Morris Cargill

GOOD OLD Uncle Dudley! When he did his bit of "mea culpa" on the Breakfast Club, he started what might turn out to be the in thing among politicians for confession and apology. This could provide us all with some of the best entertainment in years.

Uncle Dudley was soon followed by Bruce Golding, who confesses only to a minor sin, and by Tony Abrahams who says that he will reveal all if the Director of Public Prosecutions will give him immunity from prosecution.

I doubt whether that gig will spin. A blanket indemnity could only be given by Act of Parliament. While the DPP could indeed agree to refrain from action in a special individual case, any blanket indemnity is out of the question. In any case Tony Abrahams is well aware of the dangers from private suits for defamation. If I were to say over the radio that I gave Mr. Bloggs a gun for the agreed purpose of shooting a voter, Mr. Bloggs could sue me, unless I could prove the matter up to the hilt.

Even the ex-communists are getting into the act, though they are not confessing, but rather protesting their innocence. They are prepared to admit that they poked the fire in Grenada, but seem blissfully unaware of the consequences of having done so.

This reminds me of the problem which David D'Costa had concerning the Green Bay Massacre. We discussed the matter and although we had some very firm suspicions about the politician who played a major role in it, the hard evidence needed for disclosure was unobtainable. To this day, those suspicions must remain unexpressed even although the suspect has since died.

It would be salutary and of course great fun if we could watch a parade of political war horses confessing their sins in public. But, alas, there is no hope of this, and there is a limit to what people like Golding and Abrahams can do even although they have the best of intentions.

In any event even without the confessions, most of us already know what many politicians are up to. But the voters don't seem to care. Election after election, they come back to reap their winning ration of votes. We only dislike dishonest and violent politicians when we are deprived of sharing the spoils.

Credit

I was interested by the letter Richard Coe wrote in The Gleaner of September 4th in reply to my column on the subject of credit. Richard Coe, being a very able man, will I'm sure be able to sail Courts safely between the Scylla of low demand and the Charybdis of extended credit.

But in the same issue of The Gleaner, was an account by C. Roy Reynolds of an editorial written upon the subject of credit in the year 1901. When I read this account, so well researched by C. Roy, I suffered a very strange sensation, for the words of that editorial most precisely echoed what I have been writing about a century later. That Gleaner editorial of 1901 said among other things, "The consumers who have been living on credit have suddenly been pulled-up and placed in a most awkward position. Both the greatest planter and the poorest householder are in the same position. Subsisting on credit, they have come to the end of their resources".

Way back in the '30s and '40s this appetite for credit was still giving trouble. When in those days the comparatively wealthy decided to start a business, they were very reluctant to allow the capital to be widely subscribed, partly because they wished to keep their business within the family and partly because there was no stock exchange. In consequence, the habit developed of borrowing needed capital from the bank; a bad habit which was to have devastating consequences in the '90s.

Of course in those far-off days of the '30s and '40s an interest rate of 6 per cent was normal, and anything much above that was considered usury. Those days, alas, have now faded into the dim and almost unknown past.

Jailbreaks

I read with astonishment that one conscientious Constable prevented a big jailbreak at the Half Way Tree lock-up. This is a refreshing change from all those other policemen who carefully fail to hear when dozens of prisoners are busy cutting steel bars with hack-saw blades.

Here at last is one Constable that we can be sure has taken no bribes for suffering convenient deafness. I find it hard to believe that the majority of these jailbreaks were not made possible by the dishonesty of those given the job of supervising the lock-ups.

Apart from the possible corruption of the guards I have no doubt that the escape of prisoners from the lock-ups is due to the usual Jamaican ramshackle.

When they are building these lock-ups, why do they not use high-tensile steel for the bars? The present bars must be of very soft steel to be so easily cut by a hack-saw blade.