Devon Dick

'Two thousand Negroes killed - eight miles of dead bodies' was the account in the New York Times concerning the actions of the British colonial establishment in the 1865 Jamaican insurrection. This is comparable to dead bodies lining the streets from Stony Hill to Cross Roads. This I read two weeks ago. But not many persons recognise the depth of the massacre.

Yesterday, we recalled the achievements of our revered National Heroes and remembered the events that led to their struggles. It is clear that not enough is known about the National Heroes and the events of the time.

Last week, Dr. Clinton Hutton, a political scientist who specialises in Afro-Caribbean religions at the University of the West Indies, loaned me a video cassette entitled 'Morant Bay Rebellion and Massacre' which features Hutton, Dr. Swithin Wilmot and Professor Stuart Hall as resource persons. This is a copy of a BBC documentary that was aired in England over a decade ago but never in Jamaica. This film rightly focussed on the massacre committed by the British authorities.

The British official inquiry claimed that 439 persons were killed. However, other reports have it much worse and the evidence points to untold brutality and barbarity. There are reports that 3,000 persons were killed. There are writings by British officers boasting about the abuses and killings. One report stated that once it was a 'black face' the person was executed.

Other reports

Another report said if the person of African descent did not run, then he was shot, and if he ran it was a sign that he was guilty so he was hunted down and murdered.

There was also a comment by a 'sensible Scotsman' of that era who said that it was a pattern of the English people to engage in barbarity. He said, "It was so in all the massacres of Ireland and Scotland - it was so in the Indian mutiny, and it is so in Jamaica."

And if we fast-forward to the present, it is a similar thing happening in Iraq with U.S. and British soldiers taking pictures of their brutality. One British soldier has already been convicted of crime against humanity. Things have not changed. By credible estimates 60,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq. But no country dare take a resolution to the UN Security Council about the massacres in Iraq.

Those who claim that we should forget history, those who claim that the study of historical records is a useless exercise are destined to repeat the mistakes of the past and not advance the human race and fail to grasp the trends and connection of the past with the present.

When Governor Eyre was tried for murder in England he was acquitted and the British Parliament voted a pension for Eyre. Britain has never accepted that it was a massacre and historians have done this nation a disservice by referring to it as 'Morant Bay Rebellion' and ignoring the 'massacre'.

The French Parliament adopted a bill which would make it a crime for anyone to claim that the Turks did not commit genocide among the Armenians. But what about the crime of France in Haiti and the crime of Britain at Morant Bay?

The deputy PM of Britain plans to apologize for slavery next year, the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. However, atrocities continued after slavery such as at Morant Bay. When will Britain accept that it was a massacre at Morant Bay?

In addition, Jamaica needs to determine how many persons were killed in the Morant Bay massacre.

Rev. Devon Dick is pastor of Boulevard Baptist Church and author of "Rebellion to Riot: the Church in Nation Building"