It came as no surprise that Barbados’ Minister of Social Care Steve Blackett would object to calypsonian Mighty Gabby’s observation of signs of increasing economic desperation among the Barbadian underclass.
After all, the Government, of which Blackett is part, has been heavily criticized over the economy, to which the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) has responded by emphasizing its focus on “society”.
In a week therefore when a Standard & Poor’s downgrade suggested economic failure, Gabby’s presentation of evidence of social failure proved too overtly hostile to the DLP’s propagandist separation of economy from society.
Moreover, Gabby’s pointed claim that Barbados’ levels of poverty had created conditions conducive to a repetition of 1937-like social upheaval would have suggested failure of crisis proportions on both economic and social fronts. Blackett’s response was therefore expected.
Though expected, it was unconvincing.
What the minister did was to cite increasing levels of social welfare coverage in line with deteriorating economic conditions.
Welfare assistance
Thus, his reference to the $919 000 from the Welfare Department in food vouchers and cash grants of $3.3 million between April and June, though commendable, provided tangible evidence that fewer people were able to make it without direct Government assistance.
Given the inability of the Government to reach every deserving individual, it is very likely that several hundreds more have escaped the Government’s attention, and thus it is reasonable to conclude that the cases identified by Gabby abound.
In addition, Gabby’s reference to the pride of the poor, especially the womenfolk, would suggest that several more would be too embarrassed to approach the Government for help.
In his rejection of Gabby’s prediction of social upheaval, however, Blackett must have felt himself on safer ground, simply on the basis, although he did not say so himself, that where revolutions are concerned, “no man knoweth the minute or the hour”. It is for this reason that reactionaries always arrogantly scoff at predictions of revolt.
Marie Antoinette’s “let them eat cake” is the most famous case in point, before she lost her head to a guillotine in revolutionary France.
Ironically, however, the very uncertainty which attends the predicting of revolts also applies to their denial. Blackett’s categorical denial of “riots in de land” was therefore misguided.
From a social science perspective, the most that one can do is identify conditions which have attended past upheavals and note the sufficient causes.
Often such upheavals take place when mature economic systems seem unable to reproduce themselves and to meet legitimate social expectations. Look to Europe.
The 1937 revolt occurred in the midst of global depression. A second Great Depression is here. All the signs point to a crisis of the post-colonial economic order in Barbados.
Marx taught us that violence is the midwife that gives birth to the new society from the womb of the old.
Don’t shoot the calypsonian-messenger.
• Tennyson Joseph is a political scientist at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, specializing in regional affairs. Email [email protected]
