I came away from the Frank Collymore Hall 13 nights ago with two poignant messages: one from Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, the other from the sparsity of the audience in a recital hall designed for 500 occupants.
The occasion was the 40th Anniversary Lecture sponsored the THE NATION Newspapers. The month-long colour advertisements had said: “All are invited.”
As one who played some small role at the birth of THE NATION newspaper, I interpreted the Principal and Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus to be advising the 40-year-old newspaper – to use a cricket cliché – to take fresh guard if it wanted to 21st century as it was in the 20th century.
As one who played some small role at the birth of the Frank Collymore Hall, from the 300-odd empty seats I sensed a quiet but unequivocal signal of displeasure and dissatisfaction at the slippage of performance and drift away from the newspaper’s ethos over the past four decades.
When you invite an historian of Sir Hilary’s intellectual heft to speak on a subject as profound as THE NATION Within Our Nation: Media And People Power you owe him a sizeable audience. It can be uncomfortable looking out from the stage into a sea of pumpkin-coloured upholstery.
I shall have more to say about the latter message – the one from the absent audience – in a later essay directly connected with the question I insisted on asking after Master of Ceremonies David Ellis abruptly brought question time to a close. My question to Sir Hilary was concerned with the nexus between mainstream media and the lawless phenomenon known as social media which, for the most part, is decidedly unsociable, gossipy, vulgar, cowardly and pornographic.
But I had promised in my last column to continue with some excerpts from the first year of publication of THE NATION newspaper. As the pages of my bound compilation of 58 issues continue to fall apart and be digested by hungry bookworms, I thank my friend Emelda Browne for offering her professional advice – something akin to the process of embalming – on how to preserve ageing newsprint.
Forty years ago, Barbados had not yet given up on sugar production. Prime Minister Barrow entered the cane fields at Kent Plantation to demonstrate that he, too, was assisting in the reaping of that year’s crop.
The newspaper printed a picture of Mr Barrow slashing away, albeit with the collins (cutlass) held backwards, with Permanent Secretary Chesterfield Thompson, standing at a safe distance, no doubt wondering: “What am I doing in this cane-piece?” all the while praying that no adventurous centipede was climbing up his pants leg.
By far, the most important event of 1974 – whose consequences, for good or bad, continue to ripple through this country’s public life – was the amending of the Constitution.
After weeks of public unease, Prime Minister Errol Barrow said: “Contrary to prognostications and popular belief, we do not intend to appoint any political judges. We are concerned about what they do when they get there; not who appoints them. They are there to discharge the law, not argue politics.”
In a Page 1 opinion on July 21, headlined “It’s up to us”, THE NATION asked: “Are we witnessing the unfolding of a repressive and dictatorial chapter in our history?” and reminded its readers that the Government had not indicated at any stage since Independence that the Constitution had been found to be unworkable in any respect.
The 34 amendments became law on Wednesday, August 29. Seventeen Democratic Labour Party members said “Aye” and six Barbados Labour Party members voted “No”. Political commentators came out with guns blazing: Ezra Alleyne protested: “Hands off judges” and Harold Hoyte termed it “An act of folly”.
Over the next 39 years, no Barbados Labour Party administration has bothered to reverse those changes – even when they enjoyed a two-thirds majority.
The “Heavy Roller”, Frank Walcott, General Secretary of the Barbados Workers’ Union, was his usual fiery self at the 1974 May Day celebrations at King George Park. What the Union wanted, he stressed, was economic and industrial democracy and it was prepared to achieve that “at any cost”. The Union was standing for “no white domination, no colonial domination, no black domination!”
Another frank assertion came a month later from UWI economist Frank Alleyne when he categorically denied any affiliation with a rumoured third political party. He told this newspaper: “We have to recognize that there was and there will only be one Jesus Christ. We have to avoid political Jesus Christs.”
Two months later the National Democratic Party was launched with a number of Democratic Labour Party supporters saying goodbye and joining. Among them was 26-year-old Reggie Hunte.
An August edition reported the sudden death of one of the region’s leading jurists, Sir Hugh Wooding, of Trinidad and Tobago.
In his popular entertainment column, Al’s Grapevine, Gilkes broke a story that caught many readers off-guard: Several Barbadians were eating and enjoying monkey meat!
A September headline screamed “Teachers strike looms”. The Barbados Union of Teachers and the Public Service Commission were heading for “a bitter confrontation” that could bring Government to its knees, the report said. Fourteen non-appointed teachers had had their services terminated following demonstrations when it was alleged that a white teacher had kicked three black boys at St Leonard’s Comprehensive School.
On November 3, Sam Wilkinson was saying: “He is the greatest”, after Mohammed Ali had knocked out George Foreman in Zaire. Sam noted that Foreman had been beaten “fair and square” from round one to round eight when he “found the ground as his saviour”.
So much for this small selection of excerpts from the first year of publication of THE NATION newspaper.
I congratulate THE NATION at 40 and urge this national success story on to another 40.
• Carl Moore was the first Editor of THE NATION and is a social commentator.
