Hartley Neita, Contributor
DURING the years preceding Independence - i.e. 40 years and over ago - Kings House was the venue of receptions which were the major events in the annual calendar of social activities. One of these was to celebrate the birthday of the Monarch - King or Queen - and the other was on Empire Day, a public holiday celebrated to remind colonials throughout the British Empire of the power and glory of Great Britain.
To receive an invitation to these events was a mark of your importance in the country and of your social status. Some people went to great extent to get these gold-embossed cards. And the ladies of the day went to great expense to wear the latest pair of shoes, dress, gloves and even hats. And raised hell with the Gleaner's Social Reporter if their names were not listed in the long columns of "among those who attended".
On one such occasion, Theodore Sealy, the Editor of The Daily Gleaner, took his two teenage daughters with him. He was a man of tremendous importance and influence in Jamaica, and his secretary had been telephoned to ask who he would be taking. The invitation was therefore addressed to "Mr. T.E. Sealy and Misses Hope and Dorothy Sealy".
As they were about to leave the car to join the hundreds of guests Sealy stopped his daughters.
"Girls," he said. "I think you should know that T.E. Sealy, Hope and Dorothy Sealy have not been invited to this function."
"But Dad,' one said. "The invitations have our names."
"Yes, they do," he agreed, "but it is really the Editor of the Gleaner and his daughters who have been invited."
It was some time before they realised what he meant, that he and they would not have been invited had he not been the Editor of this newspaper.
Many men and women in positions of power have never realised that the pleasures they enjoy have not been because they were born to be of the Manor.
Boxers, for example, hang up their gloves with reluctance as without being in the ring no one knows them. Nobody screams their names and seeks their autographs. It is the same, too, with cricketers, footballers, and athletes.
Politicians, except for a finger few, who achieve Ministerial office fight tooth and nail to win back office if they lose it. The glory days of being Mr. Minister and being attached to the trappings of office are a magnet which pulls at them for life. The few are like one who remains my friend, and who having given up office for some three months when asked how many of his colleagues still call him by phone, replied with a chuckle, "I can count them on one finger."
The thing about power is that like tempus it fugits. All who hold the status of high office must always remember it was not always like this and may not always be. We hang on to titles until death as if we were born with them. And we even want them carved on our tombstones so that we can wear our titles in perpetuity.
Shortly after he was appointed a Minister in 1955, the late Wills O. Isaacs said:
"My desk is suddenly full of invitations to tea parties and cocktail parties, lunches and dinners. If I'm not careful I won't have time to do any work. Where were all these hosts before?"
The best advice I ever received in my life was from former Financial Secretary and Governor of the Bank of Jamaica, Sir Egerton Richard-son. I had accompanied Prime Minister Shearer to the United States where he was our Ambassador to Washington. While there he sought me out and in a friendly but meaningful lecture, said:
"You have been Press Secretary to Donald Sangster for the past three years, and as you know he was only Acting Prime Minister. He could not, on his own volition fire a Minister or transfer him or even re-allocate duties and responsibilities. He had to consult with Prime Minister Bustamante. You are now working for a Prime Minister who is his own man. He can dismiss any Minister and appoint anyone as a Minister. And he can call elections on his own. So you are going to find that you will gain a multitude of new friends. You will also be invited to drinks at Long Lane and to tea at Trafalgar House. And one day you will suddenly think you are important and that you are above everybody else and are way up there in the clouds."
Then he paused and pursed his lips. "But remember young man. The air up there is rarefied, and it's hard to breathe."
Truer words were never spoken. It happened as Richardson said. And each time as I gasped in the thin air I was jerked back to reality.
