On select occasions, People & Things reflects on recent publications, and as 2012 draws to a close, it is a distinct pleasure to review of a book which is new, exciting and very well timed.
Reference here is, of course, made to the publication entitled Eyewitness To Order And Disorder under the distinguished authorship of Mr Harold Hoyte, who is also Editor Emeritus of the NATION newspapers.
Before proceeding, I should publicly declare my personal gratitude to him for giving me a start in this business of writing 14 years ago. As much as I am grateful to him, this review of his work will be no less objective, as I believe that to do otherwise would be a disservice to the “constituency” that we both serve.
I begin with a compliment to the author on what was a well written and thoughtfully produced book that reflects an era of our politics that has received too little attention. The statement that the book was “written” seems obvious. However, it is important to start with the observation that Hoyte resisted the temptation to assemble a collection of articles which is a common approach to publication taken by people who have amassed a body of work based on articles over the years. These collections are easier to assemble and, indeed, this same author has already published one such collection [of non-political columns].
The advantage of this style is that it produces a book that one can digest “lightly” in bite-sized chunks. However, our political development often deserves a more comprehensive treatment that allows one to follow thought, ideas and concepts beyond a 700-word limit, as is the case with articles. It is fortuitous that Hoyte took this path and expended considerable effort writing “fresh stuff” around the several themes he identified in his work.
The other major stylistic observation is that he used a “thematic” approach to his presentation of ideas, as distinct from the historic approach that is often popular. The latter allows the writer to tell a story and is a style that is especially popular with historians. Although the historic approach is somewhat easier to follow, I am more partial to the thematic approach which Hoyte exploited. It allowed him to begin with an analysis of Adams and thereafter jump to Thompson as the two represented the beginning and end of the 50-year time period with which the author was concerned.
The contrast was profound and conveyed the tragedy of Thompson’s short service and his largely unfulfilled political promise. This is interesting for an analyst such as myself who often speaks in terms of political timelines which assume that the politician’s contribution will span a “normal” lifetime.
One of the challenges of the thematic approach is that it opens one to challenge regarding the rationale behind which themes were selected. It was therefore not surprising that at the launch, Hoyte read a critique given by Robert “Bobby” Morris who argued that while the author spoke to order and disorder, he appeared partial in his selection of events to disorder.
I too, noticed this preference, but unlike Morris, I expect nothing less from a journalist and Hoyte has never attempted to hide from his label. The journalist will always prefer to focus on the disorder because that is what sells newspapers and what we are all more interested in.
I would therefore have been disappointed if Hoyte reviewed the more placid points in our recent political history and one suspects that there would also be little interest in his book if he did.
That said, I was entirely comfortable with his selection of “disorderly events” which he chronicled as any journalist would. The book is often written in the first person which unashamedly conveys the point that it is not an academic piece. It is a journalistic account and, as such, it draws on historical facts and offers liberal and fearless comment in several instances, while in others it leaves us to draw our own conclusions.
As a “recovering academic” who engages in journalistic pursuits, I feel compelled to defend the importance of contributions like these, upon which academics will have to rely in their delivery of our political history. These perspectives are important and while we might often yearn for greater “academic rigour” in the treatment of events, the journalist’s impression is equally important, especially since our academics have been a little slow to treat to the contemporary political scene.
Hoyte is well known for his irreverence and it was therefore not surprising that he dealt frontally with issues like the Pele case, the HARP gun and the cheques reply. In the latter instance, he reprinted the cheques that helped to bring down the 1976 Democratic Labour Party administration which will no doubt generate some interest among those of us who are too young to remember the role played by those identified as “payees”.
The extent to which the Pele case was indeed political and worthy of discussion in a book like this is open to debate, but to my mind this is the advantage a journalist like Hoyte has since he is not constrained by academic shackles and, as such, can present a unique perspective on the events that shaped our political development.
Naturally, I am quite pleased that an entire chapter on polling made the “cut” since this too, is part of our more recent political development. The brief discussion of the history of published political polls and his mention of notable polling “mishaps” was useful in that it tells the young pollster, such as myself, what pitfalls need to be avoided and where this science needs to go next.
The extensive range and comprehensive treatment of issues in this publication is almost singular in the area of Caribbean political history and for this, Hoyte needs to be congratulated.
Even as he introduced this publication, both political parties are preparing for a general election which will perhaps generate even more “order and disorder”. It is therefore left to be seen if Hoyte will pen volume II or if that task will fall to someone more junior to take up the cudgel.
• Peter W. Wickham is a political consultant and a director of Caribbean Development Research Services (CADRES).
