“Move on”? Never Gonna Happen chap!

History has always been one of my favourite subjects; I did very well in it at school and my love for it led me to become a journalist. After all, journalists are historians. We tell the stories of what’s taking place in the present which will be revisited by future generations.

But one of the worst days of my life happened in my sixth form history class at Wolmer’s High School For Girls’. We were looking at slavery and what happened during that most abominable time in history and in my text was an account about a plantation owner in Jamaica named John Gyles.

John Gyles was already known to me because he was my great-great grandfather. So the story went that plantation and slave owner John Gyles had the habit of putting slaves he no longer wanted in a barrel and rolling them down a hill on his plantation. His plantation took up parts of present day Linstead, St. Catherine. In fact there’s a street in Linstead named “Gyles Street”.

After reading the account, and yes I remember it clearly almost 20 years later, class mates asked me, if he was my relative. I sheepishly said yes; I don’t know if I told them just how close a relative he was.

You see there was another story I was told while growing up. My grandfather, whose name was John Gyles, was the son of a white plantation owner, also named John Gyles and a black woman, a former slave. When my grandfather came of age he went to his father for some money or assistance, after all his father was a rich man. The story goes his father told him he had nothing to give him, but at least he gave him his “name.” So my grandfather left his father’s estate with nothing more than a name as he was never recognised as a legitimate heir.

My grandfather didn’t do too badly for himself though. He, willing to prove himself to his father and paternal family went off and fought for the British Empire in World War I. When he returned to Jamaica, he settled in Guys’ Hill, St. Catherine not too far from his father’s estate, bought land, and raised several children with his wife Myrtle. My father is their first born.

But there have been lasting impact from that incident that happened to my grandfather over a century ago. To this day my family remains fractured. The “black side” to which I belong has no relationship with the “white side”. I have never met any of my cousins on the white side, one of whom was a former minister of Agriculture named; you guessed it, “John Gyles.” So deep do the divisions run that because the white side were aligned to the then “Farmer’s Party”, which eventually became a part of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), my grandfather was one of the early members and foot soldiers for the People’s National Party (PNP). He openly campaigned against his cousin John Gyles, and used the similarities of their name to tell people “when you vote for the PNP is John Gyles you’re voting for.” I Don’t think his campaigns were particularly successful though since the area has always been a JLP stronghold.

But that is the personal reality of what slavery and its after effects has meant for my family & in particular me.

And that is why I take umbrage to hearing British Prime Minister David Cameron say in the Jamaican Parliament on Wednesday, that we should “move on.”

“Slavery was and is abhorrent in all its forms. It has no place whatsoever in any civilised society, and Britain is proud to have eventually led the way in its abolition. That the Caribbean has emerged from the long, dark shadow it cast is testament to the resilience and spirit of its people. I acknowledge that these wounds run very deep indeed. But I do hope that, as friends who have gone through so much together since those darkest of times, we can move on from this painful legacy and continue to build for the future.” — David Cameron, Gordon House, Kingston Jamaica, Wednesday September 30, 2015.

No sooner had he said the words “move on”, I became enraged. I was sitting at my desk in the office, listening to Mr. Cameron and I leapt up and stood before the television set glaring at him while muttering every single profanity I knew in both English and Spanish and I’m sure I probably made up a few new ones.

And then my anger grew to rage as I watched the sons and daughters of slaves who are now parliamentarians allow the descendant of a slave owner to get away with the comment. There was not one single visible note of objection. Not one.

My anger turned to unimaginable shame though when the President of the Senate, the visually impaired Floyd Morris genuflected into the perfect “house slave”. His vote of thanks after Mr. Cameron’s speech sounded something like this: Thank You Massa for coming to speak to us Niggers. We have never been so blessed. Thank You Massa! Thank You! Thank You!

As I write this blog piece on Friday, two days later, they, the sons and daughters of slaves, who now occupy the Parliament still haven’t objected.

They, by the way, sit in the Parliament named after a national hero, The Right Excellent George William Gordon, who was executed by the British for his role in the Morant Bay War 150 years ago.

Had I been in the Parliament, I would have very loudly hissed my teeth and walked out right then and there. There’s no more need to be civil towards our “guest” when he comes in to our house and tells us to get over the past, the past whose legacy he has been able to build on, the past whose legacy continues to hold our country, in fact our region back.

But the parliamentarians, many of whom are lawyers, doctors, a few educators and successful businessmen allowed Mr. Cameron whose family got compensated upon abolition, to not only tell us to get over it but also fail to do what is right and honourable in giving us the apology which we deserve.

To the Jamaican parliamentarians, both MPs and Senators you have shamed this country and the entire Caribbean through your cowardice. You have shamed your slave ancestors and you have shamed the spirits of Nanny, Sam Sharpe, Paul Bogle and George William Gordon. But most of all you have shamed yourselves.

Slavery is not something to just “move on” from. Especially when we have never ever been set right. At Independence 60 per cent of Jamaica’s population was illiterate. Sixty per cent!. We are still reaping the consequences of that today.

The money that the British Government gave us to start our Independence journey on was never even enough because it never factored in what was owed to the black population, descendants of slaves; slaves who even after “freedom” had to rent lodgings from their former owners.

We cannot move on because it has never ever been acknowledged that the worst crime in humanity was perpetrated on approximately 6 million black Africans, whose blood still course through our veins.

We cannot move on because almost 200 years after emancipation we, the children of Africa, don’t know who we are and where we came from. We lost our families, our tribes, our language, our culture, our identities. Meanwhile Mr. Cameron knows exactly how much money his cousin received as compensation after his slaves on his plantation in Jamaica were freed.

And I cannot move on because my family is still fractured, all I ever got was the name. I deserve at the very least an apology.

I bet you David Cameron wouldn’t have gone to the Knesset and told their Parliamentarians to “move on” from the Holocaust. Hell, he wouldn’t have said same to a bunch of Jewish businessmen.