It doesn’t take much to fray tempers in our dear ole Mudland. Take what’s happening with the scions of the Gladstone family’s apology for their role in slavery and indentureship back in the day. While John Gladstone didn’t actually pull himself up by his bootstraps, he was bold enough to leave his father’s small 18th century corn-trading business and – piggybacking on the mercantilist policies of the British Government – soon became a powerful WI Planter who got elected to the British Parliament.
In the early 19th century – after the Napoleonic wars – he branched out from his trading activities and jumped into owning cotton and sugar plantations that used African slave labour and made a bundle!! But while his slave-owing foray lasted for just a few years, one of his plantations – Success – was the scene of that most massive slave uprising of 1823. It wasn’t ironic, but a sign of the times that the leader of the rebellion had been given his name – John Gladstone – as a sign of being the property of his owner. The name was as effective as a brand made with hot iron.
But Gladstone’s role in Indian indentureship was even more critical, since it was he who initiated the system in the Caribbean with the fateful “Gladstone Experiment of 1838”. It was he who arranged for the Whitby and the Hesperus to bring those 406 poor souls to replace the freed Africans. Within five years, a quarter of them had perished, and an Inquiry had been conducted into their bestial treatment!! The usual platitudes were issued, and emigration was reintroduced in 1845, to continue till 1917 – by which time 239,000 had been shipped to Guiana from a total of almost 500,000!!
While some are emphasising that there was a contract for the indentureds, to suggest that they were in a situation like today – it should be noted that any deviation from that contract by the Indian Indentured was dubbed a CRIMINAL offence – for which there was an onerous fine and jail time!! The indentured needed a pass to leave the plantation – just like during slavery. There were at best only 3 women to every ten men – leading to horrible intra-Indian violence. All of these pressures created such strain on the indentureds that suicide became endemic – and continues to this day.
And it is for these reasons – and countless others – that the Gladstones will be apologising for their ancestor’s role in slavery as well as indentureship. But with partisans arguing about who suffered more, etc etc…it is imperative that the 100,000-pound donation to UG be used to establish the facts on slavery and indentureship.
While we may differ on the interpretation of those facts, the latter should be undisputed.
…history
Before Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute barrier for the mile in 1954, few thought it could be done. But then paring away seconds from new records soon became routine.
Your Eyewitness suspects that something similar is happening with the number of subjects being written and passed at the CSEC exams, once the barrier of 15 subjects was broken a decade ago. The numbers have since inexorably increased, and in this year’s results, one kid actually wrote and passed TWENTY-SEVEN subjects!! 23 Grade Ones and 4 Grade Twos!! WOW!!
Frankly, your Eyewitness really thought that this wasn’t humanely possible – but there it is! And the kid wasn’t even from one of the so-called “premier” Georgetown schools that annually skim off the cream of the NGSA crop!! This was ARMS, over in Essequibo, that has joined SVN on the West Coast Demerara to now not only regularly top Guyana at SCEC and CAPE, but also the entire Caribbean.
Why do it?? To show it can be done??
…the score even?
Last June, Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Russian private mercenary Wagner Group, mounted a rebellion and marched towards Moscow. He embarrassed his old friend Putin. Yesterday it was reported he was killed in a mysterious crash!!
Coincidence?
