THE MOORE THINGS CHANGE – Democracy in ICU

IN MY BOOK, the late Gladstone Holder is the sage of Barbadian social commentary. No one since Clennell Wickham has analysed the state of our democratic practice with such acuity, depth and fearlessness.I have had the honour – all too short – of sitting at the feet of this Gamaliel, drawing even closer during the period when we were both founding members of the Frank Collymore Literary Endowment, one of the most important cultural initiatives championed by the Central Bank of Barbados.Today’s effort is dedicated to the memory of Gladstone Holder in the form of a few nuggets of wisdom which flowed from his pen as he observed the Barbadian condition.It comes a few days after the arrival of a book titled Democracy In ICU: The Diminishing Of Natural Resources, edited by his son Lisle, and launched last Wednesday night at Gladstone’s alma mater, Combermere School, just as United States President Obama was shuffling generals in a faraway war with no apparent raison d’etre.This publication also assuages some of the disappointment I felt when, as a member of the board of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation, I tried, perhaps not sufficiently persistently, to introduce a radio programme of edited articles from Mr Holder’s voluminous writings. In More Than A Word, Gladstone Holder wrote: “Under any other system of government, any other way of life, only the evil side of man can flourish, and that is true for both the rulers and the ruled. It is only under democracy, stretched to its limits, that the potential good of man has a chance to be realised.”In Acts And Consequences: “Language has magical powers, for good or ill. Priests and politicians know it, to their own advantage, from long practice. So should teachers, to the advantage of their students.”In Where The Truth Lies: “If Mr (Tom) Adams, who is regarded as one of the best informed political leaders on the scene, wishes the people of Barbados to believe that he thinks EIR (Executive Intelligence Review) is a garbage newspaper which he consigns to the trash can, then they may have to reassess their opinion of him.”In More Than A Game: “Today’s Test cricketers are using the bottom line of the capitalist society – success – to take command. They are no longer suppliants for jobs. They are young entrepreneurs investing their talent in an upbeat market, knowing that for as long as their health and their talents endure, they have almost as sure a job as civil servants.”In A Green Tree: “Cancer in the human body begins insidiously slowly, but in the final stages it moves at an unstoppable gallop. The cancer of power in the body politic behaves in a similar way. Yet, just as many persons are afraid to undergo tests lest they prove the presence of the first so they fear interpreting the signs that tell of the second.”In The Great Divide: “One of the most difficult ideas to cause to germinate in the minds of large numbers of people is a very simple one: governments do not pay for anything. Governments have no money. It is the workers who pay for every act carried out or not carried out by governments.”In Silenced People: “The CBC suspended Guttaperk during the election campaign (1986) for a number of rationalisations masquerading as reasons of which an intelligent schoolboy would be ashamed.”In This Other Eden: “The choice of good arable plantation land for home building cannot be explained by simple greed or simplemindedness when plenty of non-arable land is available. The authors of this exercise in vandalism may be unaware of the roots of their compulsion but these fields and hills we call our very own are being destroyed by our own.”Every journalist worth his or her salary should keep a copy of Gladstone Holder’s Democracy in ICU on their desk. It’s in bookstores.• Carl Moore was the first Editor of THE NATION and is a social commentator.