E.B. Du Bois who is perhaps the most influential figure in African American social and political discourse during the first decades of the twentieth century and one of the first to identify himself as a pan-Africanist. He too employs organic, primordial and diasporic tropes to conceptualize African American identity. Du Bois anticipates by many years King's questions concerning the African American's hybrid identity.

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The dilemma of being both American and black at the same time is most famously articulated in chapter 1 of The Souls of Black Folk, titled "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" (written in 1897). Here, openly drawing upon Hegel's notion of the master/slave dialectic, he addresses what he describes as the "double consciousness" with which the African American is afflicted, this sense of always looking at one's self from through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels this twoness, - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body.84

Du Bois evidently conceives of the American Negro's psychomachia in terms of a struggle between two races and the two cultures that they represent, between innate endowment and the Eurocentric forces of acculturation to which the American Negro is inevitably subjected. The "history of the American Negro is the history of this strife - this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost."85 A similar unresolved tension between racialism and culturalism would seem to animate his theorization of the American Negro's identity in 'The Conservation of Races" (also written in 1897). His main query concerns the "essential difference of races", and his conclusion would seem a culturalist one: a race cannot be defined solely in biological terms. "What, then, is a race?" he asks. It is a "vast family of human beings, generally of common blood and language, always of common history, traditions and impulses".86 However, Du Bois' culturalism blurs into an ill-defined transcendental idealism when he attempts to explain himself further: while race differences have followed mainly physical race lines, yet no mere physical distinctions would really define or explain the deeper differences - the cohesiveness and continuity of these groups. The deeper differences are spiritual, psychical, differences - undoubtedly based on the physical, but infinitely transcending them. The forces that bind together... nations are, then, first, their race identity and common blood; secondly, and more important, a common history, common laws and religion, similar habits of thought and a conscious striving together for certain ideals of life.87

Du Bois continually vacillates between racialist, culturalist and idealist models of American Negro identity. His biologism is evident, for example,

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when, utilizing a set of organic, temporal and patriarchal metaphors, he argues that, although Negroes may be American by birth, citizenship, political, ideals, language and religion (that is, culture), they remain nevertheless, Negroes, members of a vast historic race that from the very dawn of creation has slept, but half awakening in the dark forests of its African fatherland. We are the first fruits of this new nation, the harbinger of that black tomorrow which is yet destined to soften the whiteness of the Teutonic today.88

However, having overtly appealed to the common biology shared by all Negroes, Du Bois' rhetoric immediately takes on a rather idealist, indeed, Hegelian cast. If the Negro race, he argues, is ever to take its rightful place among the worldwide community of races (each of which have something original to contribute to human civilization), it must aim for a unity predicated upon an ill-defined shared 'ideal': "only Negroes bound and welded together, inspired by one vast ideal" (my emphasis) can lead to the "development of Negro genius, of Negro literature and art, of Negro spirit".89 It is in "The Concept of Race", finally, that Du Bois articulates a conceptualization of African American identity based less on a common biology or an essentialist conception of human history and human community than a shared existential history of suffering. Here, he admits that "Africa is of course my fatherland . . . On this vast continent were born and lived a large portion of my direct ancestors going back a thousand years or more. The mark of their heritage is upon me in color and hair."90 However, what defines him as African is less consanguinity than the fact that since the fifteenth century these ancestors of mine and their other descendants have had a common history, have suffered a common disaster, and have one long memory . . . [T]he physical bond is least and the badge of color relatively unimportant save as a badge; the real essence of this kinship is its social heritage of slavery, the discrimination and insult . . . It is this unity which draws me to Africa.91

By this point (this essay was written in 1940, much later than the first two), Du Bois was evidently conscious of and eager to reconcile the contradictions that inhered in his earlier formulation of the ethnic identity

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of African Americans, and that obviously threatened to play right into the hands of the scientific racists who had gained ascendancy in the nineteenth century with their arguments predicated upon biologism. However, although Du Bois' turn towards an entirely culturalist model of identity evidently has more in common with the Marxism and existentialism of thinkers such as Cesaire, even this model is not immune to important contradictions that, as we shall see, inhere in the very project of Romantic nationalism from which it derives its greatest inspiration.

Romantic Nationalism The views of antiracist and anticolonial thinkers such as Du Bois at the turn of the century in no way represent some sort of radical departure from or challenge to the dominant fm-de-siecle and early twentieth century Euro-American discourse on nationhood or the contradictions that inhere in it. Ernest Kenan's seminal "What is a Nation?" (1882) would seem, for example, to reject racial concepts of the nation in favour of a political definition. A nation is something of a daily plebisicite, he argues, a voluntary contract between its members to affirm his or her acceptance of the collective identity of the nation. He defines this identity in terms of its historical heritage. He speaks of there being something of a "moral conscience" constituted simultaneously by the "possession in common of a rich legacy of memories" and the "will to perpetuate the value of the heritage".92 The nation, like the individual, is the culmination of a long past of endeavours, sacrifice, and devotion. Of all cults, that of the ancestors is the most legitimate, for the ancestors have made us what we are. A heroic past, great men, glory . . . this is the social capital upon which one bases a national idea. To have common glories in the past and to have a common deed in the present; to have performed great deeds together, to wish to perform still more - these are the essential conditions for being a people.93

Renan is explicit: the nation cannot be defined in racial terms. Moreover, the nation cannot be defined by factors such as language, religious affinities or geography. These are all less important than a common history and, thus, culture of shared values in the forging of a unified

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national identity. The "fact of having suffered, enjoyed, and hoped together", he writes, are the "kinds of things that can be understood in spite of differences of race and language".94 Renan also points out, in a way that resonates with respect to thinkers such as Du Bois and Cesaire, that where "national memories are concerned, griefs are of more value than triumphs, for they impose duties, and require a common effort".95 Although Renan seems to adhere to a culturalist notion of personal and collective identity, at heart, as Malik stresses, his concept of the nation "fits snugly within the metaphysical poetics of the Romantic tradition" and is informed by a "mystical, Romantic notion of nationhood".96 This can be glimpsed, for example, when Herder equates the national memories that constitute the very heart of the nation with a "soul, a spiritual principle".97 In Renan's essay, the nation emerges as what Malik describes as a "transcendental affirmation of a common heritage and values", one, in other words, which can be defined only in idealist terms.98 This notion of a "transhistorical entity" existing at the core of the nation nowhere finds better expression than in the father of British conservativism.99 The nation, Edmund Burke writes, is not an idea only of local extent and individual momentary aggregation, but it is an idea of continuity, which extends in time as well as in numbers and in space. And this is a choice not of one day or one set of people, not a tumultuary and giddy choice; it is the election of the ages and of generations; it is a constitution made by what is ten thousand times better than choice, it is made by peculiar circumstances, occasions, tempers, dispositions and moral, civil and social habitudes, which disclose themselves only in a long space of time. It is a vestment which accommodates itself to the body.100

The nation is, he also writes, a "moral essence".101 For Burke, as Malik sums it up, the nation is the "collective expression of the intuitive spirit" that binds a people together as a result of which culture is in effect the "disclosure of tradition through time".102 The views of thinkers such as Burke or Renan in this regard are perhaps best explained by reference to what A.O. Lovejoy has described as the "diversitarianism" or particularism synonymous with romanticism.103 Rejecting the view widespread during the Enlightenment that human nature is everywhere the same (so-called universalism, or what Lovejoy

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terms "uniformitarianism"), the Romantics were of the view, rather, that specific human communities were unified by the common essence that its members shared and that accordingly differentiated them from other human communities.104 Lovejoy contends that if there is one factor that unites all the various manifestations of romanticism and that has been its most enduring legacy, for good and bad, it is the "distrust of universal formulas", resulting in the "cultivation of individual, national, and racial peculiarities" and the "validation . . . of originality".105 The rejection of universalism and the embrace of diversitarianism which distinguished the Romantics from their predecessors are explicable, in turn, by reference to the organicist and historicist framework of thinking that rose to prominence at the end of the eighteenth century. To be precise, the notion that different species of plant were necessarily the products of diverse conditions of climate and soil translated itself into a theory of individualism and cultural relativism. According to historians of ideas, in the late eighteenth century, the organism began to replace the mechanism as the prototype of all dynamic wholes and biology to replace Newtonian mechanics as the prime source of the analogies most frequently employed in processes of intellection. In particular, it is the life cycle of the plant, as M.H. Abrams put it, that begins to replace mechanical metaphors as the "great source of concepts, which migrating into other provinces, were modifying the general character of ideation".106 There was, accordingly, a predisposition to attribute a plantlike development to persons and institutes alike. As Abrams puts it, in a "fully fledged organology", any human or human artefact is "envisioned as germinating, without anyone's deliberate plan or intent, and as fulfilling its destiny through an inner urgency, feeding on the materials of its time and place in order to proliferate into its ultimate and living form".107 Moreover, there is great emphasis placed on the mutual dependence or common purpose of all its parts as a result of which the whole is thought to be greater than the sum of its parts. Again and again, recourse is increasingly made to the life cycle of the plant in particular, especially its birth in a particular soil and climate; its assimilation of elements drawn from that environment; its maturation, decay and death; and its organic unity. Hence, the frequent employment of tropes of vegetable growth and decay: of rooting, germination, budding, blossoming and withering away. Moreover, organicism and historicism are two sides of the same coin in

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that thinking "patterned on a growing plant" encouraged a tendency to think developmentally rather than in terms of immutability: "much that hitherto been conceived as Being is now seen as itself a Becoming - the universe itself is a process being reconceptualised in terms of Becoming".108 As such, organicism also fostered what Abrams calls a "genetic habit of mind": "to understand anything is to know how it has come about" and, thus, to understand its origin. Organic change, that is, the "orderly emergence of inner forms" is held to "constitute the very essence of things".109 The "founding father of historical organology", and, by extension, of the related notions of nationalism and the volksgeist, was J.G. Herder.110 Most scholars of nationalism (such as Hutchinson or Smith) agree that, where modern nationalism is concerned, all roads lead to Herder. (To argue this, I hasten to add, is not to suggest that Herder is the 'originator' of the discourse of modern nationalism. 'Misreading' in turn those who preceded him, his work constitutes, rather, the crucial deviation at this historical juncture from the main current of thinking on cultural identity that predated him.) Herder's favourite analogy for describing personal and collective identity is, clearly, the life process of the plant. It is this that may be his most important legacy to modern discourse on personal and collective identity. "Like a tree have I grown", he writes: the "germ was there; but air, earth, and all the elements, which I did not myself provide, had to make their contribution to form the germ, the fruit, the tree".111 Time and again, Herder exhibits a definite propensity to seek genetic explications of a wide range of human phenomena that are couched most often in organic metaphors. The reason for so doing, he points out, is that the "botanist cannot obtain a complete knowledge of a plant, unless he follow it from the seed, through its germination, blossoming, and decay".112 Given Herder's often unrecognized importance for the models of the nation and of cultural identity which inform both anticolonial and African American thought, it is useful at this point to provide a detailed overview of his thought. Herder believed that there is no such thing as a universal human essence and, thus, that human culture is not everywhere alike. Offering what some might argue is merely a variant of autochthonous myths of identity, Herder is of the view the uniqueness of each culture is attributable to a variety of existential factors. The distinctive features of each human

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community are the product of a particular climate, geographical, biological and other physical factors: As a mineral water derives its component parts, its operative powers, and its flavour, from the soil through which it flows; so the ancient character of nations arose from the family features, the climate, the way of life and education, the early actions and employments, that were peculiar to them.113

"The cultivation of a people is the flower of its existence", Herder writes.114 Arguing that each culture has become what it is "through a given series of causes and effects", Herder is of the view that, over time, a distinctive cultural tradition is formed and handed down in immutable form from generation to generation, something summed up by the term the volksgeist.115 According to Herder, any community is made one by the common memories and values accumulated in this way. An understanding of the distinctive features of each such tradition must be sought in its original roots precisely because it was the "manners of the fathers" that "took deep root, and became the internal prototype of the race" 116 Herder also believed that this cultural tradition is expressed through the actions and thoughts of each member of the community. Since there are central patterns in terms of which each culture can be identified, to be a member of an identifiable group is to think and act in a certain way, in the light of specific conceptions of reality and, thus, particular values. Isaiah Berlin sums up Herder's point of view this way: "to be fully human . . . one must belong somewhere, to some group or some historical stream which cannot be defined save in the genetic terms of a tradition, a milieu and a culture" 117 The principal medium of the conceptions and values of a culture is its language. In language, Herder writes, "dwell its entire world of tradition, history, religion, principles of existence; its whole heart and soul" 118 "Language expresses the collective experience of the group",119 he also writes, as a result of which in the "works of the imagination and feeling the entire soul of a nation reveals itself most clearly" 12° Herder extols, consequently, the virtues of originality and invention: man must "cease to be in contradiction with himself" and to "return to himself"; men must aim to "find themselves" and to "learn not to think in other people's thoughts" 121 Imitation, thus, is tantamount to a betrayal of the self. The ever-present danger is the temptation to "speak the words of strangers" that "wean us from our own thoughts".122

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Exile from one's natural homeland, consequently, is an unnatural state of affairs even if often unavoidable (given that, for Herder, the history of humanity is one of migration). He argues that just as transplanted plants wither in unsympathetic climes, so too do humans. If "every one of these nations had remained in its place, the Earth might have been considered as a garden, where in one spot one human national plant, in another, another, bloomed in its proper figure and nature".123 But, he continues, "as men are not firmly rooted plants", they "must in time remove from their place to some other more or less different".124 The result is the adulteration of one's original culture and, thus, the betrayal, at least to some degree, of one's true self: though they might adhere to the manners of their forefathers with an obstinacy almost equal to the instinct of the brute, and even apply to their new mountains, rivers, towns, and establishments, the names of their primitive land; it would be impossible for them to remain eternally the same in every respect, under any considerable alteration of soil and climate. Here, the transplanted people would construct a wasp's nest, or anthill, after their own fashion. The style would be a compound arising from the ideas imbibed in their original country, and those inspired by the new: and this may commonly be called the youthful bloom of the nation.125

Deracination, therefore, is the thing to be avoided at all costs. 'Though the tree lift its head", Herder sermonizes, "and overshadow whole quarters of the Globe, it if be not rooted in the earth, a single blast of wind may overturn it".126 As Berlin points out, no "writer has stressed more", at least prior to the advent of African American or anticolonial discourse which both, directly or indirectly, undoubtedly found their inspiration in Herder, the "damage done to human beings by being torn from the only conditions in which their history has made it possible for them to live full lives".127 Herder's cultural pluralism, his belief not merely in the multiplicity but, more importantly, in the uniqueness and incommensurability of different cultures has evidently had a profound influence upon modern notions of individual and collective identity. As Berlin points out, "All regionalists, all defenders of the local against the universal, all champions of deeply rooted forms of life, both reactionary and progressive,... owe something, whether they know it or not, to the doctrines which Herder introduced

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into European thought."128 The principal symptom of Herder's influence upon those engaged in the process of nation building in the wake of European imperialism is the preponderance of the 'roots' metaphor that in each case implies an organic model of identity structured along the lines adumbrated above. A Herderian problematic is almost palpable, for example, in Senghor's conception of national identity. Arguing, like Herder, in favour of cultural diversity, Senghor contends that it is "Nature" that has ordained "each people, each race, each continent to foster with a particular preference particular virtues and for its originality to be in this".129 (Not insignificantly, Senghor implicitly alludes to the myth of autochthony. This is signalled by his reference here to Antaeus who first "needed to stand on the ground to make his leap into the sky".)130 He uses organic metaphors in order to draw a distinction between what he terms "homeland", the "nation" and the "state". The homeland consists, he writes, in the "heritage handed down to us by our forefathers; land, blood, a language or at least a dialect, manners and customs, a folklore and an art, a culture . . . rooted in one particular area and given expression by one race".131 Homelands, consequently, "arise naturally as expressions of a particular place and environment".132 However, the nation is that which synthesizes these various homelands: it "groups together the homelands in order to transcend them".133 The state, by extension, is a "deliberately willed construction, or rather, re-construction. Objectively it is a restructuring after the pattern of a model or an archetype . . . It unites the virtues of the homeland or more often chooses from among them those which, because of climate, history, race, have a common denominator."134 Senghor then takes all this one step further. Drawing on the Hegelian rhetoric of the Zeitgeist, he argues that all members of the African diaspora are united with Africans who remain on the continent to form a homogeneous civilization, one unified by their common 'Negritude', which the traumas inflicted by European colonialism has not managed to wipe out. It is on this basis that he can confidently proclaim that the "spirit of African civilization animates, consciously or unconsciously" the "best Negro artists and writers of today, both in Africa and America".135 However, there are a number of questions inevitably raised by all culturalist models of identity, such as those of Senghor or Du Bois or Cesaire or Brathwaite, that so evidently trace their lineage to Herder: How

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does one define this suprapersonal element linking the members of a particular ethnic group to each other and to their ancestors? In other words, what is the precise nature of, for want of a better term, the cultural essence that is shared in common? Is a common Negritude the best way of understanding the bond that links members of the African diaspora not only to each other but also to those who remain on the continent? If so, how should we understand this Negritude? Of what does it consist? How is it transmitted? The answers to these questions, as I hope to show, take two principal forms, the implied assumptions of both of which are, ironically, hostile to the very premisses upon which culturalism is predicated: the positing of an implicitly biological inheritance and/or the positing of an a priori, ahistorical transcendental subject.

Implicit Biologism Sometimes pan-Africanists explicitly define this Negritude in biological terms, this notwithstanding the fact that such an explanation merely regurgitates the scientific theories of race so prevalent in nineteenth century Europe and ultimately plays into the hands of racists. As Edward Schils argues, identification on the basis of skin colour is a variant of ethnic identification which is itself a manifestation of the universal process of "self-identification by kinship connection and territorial location".136 This latter is predicated, he argues, on man's universal "need to be in contact with the point and moment of his origin and to experience a sense of affinity with those who share that origin".137 Schils points out, quite correctly, that "[s] elf-identification by color" necessarily entails "some reference to a common biological origin that is thought to establish ties of affinity, sometimes obligation and solidarity among those who share it, and of separation from those who do not" (my emphasis).138 My interest here is not in the evident shortcomings of biological conceptions of Negritude. I am mostly interested in those pan-Africanists and anticolonial thinkers on the subject who, from Du Bois to Brathwaite, have adopted a culturalist perspective. As Schils points out, in the case of identification on the basis of nationality or culture, what he terms the "primordial element" (the reference to a common biological origin)

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begins to recede, yielding to an " 'ideal' or 'ideational' element -a 'spirit/ an 'essence' -that is recognized as involving the mind".139 Etienne Balibar has argued strongly that there are a number of resemblances between the concept of race and that of culture which in effect elides the boundaries between them. He argues that the "symbolic kernel of the idea of race" as well as, significantly, of its "cultural equivalents" (my emphasis) is the schema of genealogy, the "idea that the filiation of individuals transmits from generation to generation a substance both biological and spiritual and thereby inscribes them in a temporal community known as 'kinship' ".14° Walter Benn Michaels explains why this might be so by convincingly demonstrating how the binary opposition between race and culture, emphasized by a whole host of seminal thinkers such as Herskovitz, deconstructs itself. Michaels points out that where some African American thinkers are prepared to argue that the African heritage is genetically inherited, most others are adamant, lest they fall prey to biological definitions of race and thus give ammunition to racists, that race plays no role in the constitution of cultural identity. Their point is that the cultural identity shared by black Americans is not a matter of genetic inheritance but learned behaviour, not nature but nurture. Michaels points out that there must be a biological factor implied, but not acknowledged, in the existence and perpetuation of any cultural tradition precisely because the "fact that some people before you did something that you do does not in itself make what they did part of your past".141 Rather, to "make what they did part of your past, there must be some prior assumption of identity between you and them, and this assumption is . . . racial".142 Ironically, antiracist culturalism, Michaels argues, "can only be articulated through a commitment to racial identity".143 Michaels' point is that it is not an understanding of our past that determines our sense of who we are. It is, rather, paradoxically the other way around: "we need to know who we are in order to know which past is ours".144 In other words, for us to determine that a particular history somehow pertains to us, we must first decide who we are, and this is a decision necessarily reached on the grounds of ethnic identification. According to Michaels, the real question, therefore, is not which past should count as ours but why any past should count as ours. Virtually all the events and actions that we study did not happen to us and were

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not done by us. In this sense, the history we study is never our own; it is always the history of people who were in some respects like us and in other respects different. When, however, we claim it as ours, we commit ourselves to the ontology of 'the Negro', to the identity of 'we' and 'they', and the primacy of race.145

From this point of view, "culture has turned out to be a way of continuing rather than repudiating racial thought".146 To put this another way, an "essentialist assertion of identity" inheres in the culturalist project in that "instead of who we are being constituted by what we do, what we do is justified by who we are".147 The controversy in Barbados over the removal of Nelson's statue bears Michaels' point out. Why, if Nelson's race is not important, is the statue being removed? The answer, according to the prime minister, lies in his Britishness. That is, nationality or culture is the key factor. The question this raises, then, is Why does it behove us as Barbadians to ignore the past for which Nelson stands? Why is his past somehow irrelevant to us? Nelson is clearly a symbol of more than just British militarism or the preservation of anglophone culture in the face of French encroachments in the eighteenth century. He is an emblem, as well, of all that militarism subtended, both good and bad: British imperialism, colonialism, economic exploitation, slavery, and racism, on the one hand, but also a system of parliamentary democracy, a juridical system, a political constitution, the game of cricket, and the like, on the other, of which, notwithstanding certain limitations or aporia, we have been justly proud. Indeed, ironically, the very epistemological tools that the most incisive critics of imperialism have used to dissect colonialism have been largely bequeathed by the British to us. Even if it is true that the legacy of the British has historically been overemphasized to the detriment of our African heritage, would anyone be silly enough to argue that it has, rightly or wrongly, for good and bad, been the crucial element in our acculturation? If we accept a culturalist model of identity, then, the past which Nelson represents can in no sense be deemed irrelevant to us. Accordingly, there must be other factors that make Nelson unrepresentative. Nelson's past is not pertinent to us only if the element of race enters the fray, a prospect which undermines the very culturalist premisses which are alleged to inform not only what it means to be a national hero but also, by extension, the very essence of Barbadianness.

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We should bear in mind what Tzvetan Todorov has to say in this regard. His contention is that although the adherents of culturalism appear to reject the themes of racial discourse, which reached its apogee in the heyday of scientific racism in the nineteenth century (Gobineau et al.) and, a little later, in Nazi Germany, they nevertheless maintain the essence of a racial outlook even as they substitute culture for biology as the prime factor differentiating human beings.148 The term 'race' is "replaced by the much more appropriate term 'culture' " and "declarations of superiority and inferiority" are set aside in favour of a "glorification of difference".149 What remains constant, however, is the "rigidity of determinism (cultural rather than physical now) and the discontinuity of humanity, compartmentalized into cultures".150 In our day, he concludes, racism has not disappeared but the "discourse that legitimizes" racism "is no longer the same; rather than appealing to racialism, it appeals to nationalist or culturalist doctrine, or to the 'right to difference' ",151 Culturalism, Paul Gilroy argues similarly, distances itself from "crude ideas of biological inferiority and superiority" by appealing instead to notions of nationhood, a unified cultural community and patriotism.152 Contending that the advantage of a cultural view of difference lies in the fact that it does not appear to have any connection with notions of race at all, Malik agrees with Todorov, arguing that a "shift from the discourse of race to the discourse of culture"153 has occurred, which largely takes the form of a shift from a "belief in a single world inhabited by different types of humanity to a belief in a single type of humanity inhabiting different cultural or symbolic worlds":154 culture inherits the role of race in the nineteenth century, and history the power of biology. Culture becomes particularist and exclusive, delineating a common past to which some can belong and some cannot. And that past becomes determinist and teleological, holding power over the present through tradition and rootedness.155

The unfortunate consequence of Herder's particularist outlook, he stresses, was to encourage a racial viewpoint: once it was accepted that different people were motivated by particular sentiments, unique to themselves, it was but a short step to view these differences as racial. Herder's volksgeist became transformed into racial make-up, an unchanging

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substance, the foundation of all physical appearance and mental potential and the basis for division and difference within humankind. 156

Culturalism has in these ways "recreated the assumptions of racial thinking but in a form that can allow cultural exclusivists to deny that they are racist".157

The Metaphysics of Culturalism Perhaps more importantly, culturalist models of Negritude are also predicated upon an undoubted essentialism. This becomes clear when one considers some of the metaphysical implications inherent in the widespread use of organic metaphors to conceptualize identity. Liisa Malkki contends that within both nationalist and culturalist discourses, the "naturalizing of the links between people and place is routinely conceived of in specifically botanical metaphors. That is, people are often thought of, and think of themselves, as being rooted in place and as deriving their identity from that rootedness."158 Such aborescent root metaphors conspire with metaphors of kinship (motherland, fatherland) and of home (homeland) to suggest not only that each culture, like "each nation is a grand genealogical tree, rooted in the soil that nourishes it" but, by implication, cultural distinctness: "it is impossible to be part of more than one tree".159 Moreover, thinking of identity in terms of roots has both a geographical or spatial dimension and a temporal aspect, both of which, however, are designed to define identity in terms of lineage. "Such a tree", Malkki writes, evokes both temporal continuity of existence and territorial rootedness . . . Thinking about nations and national identities may take the form of roots, trees, origins, ancestries, racial lines, autochthonism, evolution, developments, or any number of other familiar, essentializing images; what they share is a genealogical form of thought, which . . . is peculiarly aborescent.160

However, Malkki also points out, if to be indigenous, native, autochthonous or, in short, rooted in place, is elevated, exile, displacement, and dislocation are, conversely, greatly pathologized: "broken and

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dangling roots" are "roots that threaten to wither".161 As a result, "[v]iolated, broken roots signal an ailing cultural identity", as Malkki underlines.162 Once identity is conceptualized in terms of a " 'root essence', as that 'pure product' of the cultural, and of the national, soil from which it is thought to draw its nature and sustenance", then exile is almost inevitably portrayed as an inner destruction visited upon the exiled.163 Enforced separation from one's native soil is thought to eventuate in a loss of moral bearings that is contingent upon the loss of a distinct, autonomous, unified identity. Malkki's contention is that nationalism and culturalism are "kindred concepts" in that the arborescent rhetoric which they share is in fact predicated upon what she describes as a "cultural essentialism".164 This is because the organic conceptions of identity that they make use of imply the originality, autonomy and authenticity of the self as well as, conversely, the dangers that inhere in belatedness, determination or dependence, and inauthenticity or mimicry. Paul De Man brings out the ahistoricism that ironically inheres in the use of organicist metaphors to convey culturalist models of identity. He contends that in natural objects such as flowers, "existence and essence" are thought to "coincide . . . at all times".165 That is, their "becoming coincides at all times with the mode of their own being".166 It is "as flowers", then, "that their history is what it is, totally defined by their identity".167 The reason for this is that flowers, like all natural objects, are entirely true to themselves. They are not replicas in the sense that words are mirrors of reality: rather, they "rise out of the earth without the assistance of imitation or analogy. They do not follow a model other than themselves which they copy or from which they derive the pattern of their growth."168 Moreover, all particular flowers are patterned on a master design or template that transcends history and of which they are so many physical manifestations. De Man's target is evidently Plato's belief in a world of ideal forms or essences: particular flowers can establish an immediate identity with an original Flower, of which they are as many particular manifestations. The original entity, which has to contain an infinity of manifestations of a common essence, in an infinity of places and at an infinity of moments, is necessarily transcendental. Trying to conceive of the natural object in terms of origin leads to a transcendental concept of the Idea: the quest for the Idea that takes the natural object for its starting-point

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begins with the incarnated 'minute particular' and works its way upwards towards a transcendental essence. Beyond the Idea, it searches for Being as the category which contains essences in the same manner that the Idea contains particulars. Because they are natural objects, flowers originate as incarnations of a transcendental principle.169

Clearly, organic metaphors are designed to connote the existence of a fixed and eternal essence at the core of identity, which results in the view, for example, that all black people have an essential and underlying black identity which is the same and unchanging for all eternity. Conversely, uprootedness evidently serves as an image of the traumatic nature of being severed from the very ground of one's being, that is, from one's true self. The quest for such essences, Foucault makes clear, is synonymous with a quest for origins, the Platonic nature of which he also critiques. 'The pursuit of the origin" is, he writes, an attempt to capture the exact essence of things, their purest possibilities, and their carefully protected identities . . . [T]his search assumes the existence of immobile forms that precede the external world of accident and succession. This search is directed to "that which was already there" — However, if the genealogist refuses to extend his faith in metaphysics, if he listens to history, he finds that there is "something altogether different" behind things: not a timeless and essential secret, but the secret that they have no essence or that their essence was fabricated in piecemeal fashion from alien forms.170

Foucault points out, importantly, that the inevitable corollaries of the notion of origin is a sense of "unbroken continuity" or tradition (the belief that the "past actively exists in the present, that it continues secretly to animate the present, having imposed a predetermined form on all its vicissitudes") as well as a teleological sense (the notion, for example, of the "destiny of a people").171 Tradition and teleology are two sides of the same coin and equally specious. What a genealogical approach reveals is not the "roots of our identity", not the "continuities . . . in which our present is rooted", and which augur the future, but the "dissipation" of identity.172 This is because, as Foucault warns, "being does not lie at the root o f . . . what we are, but the exteriority of accidents".173 Walker Connor underscores the relevance of attacks on essentialism, such as those by De Man and Foucault, to an understanding of national-

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ism and culturalism. As he points out, the "unstated presumption" that underpins all ethnonationalisms is "that there existed in some hazy, prerecorded era a[n] . . . Adam and Eve, and that the couple's progeny has evolved in essentially unadulterated form down to the present".174 (As Connor points out, to identify oneself with a particular nationality is "not merely to identify oneself with the... people of today but with that people throughout time. Or rather - given the intuitive conviction that one's nation is unique in its origin - perhaps we should say not throughout time but beyond time.")175 This why, Connor points out, the "essence of a nation is intangible": it is intangible because it consists in a "psychological bond that joins a people and differentiates it, in the subconscious conviction of its members, from all other people".176 This results in a "sense of homogeneity", a "feeling of sameness, of oneness, of belonging, or of consciousness of kind".177 Connor points out that, given the multiplicity of genetic strains of which any nation is necessarily composed, scholars have usually "denied that the notion of shared blood" can be the defining factor of the nation.178 However, arguing that "what ultimately matters is not what is but what people believe is", Connor stresses that it is a subconscious conviction "in the group's separate origin and evolution", an "intuitive sense of consanguinity" that is at the core of all apprehensions of nationhood.179 This is a matter which is "known intuitively and unquestionably, a matter of attitude and not of fact".180 It is this "intuitive conviction" that grants nationality a "psychological dimension approaching that of the extended family, i.e. a feeling of common blood lineage", something borne out by the fact that the word 'nation' derives from the Latin nascire: to be born.181 Hence, Connor points out, outlooks such as that expressed in the nineteenth century German maxim "Blut will zu Blut", roughly translatable as "People of the same blood attract", a sentiment that motivates statements such as the following: "German blood flows in every German body, and the soul is in the blood. When one meets a German brother and not merely a brother from common humanity, there is a certain reaction that does not take place if the brother is not German."182 As Connor underlines, " 'German' in this passage could . . . be replaced by English, Russian, Lithuanian, etc. [or, I might add, Barbadian or black or African or white] without affecting the passage's validity."183

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The greatest danger inherent in both racialism and essentialism (two of the worst aspects, in my view, of Europe's intellectual legacy that has been so, avidly embraced, ironically, in the service of decolonization), indeed, the greatest danger inherent in all centrist modes of thinking, is that essentialist notions of cultural uniqueness so quickly transform themselves into forms of cultural exclusion; that is, they become so rapidly converted into deeply felt convictions of superiority, intellectual, moral and otherwise. This is a process that occurs, importantly, not only between but also within cultures with regard to minorities, especially visible ones. Arguing, with Hegel's notion of the master/slave dialectic in mind, that a sense of self is paradoxically predicated upon a sense of otherness, Connor contends that any culture or nation is a "self-aware ethnic group".184 He argues that "until the members are themselves aware of the group's uniqueness, it is merely an ethnic group and not a nation".185 Such a sense of one's uniqueness, unfortunately, always already depends upon a sense of one's distinction from others and eventuates almost inevitably, it would seem, in exclusionary acts of one sort or another. Malik makes the similar point that "[c]ulture, history, tradition -these are means of delineating one people from another", in that the common essence which provides a sense of belonging and binds communities together functions also to exclude others. A sense of one's own uniqueness seems almost inevitably to eventuate in the demonization of others.186 The warnings of both Malik and Connor in this regard are anticipated by many years by Lovejoy's reminder of the downside of Romantic particularism and, in particular, his thinly veiled allusions to the dangers inherent in the imperialism and racism that have so marred European history. Diversitarianism, he writes, has lent itself all too readily to the service of man's egotism, and especially in the political and social sphere - of the kind of collective vanity which is nationalism or racialism. The belief in the sanctity of one's idiosyncrasy especially if it is group idiosyncrasy, and therefore sustained and intensified by mutual flattery - is rapidly converted into a belief in its superiority . . . A type of national culture valued at first because it was one's own, and because the conservation of differentness was recognized as a good for humanity as a whole, came in time to be conceived of as a thing which one had a mission to impose upon others, or to diffuse over as large part of the surface of the planet as possible.187

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The tragic outcome of the "tendency to seek to universalize things originally valued because they were not universal", and that has found expression in the arts, philosophies and politics of communities and in the "enthusiasms of their populations", is the story of modern European civilization.188 What a tragedy were it to be repeated again. It is important to note in this regard that some of the fiercest critics of Afrocentrism have argued that it replicates, in some of its most extreme forms, some of the most ugly and virulent aspects of Romantic nationalism and ethnocentrism. Stephen Howe, for example, offers a telling critique of it, describing Afrocentrism as a mystical, essentialist, irrationalist and often, in the end, racist set of doctrines [which] has arisen, out of the cultural nationalist milieu . . . The self-ascribed or preferred label for these doctrines is Afrocentricity or Afrocentrism. Afrocentrism may . . . mean little more than an emphasis on shared African origins among all 'black' people, taking a pride in those origins... But in its stronger versions, which have . . . arrogated the 'Afrocentric' label to themselves, a far more cohesive, dogmatic and essentially irrational ideology becomes evident. It provides a direct analogue to the extreme forms of cultural nationalism, premised about beliefs, which flourished in nineteenth century Europe... Like nineteenth century European nationalism, or that evident among some 1930s Germans and 1990s Serbs, 'strong'Afrocentrism is accompanied by a mass of invented traditions, by a mythical vision of the past, and by a body of racial pseudo-science . . ,189 (my emphasis)

The mere inversion of hierarchies, rather than their displacement, Howe implies, merely regurgitates (albeit in different form) and, as such, does little to eliminate the binary oppositions to which human consciousness is seemingly so prone and which are endemic in human societies.

Conclusion My argument is that the postindependence discourse of Barbadian nationalism has produced what Etienne Balibar, following Connor, would term a "fictive ethnicity", fictive for all the reasons that I have attempted to spell out over the last few pages.190 Such a fictive ethnicity is indispensable to the creation of what Balilbar calls the "ideal nation" which is fostered as the object of Barbadian national pride.191 Without it, the

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Barbadian nation would be merely an abstraction and the appeal to the sense of what it means to be a Barbadian would be addressed to no one. It is in this way that the Barbadian is interpellated "in the name of the collectivity".192 It is as a result of the mirror image of Barbadianness fostered in this way that Arthur can take for granted that there is such a thing as the 'Barbadian personality', and Barrow can implicitly refer to a Barbadian soul re-enslaved and waiting to be sold to the highest bidder, and both safely assume that their target audience, the Barbadian electorate, fully comprehends what they mean. Barbadians 'intuitively' know what an Arthur or a Barrow is speaking about, not because the discourse of nationalism has merely held up a mirror to Barbadians in which they can find their reflection but because, paradoxically, Barbadians have been encouraged to reflect the images found in the discourse of nationalism and from which they have derived their sense of identity.193 Barrow's choice of the mirror trope may have been more significant than he realized. The key element in the process by which this fictive Barbadian ethnicity has been produced is what Eric Hobsbawm terms the "invention of a tradition". By this term, he intends the "set of practices . .. which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with . . . a suitable historic past".194 Hobsbawm stresses that such an invention takes three major forms, precise examples of each of which can be found in the formation and consolidation of the modern Barbadian nation state: the development of an education system (at both the secondary and tertiary levels) designed to transmit and cement the newly enshrined principles of Barbadian identity and one of the principal means by which the Barbadian is interpellated; the invention of mass ceremonies (for example, to commemorate Emancipation Day or National Heroes' Day), and the production of public monuments (in some cases in order to replace those that do not accord with the reigning conception of national identity). As Connor reminds us, political leaders of all persuasions have long been "mindful of the common blood component of ethnonational psychology and have not hesitated to appeal to it when seeking popular support".195 It is the success of such appeals that serves to demonstrate the inextricable relationship between ethnicity and nationality, especially within the Barbadian context.

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If the old dictum holds true that the answers you get depend on the questions you ask, it may very well behove us to consider fresh perspectives on the nature of identity. These may beget different ways of looking at ourselves and of viewing the problems we face, and may allow us to formulate alternative solutions to these problems other than the tried and allegedly true. In a schema that constructs subjectivity along the axes of origin/unity/purity, deracination, involuntary diaspora, self-division and miscegenation are necessarily deemed a tragedy. Accordingly, rootlessness and exile are deeply regretted because they are thought to involve a scission from that primordial essence allegedly at the core of identity. Fragmentation is deplored because it is considered anathema to the wholeness alleged to constitute the natural condition of human beings. The historical fact of creolization is mostly worn as a badge of shame because the hybridity of the West Indian would have to be distilled in order to separate out the component elements and reveal his or her 'true' ethnicity in its pure and original form distinct from the acculturated crust which overlays it. These, and other narratives such as these, constitute, for many, the ultimate tragedy of the Middle Passage. From a different vantage point, however, it may be possible to understand that the postindependence discourse of Barbadian nationalism can constitute a romance of loss and recovery, exile and return, only if one accepts the view that there is something originary to be lost in the first place; that there is, therefore, something waiting to be rediscovered, and that all cultures originate in some primordial homeland to which one can return. Fragmentation can constitute a tragedy, mimicry an object of satire, only if one assumes that the subject is whole and pure and authentic. Rootedness can be elegized only if one ultimately believes that the self is transcendental. From this point of view, the discourse of Barbadian nationalism is least 'empowering' when it assumes that identity is pre-given or, at least, a fait accompli, rather than something continually in process and, as such, a matter of constant negotiation. It is least 'empowering' when it fails to acknowledge the mutual imbrication of nationhood and ethnicity. It is more empowering when it acknowledges that traditions are not simply rediscovered but assembled. Maybe, therefore, if we are ever to overcome the traumas derived from our collective past, and which continue to inhabit our present so completely, the imperative may be to alter our

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present understanding of identity, the essentialist one bequeathed to us by the ex-colonizer, that has encouraged us to always understand where we come from in order to understand who we are. Maybe we should bear in mind that it is, by contrast, our present sense of who we are which in fact determines not only that we look to the past but also which past we look to. Maybe it is only in recognizing this that we will manage to actually leave the past behind and turn to the future where at least part of our gaze should always be fixed in the first place.

Notes Head of chapter: Marcel Mauss, "A Category of the Human Mind: The Notion of the Person; the Notion of the Self", The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History, edited by Michael Carrithers, Steven Collins and Steven Lukes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 1-25; George Lamming, "Caribbean Literature: The Black Rock of Africa", Conversations: George Lamming - Essays, Addresses and Interviews, 1953-1990, edited by Richard Drayton and Andaiye (London: Karia, 1992), 105-23; Homi Bhabha, "Cultural Diversity and Cultural Differences", The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, edited by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (London: Routledge, 1995), 206-9; and Homi Bhabha, 'The Third Space", in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, edited by Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1998), 207-21. 1.

2. 3.

4. 5.

Errol Barrow, "What Kind of Image Do You Have of Yourself: Address to a Political Rally, 13 May 1986", Speeches by Errol Barrow, edited by Yussuff Haniff (London: Hansib, 1987), 144-50. "On the Attack: PM Lashes out at Critics of Nelson's Removal", Advocate, 21 April 1999, 4. Molefi Kete Asante, 'The Afrocentric Idea in Education", in I Am Because We Are: Readings in Black Philosophy, edited by Fred Lee Hord and Jonathan Scott Lee (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), 339. "Licks for Critics: PM Blasts Those Against the Renaming of Square", Daily Nation, 21 April 1999, 48A. Roy Morris, "PM Wants Apology: Arthur Blasts Sir John Over 'Racy' Comments", Sunday Sun, 25 April 1999,1A. See also "Arthur: Let's Not Get Racial", Daily Nation, 21 April 1999, 28A.

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6.

By 'racialist', I have in mind Appiah's important distinction between racialism (a belief in the distinctive characters of different racial groups, a point of view that does not necessarily lead to perceptions of superiority and, thus, prejudice) and racism (a belief in the hierarchy of racial groups which does necessarily lead to prejudice). Culturalism, by contrast, is the view that differences between human beings are explicable by reference to socially and historically determined factors. Where in the former schema differences, because hereditary, are permanent, culturalist models of identity contend that these differences are acquired rather than innate and, thus, not immutable. See Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Father's House (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

7.

I use the term 'ethnic' not in the familiar sense, according to Connor, of a "subgroup of a larger society" or "minority" (Walker Connor, "A Nation Is a Nation, Is a State, Is an Ethnic Group, Is . . .", in Nationalism, edited by John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994], 43), but in light of the definition of 'ethnic' proposed by Hutchinson and Smith. According to them, an ethnic is a "named human population with myths of common ancestry; shared historical memories, one or more elements of common culture, a link with a homeland and a sense of solidarity among at least some of its members" (John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith, introduction to Ethnicity, edited by John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996], 6). As Weber reminds us, 'ethnic' and 'national' overlap in significant ways in that the "idea of the 'nation' is apt to include the notions of common descent and of an essential. .. homogeneity. The nation has these in common with the sentiment of solidarity of ethnic communities" (Max Weber, 'The Nation", in Nationalism, edited by John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994], 22). (Connor reminds us that ethnos was the Greek word for nation.) Indeed, Anthony Smith's definition of the nation does not seem that different from the definition of the ethnic. Arguing that the nation is a "named community of history and culture" (Anthony D. Smith, 'The Origins of Nations", in Becoming National: A Reader, edited by Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996], 107), he contends that it is unified by a "common fund of myths, symbols, memories and values that make up the distinctive traditions passed down the generations. Through common customs and rituals, languages, arts and liturgies, this complex of myths, symbols, values and memories ensures the survival of the sense of common ethnicity, of the sense of common descent and belonging" (111). By 'ethnicity' and 'ethnic identity', I refer to what Hutchinson and Smith describe as the "individual level of identification with a culturally defined collectivity" (Hutchinson and Smith, introduction, 5). By 'ethnocentrism', I intend the "sense

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8. 9.

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of uniqueness, centrality, and virtue of an ethnie in relations with other ethnics" (Hutchinson and Smith, introduction, 5). "On the Attack", 4. I discuss in detail many of the theoretical considerations that implicitly inform this essay (to be precise, the inevitability of the discursive construction of the 'real' and the procedures of emplotment, argumentation and figuration necessarily involved therein) in my 'The Literary Nature of the Historical Text: Some Implications of the Postmodernist Critique of 'Realism' for Caribbean Historiography", Journal of Caribbean History 32 (1998): 46-81. The latter is many ways an indispensable companion-piece to the present essay and should be read in conjunction therewith.

10. Williams, with a tip of the hat to Antonio Gramsci, distinguishes between hegemony (the dominant), the residual and the emergent. The hegemonic is that "which . . . saturates the society to such an extent, and which ... constitutes the substance and limit of common sense for most people under its sway, that it corresponds to the reality of social experience very much more clearly than any notions derived from the formula of base and superstructure" (Raymond Williams, "Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory", Debating Texts: Readings in Twentieth-Century Literary Theory and Method, edited by Rick Rylance [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987], 208). It is the "central, effective and dominant system of meaning and values, which are not merely abstract but which are organized and lived" (209), that "whole body of practices and expectations; . . . our ordinary understanding of the nature of man and of his world" (209) which "constitutes a sense of reality for most people in the society" (209) and "beyond which it is very difficult . . . to move" (209). Hegemony, however, is not monolithically singular precisely because there are, rather, "alternative meanings and values, . . . alternative opinions and attitudes, even some alternative senses of the world . . . accommodated and tolerated within a particular effective and dominant culture" (210). Opposition to the dominant culture takes two forms: the residual, to wit, those "experiences, meanings and values . . . lived and practised on the basis of the residue - cultural as well as social" (210) of "long past stages of society" (213), and the emergent, to wit, the new meanings, values, significance and experiences that are continually being created. See also Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, edited and translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International, 1971). 11. Althusser argues that any body of knowledge can only "pose problems on the terrain and within the horizon of a definite theoretical structure, its problematic, which constitutes its absolute and definite conditions of possibility" (Louis

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Althusser and Etienne Balibar, Reading Capital [London: New Left Books, 1970], 24). Any object situated within this horizon is accordingly perceptible, any sighting thereof being merely the "necessary reflection of the field on its objects" (25). By the same token, what remains invisible is also the necessary effect of that which the conceptual framework allows to be seen precisely because these "are not objects of this theory, because they are forbidden by it" (26). 12. Friedrich Nietzsche, On The Genealogy of Morals, edited and translated by Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage, 1967); Michel Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History", in The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 76-100; Cornel West, "A Genealogy of Modern Racism", Knowledge and Postmodernism in Historical Perspective, edited by Joyce Appleby, Elizabeth Covington, David Hoyt, Michael Latham and Allison Sneider (New York: Routledge, 1996), 476-86. For an understanding of Foucault's notion of discourse, see Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1972). 13. Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History", 86. 14. Ibid. 15. Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1977). 16. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks, translated by Charles Lamm Markmann (New York: Grove, 1967). 17. Voices: An Anthology of Barbadian Writing, edited by Nailah Folami Imoja (Bridgetown, Barbados: Voices, the Barbados Writers Collective; National Cultural Foundation, 1997). 18. Ibid., 7. 19. Ibid., 7-8. 20. Ibid., 8. 21. Ibid., 8-9. 22. Ibid., 99-100. 23. Ibid., 99. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., 26. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid., 27. 29. Ibid. 30.

Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973); and Harold Bloom, A Map of Misreading (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975).

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31.

Edward 'Kamau' Brathwaite, "Timehri", in The Routledge Reader in Caribbean Literature, edited by Alison Donnell and Sarah Lawson Welsh (London: Routledge, 199-6), 344. 32. Ibid., 344-15. 33. Ibid., 345. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid., 344. 36. Ibid., 347. 37. Ibid., 341. 38. 39. 40. 41.

Ibid., 346. Ibid., 347. Ibid., 350. Ibid., 342.

42.

Melville ]. Herskovitz, The Myth of the Negro Past (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1970).

43.

"Nation Language" is excerpted from Brathwaite's "History of the Voice", in Roots (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983), 259-304.

44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

Edward 'Kamau' Brathwaite, "Nation Language", in The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, edited by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (London: Routledge, 1995), 310. Ibid., 310. Ibid., 309-11. Ibid., 311. Lamming, "Caribbean Literature", 106-7. Ibid., 106. Ibid., 107.

51.

Ibid., 108-9.

52. 53.

Ibid., 119. Ibid., 116-17. Lamming employs similar organic metaphors in his The Pleasures of Exile (1960) to connote the rootlessness afflicting Caribbean cultural identity. In an extract therefrom, 'The Occasion for Speaking", he writes that West Indian emigrants to Europe or North America suffer from a double exile, both from their native land and as members of the African and Indian diasporas: their "nourishment is now elsewhere" ('The Occasion for Speaking", in The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, edited by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin [London: Routledge, 1995], 12), as a result of which their "absence is likely to drag into a state of permanent separation from their roots" (12). It is this double exile that constitutes the "seed which much later bear such strange fruit" (14). Lamming

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makes reference in particular to the situation of West Indian writers who are exiled "from the very landscape which is the raw material of all their books" (14) at the same time that they have necessarily been "wholly severed from the cradle of a continuous culture and tradition" (15). (It is as a result of the latter that a "foreign or absent Mother culture has always cradled his judgement" [15], he asserts.) See George Lamming, The Pleasures of Exile (London: Michael Joseph, 1960). 54.

Lamming, "Caribbean Literature", 119.

55. 56.

Ibid., 118. Ibidv 112.

57. Aim6 C£saire, "What Is Negritude to Me", in African Presence in the Americas, edited by Tanya Sounders and Shawna Moore (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1995), 13. 58. Ibid., 14-19. 59. 60.

Ibid., 14. Ibid.

61.

See Carl Jung, The Essential Jung, edited by Anthony Storr (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). Cesaire, "What Is Negritude", 15-17. Ibid., 17. Ibid., 15-17.

62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

Ibid., 18. Ibid., 17. Martin Luther King, "Black Power", in / Am Because We Are: Readings in Black Philosophy, edited by Fred Lee Hord and Jonathan Scott Lee (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), 289. Ibid., 295. Ibid., 289. Ibid., 295. Ibid. Ibid. See, in this connection, G.W.F. Hegel, The Essential Writings (New York: Harper, 1979).

7 3. Autochthony is the belief that one's ancestors sprang from the Earth. Some of the earliest examples of autochthonous discourse (often centred around the legendary figure of Antaeus) are to be found in several of Plato's dialogues Edith Hamilton and Huntingdon Cairns, eds., Plato: The Collected Dialogues (Princeton: Princeton University. Press, 1961). The claim to be 'sons of the soil' or genetically connected to or born from the land upon which one lives is a characteristic

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strategy of self-identification and self-validation throughout the history of Western civilization, if not elsewhere. As Simon Goldhill points out, for example, the myth of autochthony was certainly one of the central myths of fifth century BC Athenian power relations and played a key role in both Athenian self-definition and Athenian claims to imperial hegemony (Simon Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986]). 74.

Stokeley Carmichael, "Pan-Africanism: Land and Power", in Modern Black Nationalism, edited by William Van Deburg (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 205.

75. 76. 77.

Ibid., 204. Ibid., 204-5. Ibid., 214.

78. 79.

Ibid., 206-7. Ibid., 207.

80. Ibid., 208. 81. Alain Locke, 'The Negro in American Culture", in Black Voices: An Anthology of Afro-American Culture, edited by Abraham Chapman (New York: Mentor, 1968), 536. In the same volume, see also Locke's 'The New Negro", 512-23. 82. Locke, 'The Negro in American Culture", 536. 83. Ibid., 537. 84. W.E.B. Du Bois, "Of Our Spiritual Strivings", in The Oxford W.E.B. Du Bois Reader, edited by Eric J. Sundquist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 102. 85. Ibid. 86. W.E.B. Du Bois, 'The Conservation of Races", in The Oxford W.E.B. Du Bois Reader, edited by Eric ]. Sundquist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 39-40. 87. Ibid., 41. 88. 89. 90.

Ibid., 44. Ibid., 42.

W.E.B. Du Bois, 'The Concept of Race", in I Am Because We Are: Readings in Black Philosophy, edited by Fred Lee Hord and Jonathan Scott Lee (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), 257. 91. Ibid., 258. 92. Ernest Renan, "What Is a Nation?", in Becoming National: A Reader, edited by Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 52-53. 93. Ibid., 52. 94. Ibid., 53. 95. Ibid.

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96. 97. 98.

345

Kenan Malik, The Meaning of Race: Race, History and Culture in Western Society (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), 132-33. Renan, "What Is a Nation", 52. Malik, The Meaning of Race, 133.

99. Ibid. 100. Edmund Burke, The Philosophy of Edmund Burke: A Selection from His Speeches and Writings, edited by Louis I. Bredvold and Ralph G. Ross (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967), 211. 101. Ibid., 50. 102. Malik, The Meaning of Race, 77. 103. A.O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (New York: Harper and Row, 1960), 294. 104. Ibid. 105. Ibid. 293-94. 106. M.H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953), 204. 107. Ibid., 218-19. 108. Ibid., 219. 109. Ibid. 110. Ibid. 111. Quoted in Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp, 184. 112. J.G. Herder, "Ideas Towards a Philosophy of the History of Man", in Theories of History, edited by Patrick Gardiner (New York: The Free Press, 1959), 38. 113. Ibid., 36. 114. Ibid., 41. 115. Ibid., 39. 116. Ibid., 36. 117. Isaiah Berlin, Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas (London: Hogarth, 1976), 198. 118. Quoted in Berlin, Vico and Herder, 165. 119. Ibid., 169. 120. Ibid., 181. 121. Ibid., 179. 122. Ibid., 180. 123. Herder, "Ideas Towards a Philosophy", 36. 124. Ibid. 125. Ibid.

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126. 127. 128. 129.

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Ibid., 37. Berlin, Vico and Herder, 197. Ibid., 176. Leopold Se"dar Senghor, "Cultural Roots and the Modern African Artist", translated by John Reed and Clive Wake, in Prose and Poetry (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), 76.

130. Ibid. 131. Leopold Se"dar Senghor, "Nation, Homeland, State", translated by John Reed and Clive Wake, in Prose and Poetry (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), 68. 132. Ibid. 133. Ibid. 134. Ibid. 135. Senghor, "Cultural Roots", 76. 136. Edward Schils, "Color, the Universal Intellectual, and the Afro-Asian Intellectual", in Racial Conflict, Discrimination, and Power: Historical and Contemporary Studies, edited by William Barclay, Krishna Kumar and Ruth Simms (New York: AMS, 1976), 427. 137. Ibid. 138. Ibid. 139. Ibid. 140. Etienne Balibar, "Fictive Identity and Ideal Nation", in Ethnicity, edited by John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 167-68. 141. Walter Benn Michaels, "Race Into Culture: A Critical Genealogy of Cultural Identity", Identities, edited by Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 57. 142. Ibid. 143. Ibid. 144. Ibid., 59. 145. 146. 147. 148.

Ibid. Ibid., 61. Ibid., 60. A. de Gobineau, The Inequality of Races, translated by Adrian Collins (Los Angeles: Noontide, 1966). 149. Tzvetan Todorov, On Human Diversity: Nationalism, Racism and Exoticism in French National Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 156. 150. Ibid.

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151. Ibid., 157. 152. Paul Gilroy, "The End of Anti-Racism", Race and Local Politics, edited by Wendy Ball and John Solomos (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990), 196. 153. Malik, The Meaning of Race, 146. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158.

Ibid. Ibid., 186. Ibid., 79. Ibid., 187. Liisa Malkki, "National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorializing of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees", Becoming National A Reader, edited by Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 437. 159. Ibid., 438.

160. 161. 162. 163.

Ibid. Ibid., 442. Ibid., 444. Ibid., 447.

164. Ibid., 439. 165. Paul De Man, "Intentional Structure of the Romantic Image", in Romanticism and Consciousness: Essays in Criticism, edited by Harold Bloom (New York: Norton, 1970), 67. 166. Ibid. 167. Ibid. 168. Ibid. 169. Ibid., 68. 170. Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History", 78. 171. Ibid., 81. 172. Ibid., 95. 173. Ibid., 81. 174. Connor, "A Nation Is a Nation", 37. 175. Walker Connor, "Beyond Reason: The Nature of the Ethnonational Bond", in Ethnicity, edited by John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 71. 176. Connor, "A Nation Is a Nation", 36. 177. Ibid., 36-37. 178. Ibid., 37.

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179. Ibid. See, in this connection, Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). 180. Connor, "A Notion Is a Nation", 37. 181. Ibid., 38. 182. Connor, "Beyond Reason", 72-73. 183. Ibid., 73. 184. Connor, "A Nation Is a Nation", 45. 185. Ibid. 186. Malik, The Meaning of Race, 182. 187. Love joy, The Great Chain of Being, 313. 188. Ibid., 313. 189. Stephen Howe, Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes (London: Verso, 1998), 1-2. 190. Balibar, "Fictive Identity", 164. 191. Ibid. 192. Ibid. Drawing upon Lacan's notion of the mirror stage, Balibar's colleague Althusser argues in "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" that all specific, historically determined ideologies mould human consciousness by means of a process of identification analogous to the specular relationship that obtains between the infant and its 'mirror' image. All ideologies have in common the function of fashioning (Althusser terms this process 'interpellation') individual human beings into subjects constructed in the several images of the Subject (human nature, God, the 'Barbadian personality', and so on) afforded by the various ideological apparatuses (the family, the education system, the media, the church) that comprise the social formation. In other words, ideologies do not reflect people, people are a reflection of the images proffered by ideologies. See Louis Althusser, "From 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses' ", in Critical Theory Since 1965, edited by Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle (Tallahassee: University Press of Florida, 1986), 239-50. See, too, Jacques Lacan, 'The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I", in Critical Theory Since 1965, edited by Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle (Tallahassee: University Press of Florida, 1986), 734-73. 193. It is to this process of interpellation that Bhabha alludes in 'The Third Space" when he makes an important distinction between 'identity' (something pregiven) and 'identification', the latter being the "process of identifying with and through another, an object of otherness, at which point the agency of identification the subject - is itself always ambivalent, because of the intervention of that otherness" (211).

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194. Eric Hobsbawm, "Introduction: Inventing Traditions", in The Invention of Tradition, edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1. 195. Connor, "Beyond Reason", 71.

Afterword

KERRIE D. SYMMONDS

I am honoured to have the privilege of commenting on the work of some of the luminaries in our academic society. Their contributions to this exercise in defining and tracing the development of the nationalist tradition of Barbados has been a sterling one and their efforts will undoubtedly prove to be rich educational resource for our people. Our epochal experience of slavery represented one of the most vulgar, ruthless and traumatizing chapters in human history. But even as we adjust ourselves to that daunting reality, we must also recognize that the experience taught us a vital lesson about ourselves as a people. For through it all, without a doubt, the indomitable spirit of black nationalism never waned. Indeed, there is an abundance of ethno-archaeological evidence to suggest that the monadnock that was Barbadian slave society was repeatedly assailed by what Hilary Beckles calls, in his chapter on the Bussa rebellion, "a full range of actions, from negative work attitudes to open rebellion". By clinically revisiting and analysing the sociopolitical resistance of the slaves in their polity, we can now sensitize both our generation and those to come to the conscious and persistent solidarity and struggle involved in the quest to alter the ecopolitical balance of power that characterized that era. Similarly, when one considers the postemancipation colonial experience in Barbados, one sees that it is because of (the less dialectical might say, in spite of) all the attendant and debilitating oppression and deprivation of that era that Barbadian nationalism found even further impetus. Indeed, it is at this stage that clearly defined ideological positions and 350

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world views started to be taken by a number of pre-eminent Barbadians. Many of these individuals then took to the national stage and agitated for the reform and, in some instances, the overthrow of the entrenched conservative economic and sociopolitical infrastructure of the island. This ardent nationalism ultimately asserted itself in the 'achievements' of universal adult suffrage, political independence and the establishment, some thirty years later, of a state-sponsored commission for pan-African affairs. All significant strides, no doubt, but all of which fall woefully short of the still much needed fundamental restructuring and transmogrification of the economic balance of power of Barbados. This work, in tracing these tentative steps along the path of Barbadian nationalist endeavour, speaks eloquently both to the obstacles and achievements of nationalism. It is therefore an expansive, matter-of-fact and unpretentious study. If, indeed, there is a dearth, it comes perhaps in the seemingly inexplicable omission of the great leveller, that sociocultural vehicle that psychologically transported people to unanticipated vistas of self-worth and self-respect. I speak of course, to Barbados' contribution to the game of cricket, which at once has been one of the most irrefutable, defiant and deafening egalitarian and anti-imperialist statements made by twentieth century man. That omission notwithstanding, this publication in large measure reinforces our confidence and gives us a focal point for reflection upon who we are as a people. What is contained in this work is, in my view, an effort to rekindle the sense of dignity in all Barbadians. This work should therefore engender an unrestrained dialogue amongst our people, and should encourage us as a society to objectively examine the contributions of past leaders to our development and to the democracy we now enjoy. Equally, it should both encourage and equip us to better critique the image of our contemporary society and to chart a fresh course towards the elusive goal of self-determination. Through the benefits of this sound research, Barbadians and students of Barbados alike can now move from the realm of conjecture and speculation to the realm of empiricism. This eventuality, I suggest, does not arrive a moment too soon for, in light of a changing global community, we face not only economic challenges but cultural challenges as well. Small states such as Barbados will face severe threats to their sovereignty. To deal with these, we must speedily come to terms with long-deferred

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issues of sociocultural identity. We must define ourselves and be able to appreciate and defend that definition if we are to assert ourselves and claim our place in a rapidly changing world. An overwhelming debt of gratitude is therefore owed to those scholars who rose to the occasion to make this work possible.

Contributors

Glenford D. Howe is Research Officer for the Board for Non-Campus Countries and Distance Education, University of the West Indies. He is a Commonwealth scholar and a graduate of the University of the West Indies and the University of London. Don D. Marshall is Research Fellow in the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill. He has published extensively in the areas of globalization, social change and development theory. Hilary McD. Beckles is Professor of Caribbean History and Pro Vice Chancellor, Board of Undergraduate Studies, University of the West Indies. He has written extensively on Barbadian and Caribbean history and society. Korah Belgrave is Lecturer in the Department of English, Linguistics and Literatures, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill. George A.V. Belle is Head of the Department of Government, Sociology and Social Work, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill. He is a graduate of the University of the West Indies and the University of Manchester. Curwen Best is Lecturer in the Department of English, Linguistics and Literatures, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill. He has published extensively on Barbadian music and culture. David V.C. Browne is a teacher at Queen's College, Barbados, and a doctoral candidate in the Department of History, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill. Richard L.W. Clarke is Lecturer in the Department of English, Linguistics and Literatures, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill. He has published widely on Barbadian culture and literature. 353

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Sir Keith Hunte is a historian by training but presently serves as Principal of the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies. Anthony De V. Phillips is Senior Lecturer in the Department of History, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill. Kerrie D. Symmonds graduated from the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, with degrees in History, Political Science and Law. He is now an attorney-at-law, an active politician, and a noted social commentator on Barbadian and Caribbean issues. Karl Watson is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of History, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill. Pedro Welch is a former lecturer in the Department of History, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill. He is now Assistant Registrar (Examinations) at the Cave Hill campus. Rodney Worrell is a tutor in Political Science at the Barbados Community College.