Crack some heads! Shoot some people! Sir Wilfred jump up in de steeple: “Fighting words”, the bishop cries: “Minister Jones must apologize!”
Lord have mercy, what is going on in sweet Barbados? Commissioner of Police sent on leave. Ronald Jones getting crucified. Body blows and long talk from the Public Accounts Committee while we wait in vain to see abusers of public moneys, if any, heading up to Dodds.
Let me start with the 11-Plus. If “you are what you eat”, it is obvious a cabbage can’t pass no exam. So I used to fry a regular fresh pork for the offsprings. They all three waltzed into Harrison College, no sweat. Apart from being remarkably intelligent, the pig’s 30-minute orgasm is the envy of men everywhere.
But now comes the turn of the first grandchild and her mother has turned vegetarian on me. What to do? Actually, it was easier than I thought. Saturday mornings I get up early to boil pork for the souse using lots of onion, garlic and other seasonings. It was a simple matter to convert the pork water into a vegetable soup which the young lady loves. She got into Queen’s.
I don’t like the 11-Plus because of the pressure it puts on children, with the high-flyers celebrating and the others in danger of considering themselves failures. But the problem, to my mind, is not with the exam but rather with the emphasis placed on academic education nowadays.
Teaching children of mixed abilities together has been deemed a disaster in recent reports from Britain and I fully support grouping children with academic aptitude into schools where they can move ahead. I know from bitter experience the nightmare of being in classes where one can’t keep up.
But in our day, non-academic children simply dropped out and found a job. Many people with little secondary education have done exceptionally well for themselves.
I join former colleague Robert Vaughan who claims to be educated “in spite of Harrison College and the University of the West Indies”, both of which sent me on a path of academic torture and delayed for many years my living the simple farm life I always craved.
By the way, with the 11-Plus out of the way, I cooked some pig liver, lungs and heart in last week’s pork water to make a Harslet Delight Stew. Proper, especially when topped off with Anthony Nicholls cane juice and House of Lords chocolates compliments of Sir Hendy Lashley who is visiting!
Next thing, in backward banana republics, the summary removal of a Chief of Police usually signals he is too close on the heels of a crooked wealthy government backer, drug kingpin or porn magnate. Such scenarios are unthinkable in civilized Barbados. So why has Commissioner Dottin been sent on leave?
When he first assumed duties, the goodly gentleman visited to pay his respects to the so-called mayor of Morgan Lewis Bottom. He is the only policeman I know and it felt good to have a connection of his stature. The Government has a lot of explaining to do lest we jump to the wrong conclusions.
Finally, the Jones furore. Not for the first time I find myself the odd man out. It does not require, as Tennyson Joseph would have us believe, a “Movement for the Destruction of Barbados” to initiate “extreme cases of civil disobedience”. You don’t need 1937 conditions.
I was in Trinidad a few years before the 1970 revolt. My wife was there. Did conditions warrant a military takeover then or the Muslimeen uprising later?
Over and over we see peaceful demonstrations – Occupy Wall Street, Gezi Park protest, Egypt, Brasil – turn ugly. In many cases, they end with heads being cracked and people shot. As happened in 1937, despite Clement Payne’s repeated admonitions against violence.
There is at present serious dissatisfaction with this Government’s lack of action, lack of dialogue with the people and even a refusal to admit what is going on.
In my opinion, Mr Jones was neither issuing a threat nor expressing a wish that people be beaten or shot. He seemed rather to be pointing out that these are often the unfortunate consequences of orchestrated protest.
In these difficult times, caution and patience are to be preferred.
• Richard Hoad is a farmer and social commentator. Email porkhoad @gmail.com.
