Peter EspeutA SEARCH is on for new National Heroes. A new search committee has been named and they started work Tuesday. What names will they come up with? What criteria will they use?
Have you ever stopped to think that most of those whom we honour took up arms to fight against an oppressive state apparatus? If a search was on at the time to select National Heroes, the names would all have been different. Nanny and Samuel Sharpe fought to end the enslavement of black people. We call them heroes now, but at the time they were guilty of treason and sedition; Sharpe was hung by the neck until dead in the public square. A search at the time might have led to the British officer who shelled Nanny Town, or the man who captured Sam Sharpe being made National Hero.
Paul Bogle and George William Gordon fought the oppressive system the planters and the British Colonial government operated after emancipation. Only planters could vote; only planters could stand for election. All the judges were planters, and only planters could sit on juries. All the attorneys were planters. The militia officers were all planters. Opportuni-ties for the poor small farmers and others were limited, and there was a general feeling of hopelessness and powerlessness.
They tried legal means first. Bogle and a large throng walked from Stony Gut in St. Thomas to Spanish Town to present Governor Eyre with a petition from the poor, but the Governor considered himself too good to speak with poor black people, and refused to see them. Soon the Custos and other planters were killed and the Morant Bay courthouse and other buildings went up in flames. Bogle and Gordon (and hundreds of others) were hanged as insurgents, but they are National Heroes today because we see the value of the killing and burning they did with the wisdom of hindsight. If Governor Eyre and the government of the day were selecting National Heroes Bogle and Gordon would never have made the list!
Finding black people still at the bottom of the ladder in the white-dominated Jamaica of the earlier part of this century, Marcus Mosiah Garvey denounced the system of white supremacy, and encouraged black people to get education and to open businesses, to have economic power and earn the right to vote. He was imprisoned and derided, and is ridiculed by the white elite to this day, and would never have made the Queen's Honours List.
Universal adult suffrage came only in 1944 while the British were distracted with World War II, through the efforts of the cousins Manley and Bustamante, and others. The parties they formed and led have turned Jamaica into a land where, in the words of our present Prime Minister, hostile tribes are perpetually at war fighting for scarce benefits. And when Britain went on a campaign to shed its colonies, and Jamaica gained political independence in 1962, we made Bustamante and Manley National Heroes.
Of course the selection committee was made up of partisans of Manley and Bustamante, and so their selection was a foregone conclusion. The days when we were giddy with the new wine of independence have passed, and we have taken a long hard look at those days and have found the major players wanting. Busta and Manley were not perfect, flawless and without sin; they made their contribution for our advancement as a nation, which has taken us to a point. I think they deserve the Order of Merit for their efforts. It is now that we need Heroes who are prepared to put their lives on the line to take us out of the mire the PNP and JLP have put us in.
As this new committee meets to select more National Heroes, there is a danger that they will come up with more party heroes. In a true spirit of bi-partisanship, over the years our National Honours lists have been littered with politicians from both sides. I suppose National Honours are part of the scarce benefits and spoils, and I for one feel that dispensing National Honours to tribalists devalues them. Not everything that is good for the party is good for the country, and the political parties should have their own honours lists instead of misusing the National Honours lists.
True National Heroes must be able to stand up to the hindsight test, and we must be careful to avoid hasty and rash heroisation in fits of euphoria and rushes of blood.
And sweet words cannot a National Hero make. There must be some action taken and some tangible result of national or international impact.
If a National Hero is someone who has increased our self-respect and contributed to national identity and pride locally and overseas then who better to canonise than the genuinely Honourable Louise Bennett-Coverley? She has made us comfortable with our language and our music, and has through drama and poetry and song, held up Jamaica and Jamaicans like a mirror for us to look at and be proud. None of the fool-fool-Jamaican-come-from-country type of comedy from Miss Lou, which really makes us look stupid and increases feelings of inferiority. She has already been honoured, I know, but not enough by far.
And leave politicians off the National Honours list until we see who will take us out of tribal politics. Until then, none of them deserves it.
Peter Espeut is a Sociologist and Executive Director of an Environment and Development NGO.
