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This is an article from 2001, but still worth reading
We are in a rut, says D.K. Duncan
Then PNP General- Secretary D.K. Duncan (in dark glasses), speaking with a group of South West St. Andrew demonstrators who were demanding to see the Prime Minister in connection with charges made against then JLP Senator Pearnel Charles in October 1975.
The following are excerpts of an address by former PNP General Secretary and Minister of Mobilisation, Dr. D.K. Duncan, to the West Kingston Development Committee Fund-raising Banquet in Kingston, on Friday, September 28, 2001.
I HAD a lot of time to prepare for this presentation but I want to confess that what I hoped that I would have done, I have not done - hand to the Member of Parliament and the organisers of the function a prepared text which they could follow and carefully scrutinise and which would also be available to the press. But I was not able to do it, and I'm going to tell you frankly why, because I've been turning over and over in my mind for the last two weeks, what it is that I could say to this gathering this evening that would be useful, positive, truthful. A number of things flashed through my mind.
I thought of questions of leadership because I don't think there's any doubt at all in anybody's mind that the country badly needs leadership. But people would say I'm campaigning for Mr. Seaga against Mr. Patterson and although, objectively that could be a conclusion, that is not really what I intend to do to campaign for anybody. But in the few words that I put out there, to let the chips fall where they may, and as intelligent people, people do what they want to do.
I thought of speaking about more abstract concepts like renewal, in the sense of political renewal, and if I have the time and I can get to that section which I've prepared, I'd like to refer to some comments made by the Member of Parliament and Leader of the party (Edward Seaga), in that context, in a speech he made in 1995, if we have the time for that.
NATIONAL UNITY
I thought of speaking on the question of national unity. It's a term that is ringing in the environment all over the place. It could be a very safe presentation. You could leave with a lot of friends, on the other hand you could be very abstract and say nothing, and that's not my style.
Although there are several important points to be made about national unity, I have some other thoughts about it which are not currently popular but which are known I believe that if you are going to move towards national unity, usually it requires a basis.
It's not something peripheral, something only symbolic. But my understanding of it, it would be something more profound and that profound approach would require an agenda, something that you can feel and touch and deal with. It does not require what we have done over so many years, two or three people meeting and having some pictures taken, or going to the odd meeting here and there and saying that we invited you and you came. That, to me, is not national unity. So on the other hand, it would cause a lot of difficulty for me at this time when I have other problems to deal with.
I thought of speaking about trust. And I will speak about trust but in the context of what I really would like to speak about, the thing called justice. I'm not a parson or a reverend, although my mother wanted me to be one, but I want to use as a text, the presentation made by Mr. Seaga, because we haven't got a lot of time and I think he has put what I want to say very succinctly in his document. I'm using it deliberately, I'm not going around the corner. I'm using it deliberately because they are profound words. I'm not dealing with the messenger, I'm dealing with the message - although we can appropriately deal with both.
It's not just two verses like Matthews 1, vs. 2-3. It's about four paragraphs and then I want to elaborate on it and tell you what my own views are and then to really speak to you mainly from my heart.
The quotation is from the prepared text of the broadcast to the nation by Rt. Hon. Edward Seaga, MP, Leader of the Opposition, Part 1, CVM, Sunday, July 22, 2001.
I repeat in an audience like this because I know I've been in the political scene long enough to know that people listen to speeches and they really don't hear them. They say it sounds nice, especially if it's something that they know they would agree with. When I used to go to church sometimes and the people leave church and you ask 'what the man sey?' 'Bwoy, ah doan know but it sound nice.'
The quote is this:
"None of the attempts by the security forces to brutalise innocent inner-city residents will be successful if the government itself does not uphold principles of justice and draw a line beyond which the security forces would not go. Or if civil society too, had a principled position about where the line of justice should be drawn in the treatment of poor and disadvantaged people. It is a fundamental weakness of our society that there are many people who feel that the massacre of innocent inner-city residents are worth it if the security forces can capture even one criminal. Crime is their prime concern. They feel threatened by violence. Justice is not their concern. They live in a privileged world which safeguards them from injustice."
"So while government, in search of criminals unleashes criminal terror on innocent people in communities in the name of law and order and are cheered on by many of civil society to whom the death of unknown poor people, who live in such communities, is neither a crime nor of consequences. Others have to stand up and cry for justice in the face of this onslaught. In so doing, we who stand in the way are smeared and tarnished, not as protecting innocent people but protecting criminals."
What is taking place in Jamaica today reminds me, not all of it, but to a great extent of what took place in 1974. In 1974, two very important citizens of our country were killed within a two-week period, a gentleman by the name of Mr. Leo Henry, and a gentleman by the name of Mr. Paul Fitz-Ritson. Incidents of criminal violence had begun to increase by 1973/74. The government had attempted to put in place an amnesty prior to that. They had put in place a situation where first offenders for having a spliff were let out of jail on parole, in an attempt, as from where I sat, to diminish some of the anger and frustration in the society.
But the thing started rising when two middle-class people got shot - I have every sympathy for every middle class person in the world, we are middle class, you know what I mean, and I'm proud of that and I now want to move up from the middle. I was down in the other and my mother and father said get some education and move out of where you were. My job was not to stay there, it was to move to where I am."
But the government responded, and now I want to make it very clear what I'm speaking about. The State responded, led by the government, with two legislations - The Gun Court Act and the Suppression of Crime Act. Now, it caused great concern within the People's National Party. There are a lot of lawyers in there, and I myself coming from the Civil Rights wing of the nation, through the Human Rights Council at the time, with people like Dennis Daley and those people; coming from the Black Power Movement where yuh mix up with "dutty neyga", forgive me. So you note some of the tribulations, like some Members of Parliament who have to do that because they are their constituents.
So it caused a lot of concern inside there, and we were told don't worry about it - it's unconstitutional, it abrogates every human right that there is, but there's a crisis, so let's go for it. It was very popular. There's a Stone Poll which showed 80 per cent, 70 per cent, 60 per cent across the country, because we who sit here in this room love short-term solutions. 'Lick off dem head!' When I say we, I don't mean everyone of us, I mean we as a group. When you go out there and people sey, "Bwoy, why unno challenging Reneto? The man is doing a good job. We have to just clean it out!"
I'm going over this little part of the history not to denigrate anybody, not the PNP, not Michael Manley, not anybody, but to recall aspects of our history which put us into part of the rut that we are in. It's one thing, for little groups out there - civil society groups, political groups - to be fighting one another, which is not good. But when the State institutionalises repression and terrorism, it's another thing.
For whatever reason, because I'm willing to say to you now that at that time, and I still believe, at that time that all of us had pure hearts and wanted the best for the country - we would have liked to see the violence stop immediately. We were told things like we would have programmes for the youth and I could relate a number of other things which I won't go into because the time doesn't allow - but that there would be balance. It is not that we did not know that it was not right. That was known.
Let me read from page 137 of Michael Manley's 'Struggle in the Periphery':
"In 1974, we had introduced controversial legislation in which we made the illegal possession of a firearm a crime punishable by mandatory life sentence. We had even stopped bird shooting and asked the sportsmen to hand in their guns for safekeeping in the military armoury. Under the Gun Court Law, as it was called, we had made special arrangements to provide for the quick trial of those charged with offences involving guns. Acting upon the advice of the team which included a sociologist and a psychiatrist, we had tried shock therapy in the hope that this would buy time for the society - buy time for the society - (Dr. Duncan emphasises) and give us an opportunity to gain control over the situation through improved methods of detection - substitute 'intelligence' - (Dr. Duncan adds) and police activity generally. But as 1977 proceeded, in its anxious and tense way, crime was on the rise again and public concern increased with it."
I'm quoting it to let you know that these things were not done accidentally. So you knew that there was a risk. The point I'm trying to make here is that, all of those people who are now in the leadership of this country, were there then. So if you can't know by intelligence, by theory, you should know by practice. The practice of the last 27 years - 1974-2001 - has shown us that whether it's from Echo Squad, through Eradication Squad, to ACID - it does not work!
So we don't have to be either good or bad, we can only look and see what happened.
And it is in that context that I myself felt personally moved to identify with the feelings of the Member of Parliament of Western Kingston during the period of July 7-10. I'll tell you why. As I tell you, I don't have time to give you all of my background but you heard some of it before. My bottom-line in my politics and my life, is justice. And I try as much as possible to look for it more for the dispossessed at this point in time because I feel that they need the attention the most. Some of us can buy it, run away from it, but others have to live in it - the injustice.
So when I heard people saying for example, this is a wicked man because he promised people safe passage. I want to invite anybody in this country to come with me and turn MP in any of these inner-city areas - I was one of them. It's easy to sit in your citadels and your fortresses and say anything but come down there and live with me.
As I explained on a recent radio programme, in the 1980 elections, part of my constituency had a road with a lot of lanes off it and a group of opponents were coming down. Police and soldiers were coming down and were shooting down the lanes. People call you, as I'm sure they must have called Mr. Seaga when the shooting took place down there, and say 'MP something is happening down here'.
PEOPLE ARE BEING KILLED
Doesn't that sound logical that somebody would call the MP and say something is happening down there? Is that a crime? And if you hear something is happening down there, wouldn't you want to find out if you're the MP for the area? If you hear people are being killed, would you want to go to see what is happening?
Well, I tell you that day they were shooting, I thought indiscriminately shooting in 1980, and I went around to Waltham Park Road. It was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon and I said that 'if we are going to stop anything here, is through prevention.' So I called a public meeting on the corner of Waltham Park Avenue and Brotherton Avenue and told them we're going to have a meeting all night till daylight. We were going to have speeches upon speeches upon speeches, you can call it whatever you want - a civil protest. And during the course of the night police and soldiers kept coming down and every time they came down I said 'Let them pass'. I gave them safe passage.
Since I was not born attached to any political party, but I have a fundamental commitment to justice and therefore against injustice, particularly amongst the poor of this country - I don't see the poor through the eyes of PNP, JLP, NDM or UPP or anything that exists. I see them as people whether they live in Tivoli, Rema, Maxfield Avenue or Waltham Park Road. I've always seen them that way. I've been called all kinds of names because 'a yuh wrap with ragamuffin'. When there was a "Community Leader" named Starkey, people knew of his "leadership qualities" but he had not been arrested by or charged by the police. And they planned, as I understood it, to go and kill him. I said no! And PNP people were very happy. "Press along, D.K., Press along."
Because there are certain basic common law rights, some justice rights that until you can prove that man is guilty of so and so, you can't just go and shoot him so and they were going to do it. Now if you have on your PNP lens, or your JLP lens - if it happen to the PNP, JLP say great, if it happen to the JLP, the PNP say great. But I say it must not happen to anybody.
It must not happen to anybody! People say, 'if yuh sey dat people going misunderstand and sey you are a labourite'. If, my support for and concern for what happened in Tivoli is shared by Edward Seaga and that makes me a labourite, then make me a labourite. But it's not for my own personal self, it's because I know where we are coming from because I was a part of it and for that I am sorry. Because I could have left the People's National Party in 1974 when that thing was introduced.
But you know this thing, you stay inside and you argue and dem say majority win and whatever, whatever. In any case you buy the argument. I bought the argument mek we just do a likkle ting quick, quick, quick, because Michael said this thing is a short-term thing. A short-term thing which lasted way down until 1994. We could see it, all of us who are MPs in the inner-cities or in areas where criminal activity may or may not occur - we know, we give the policeman the right to just walk in your house without a search warrant and think, that in those days they were just kicking off your door.
For those who don't know, come mek wi go down there one a dem day, come mek wi go live down there fi two weeks. I'm willing now for me and yuh, anyone a yuh go down deh and live in a dem place deh for two weeks, and you see how much time dem come kick down yuh door. Looking for one man and dem kick down thirty-five doors - or sey dem looking for one man. So he who feels it, knows it.
Maybe what Mr. Seaga should have done for the ease of the JLP is to move out of there into a nice respectable constituency where he doesn't have to deal with people, just deal with issues.
So I'm not saying that because this is West Kingston dinner. Those who know me, know it is not my style. If this was a Region 3 conference, it's the same speech I'd be making - same speech. Because I feel very strongly about what took place down there.
So therefore, as I said I want to relay the message about justice and injustice, but in its stark ways - in as graphic a way as possible, for you to feel the feeling. Because I could speak about some nice abstract issues, which would be very safe. But what we're facing now is institutionalised repression. And coming in the wake of the Braeton incident. They have a saying, I cyann fully remember it but dem sey, 'First time is mistake, second time is purpose, and third time is habit'.
IN THAT HOUSE IN BRAETON
And I have said this to my friends, many of whom are my children who are sitting over there, that I could have been in that house in Braeton. I personally know that, not through some abstract thing, but through practical reality. [Karl whey you think bout this part in red]I was a Member of Parliament who mix-up with everybody mi neva skin up because every man have a right fi him own destiny. And I can envisage myself in the 1970s or 1960s when I was in the Black Power movement, sitting down in a room with some set of youths saying 'Listen, we have to reason out how dis ting go, what we can do wid wi life.'
Because this thing don't work through no public meeting and no whole heap a thing, we have sit down and reason, you have to reason, it's one on one, it's likkle small groups - that's where you get to the minds and to challenge the youth and thing of this country.
You cyaan just come down and spend half an hour and say 'I was there, and they look poor.' So I could have been there reasoning with them and Mr. Adams could have walked in there and sey, 'See it deh, see the b_ _ _ h deh', and just shot wi! That's exactly how it would go, that's exactly how it would have gone. And I want to put it as starkly as possible, because I want you to know that you face 'a clear and present danger.'
And I was very disappointed when we went down to the funeral that Sunday afternoon, and saw the chairs, set out in anticipation of civil society, empty. I don't want to interpret Edward Seaga, but I felt like how I think he felt, when a question was put to him on the Breakfast Club and he answered by saying, 'My heart tells one thing, but my head tells me another.' Nutten nuh lef fi sey afta dat.
I don't even want him explain it to me - don't you know when you're fed up and yuh feel like sey 'What in the name of God, why people cyaan see that something is wrong? What is it going to take for people to know that something is wrong?'
The South African Constitutional Court in 1995, when they were dealing with Truth and Reconciliation, said:
"It is only if there is a willingness to protect the worst and the weakest amongst us that all of us can be secure that our own rights will be protected." That's from a court sitting in a country which has reason to hate - good reason to hate and good reason to retaliate.
So to bring up all kinds of irrelevancies, either of the past, the present or the future, when you are dealing with a reality of the moment, to me, makes no sense. It shows, and I don't want to judge too much, but I have to come to certain conclusions. I was very disappointed and I would appeal to people to see these people as human beings.
These few words that I've tried to put together this evening are dedicated, not to New York, but to West Kingston where I want to see the flag fly half-mast. More people died there in three days than the four weeks of the 1938 uprising. But, who are these people?
As the Member of Parliament explained, hand-cart man, rum-head - what I hear they call now in certain places of the inner-city, 'Waste man'. That's what they call them now, that's what we have come to. And we have come to that because we have allowed the institutionalisation of repression to continue to satisfy our immediate gratification in the hope that if them kill ten now, then everything will be solved. Well, mek I tell you if you kill ten now, a hundred going come up.
And where as in a particular point in time the Suppression of Crime Act allowed them to just kick off the door, come in and gun butt yuh and tek yuh to jail, now dem come in, gun butt yuh and shot yuh in yuh head. That is what it has come to, and we sit by and talk about why yuh nuh go policeman funeral and go dis and go dat. Of course, everybody is sorry when anybody dies. But as James Baldwin said, 'If they come for me in the morning, they are going to come for you in the night.'
And in paying respect to those people, we have a Commission of Enquiry, like so many other Commissions of Enquiry into another crisis in the country - a Commission of Enquiry which just in an instant can't see the sense in getting up immediately from their chairs and going down to West Kingston and look, immediately. Sometimes I feel like 'Yuh mad', if a man sey 'a shot from here so to there so', doesn't it suit you to go look to see if there is a wall in front of it. And the Reverend Garnett Brown of the church, he can go down dere by himself, him don't have to wait for the di commission meeting.
Don't anyone of dem can tek a taxi down there and go look? It doesn't have to be a formal look. Go look where Tivoli Court is and where the man dem fire the gun from. I'm not making any judgement on what happened in any fullness thereof. But what I am saying that any State security operation which ends up with 28 people being killed, no matter how they died is an abject failure and must be seen as that. And I would love Jamaican people to understand that each human life is important.
We are in a rut, says D.K. Duncan
Then PNP General- Secretary D.K. Duncan (in dark glasses), speaking with a group of South West St. Andrew demonstrators who were demanding to see the Prime Minister in connection with charges made against then JLP Senator Pearnel Charles in October 1975.
The following are excerpts of an address by former PNP General Secretary and Minister of Mobilisation, Dr. D.K. Duncan, to the West Kingston Development Committee Fund-raising Banquet in Kingston, on Friday, September 28, 2001.
I HAD a lot of time to prepare for this presentation but I want to confess that what I hoped that I would have done, I have not done - hand to the Member of Parliament and the organisers of the function a prepared text which they could follow and carefully scrutinise and which would also be available to the press. But I was not able to do it, and I'm going to tell you frankly why, because I've been turning over and over in my mind for the last two weeks, what it is that I could say to this gathering this evening that would be useful, positive, truthful. A number of things flashed through my mind.
I thought of questions of leadership because I don't think there's any doubt at all in anybody's mind that the country badly needs leadership. But people would say I'm campaigning for Mr. Seaga against Mr. Patterson and although, objectively that could be a conclusion, that is not really what I intend to do to campaign for anybody. But in the few words that I put out there, to let the chips fall where they may, and as intelligent people, people do what they want to do.
I thought of speaking about more abstract concepts like renewal, in the sense of political renewal, and if I have the time and I can get to that section which I've prepared, I'd like to refer to some comments made by the Member of Parliament and Leader of the party (Edward Seaga), in that context, in a speech he made in 1995, if we have the time for that.
NATIONAL UNITY
I thought of speaking on the question of national unity. It's a term that is ringing in the environment all over the place. It could be a very safe presentation. You could leave with a lot of friends, on the other hand you could be very abstract and say nothing, and that's not my style.
Although there are several important points to be made about national unity, I have some other thoughts about it which are not currently popular but which are known I believe that if you are going to move towards national unity, usually it requires a basis.
It's not something peripheral, something only symbolic. But my understanding of it, it would be something more profound and that profound approach would require an agenda, something that you can feel and touch and deal with. It does not require what we have done over so many years, two or three people meeting and having some pictures taken, or going to the odd meeting here and there and saying that we invited you and you came. That, to me, is not national unity. So on the other hand, it would cause a lot of difficulty for me at this time when I have other problems to deal with.
I thought of speaking about trust. And I will speak about trust but in the context of what I really would like to speak about, the thing called justice. I'm not a parson or a reverend, although my mother wanted me to be one, but I want to use as a text, the presentation made by Mr. Seaga, because we haven't got a lot of time and I think he has put what I want to say very succinctly in his document. I'm using it deliberately, I'm not going around the corner. I'm using it deliberately because they are profound words. I'm not dealing with the messenger, I'm dealing with the message - although we can appropriately deal with both.
It's not just two verses like Matthews 1, vs. 2-3. It's about four paragraphs and then I want to elaborate on it and tell you what my own views are and then to really speak to you mainly from my heart.
The quotation is from the prepared text of the broadcast to the nation by Rt. Hon. Edward Seaga, MP, Leader of the Opposition, Part 1, CVM, Sunday, July 22, 2001.
I repeat in an audience like this because I know I've been in the political scene long enough to know that people listen to speeches and they really don't hear them. They say it sounds nice, especially if it's something that they know they would agree with. When I used to go to church sometimes and the people leave church and you ask 'what the man sey?' 'Bwoy, ah doan know but it sound nice.'
The quote is this:
"None of the attempts by the security forces to brutalise innocent inner-city residents will be successful if the government itself does not uphold principles of justice and draw a line beyond which the security forces would not go. Or if civil society too, had a principled position about where the line of justice should be drawn in the treatment of poor and disadvantaged people. It is a fundamental weakness of our society that there are many people who feel that the massacre of innocent inner-city residents are worth it if the security forces can capture even one criminal. Crime is their prime concern. They feel threatened by violence. Justice is not their concern. They live in a privileged world which safeguards them from injustice."
"So while government, in search of criminals unleashes criminal terror on innocent people in communities in the name of law and order and are cheered on by many of civil society to whom the death of unknown poor people, who live in such communities, is neither a crime nor of consequences. Others have to stand up and cry for justice in the face of this onslaught. In so doing, we who stand in the way are smeared and tarnished, not as protecting innocent people but protecting criminals."
What is taking place in Jamaica today reminds me, not all of it, but to a great extent of what took place in 1974. In 1974, two very important citizens of our country were killed within a two-week period, a gentleman by the name of Mr. Leo Henry, and a gentleman by the name of Mr. Paul Fitz-Ritson. Incidents of criminal violence had begun to increase by 1973/74. The government had attempted to put in place an amnesty prior to that. They had put in place a situation where first offenders for having a spliff were let out of jail on parole, in an attempt, as from where I sat, to diminish some of the anger and frustration in the society.
But the thing started rising when two middle-class people got shot - I have every sympathy for every middle class person in the world, we are middle class, you know what I mean, and I'm proud of that and I now want to move up from the middle. I was down in the other and my mother and father said get some education and move out of where you were. My job was not to stay there, it was to move to where I am."
But the government responded, and now I want to make it very clear what I'm speaking about. The State responded, led by the government, with two legislations - The Gun Court Act and the Suppression of Crime Act. Now, it caused great concern within the People's National Party. There are a lot of lawyers in there, and I myself coming from the Civil Rights wing of the nation, through the Human Rights Council at the time, with people like Dennis Daley and those people; coming from the Black Power Movement where yuh mix up with "dutty neyga", forgive me. So you note some of the tribulations, like some Members of Parliament who have to do that because they are their constituents.
So it caused a lot of concern inside there, and we were told don't worry about it - it's unconstitutional, it abrogates every human right that there is, but there's a crisis, so let's go for it. It was very popular. There's a Stone Poll which showed 80 per cent, 70 per cent, 60 per cent across the country, because we who sit here in this room love short-term solutions. 'Lick off dem head!' When I say we, I don't mean everyone of us, I mean we as a group. When you go out there and people sey, "Bwoy, why unno challenging Reneto? The man is doing a good job. We have to just clean it out!"
I'm going over this little part of the history not to denigrate anybody, not the PNP, not Michael Manley, not anybody, but to recall aspects of our history which put us into part of the rut that we are in. It's one thing, for little groups out there - civil society groups, political groups - to be fighting one another, which is not good. But when the State institutionalises repression and terrorism, it's another thing.
For whatever reason, because I'm willing to say to you now that at that time, and I still believe, at that time that all of us had pure hearts and wanted the best for the country - we would have liked to see the violence stop immediately. We were told things like we would have programmes for the youth and I could relate a number of other things which I won't go into because the time doesn't allow - but that there would be balance. It is not that we did not know that it was not right. That was known.
Let me read from page 137 of Michael Manley's 'Struggle in the Periphery':
"In 1974, we had introduced controversial legislation in which we made the illegal possession of a firearm a crime punishable by mandatory life sentence. We had even stopped bird shooting and asked the sportsmen to hand in their guns for safekeeping in the military armoury. Under the Gun Court Law, as it was called, we had made special arrangements to provide for the quick trial of those charged with offences involving guns. Acting upon the advice of the team which included a sociologist and a psychiatrist, we had tried shock therapy in the hope that this would buy time for the society - buy time for the society - (Dr. Duncan emphasises) and give us an opportunity to gain control over the situation through improved methods of detection - substitute 'intelligence' - (Dr. Duncan adds) and police activity generally. But as 1977 proceeded, in its anxious and tense way, crime was on the rise again and public concern increased with it."
I'm quoting it to let you know that these things were not done accidentally. So you knew that there was a risk. The point I'm trying to make here is that, all of those people who are now in the leadership of this country, were there then. So if you can't know by intelligence, by theory, you should know by practice. The practice of the last 27 years - 1974-2001 - has shown us that whether it's from Echo Squad, through Eradication Squad, to ACID - it does not work!
So we don't have to be either good or bad, we can only look and see what happened.
And it is in that context that I myself felt personally moved to identify with the feelings of the Member of Parliament of Western Kingston during the period of July 7-10. I'll tell you why. As I tell you, I don't have time to give you all of my background but you heard some of it before. My bottom-line in my politics and my life, is justice. And I try as much as possible to look for it more for the dispossessed at this point in time because I feel that they need the attention the most. Some of us can buy it, run away from it, but others have to live in it - the injustice.
So when I heard people saying for example, this is a wicked man because he promised people safe passage. I want to invite anybody in this country to come with me and turn MP in any of these inner-city areas - I was one of them. It's easy to sit in your citadels and your fortresses and say anything but come down there and live with me.
As I explained on a recent radio programme, in the 1980 elections, part of my constituency had a road with a lot of lanes off it and a group of opponents were coming down. Police and soldiers were coming down and were shooting down the lanes. People call you, as I'm sure they must have called Mr. Seaga when the shooting took place down there, and say 'MP something is happening down here'.
PEOPLE ARE BEING KILLED
Doesn't that sound logical that somebody would call the MP and say something is happening down there? Is that a crime? And if you hear something is happening down there, wouldn't you want to find out if you're the MP for the area? If you hear people are being killed, would you want to go to see what is happening?
Well, I tell you that day they were shooting, I thought indiscriminately shooting in 1980, and I went around to Waltham Park Road. It was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon and I said that 'if we are going to stop anything here, is through prevention.' So I called a public meeting on the corner of Waltham Park Avenue and Brotherton Avenue and told them we're going to have a meeting all night till daylight. We were going to have speeches upon speeches upon speeches, you can call it whatever you want - a civil protest. And during the course of the night police and soldiers kept coming down and every time they came down I said 'Let them pass'. I gave them safe passage.
Since I was not born attached to any political party, but I have a fundamental commitment to justice and therefore against injustice, particularly amongst the poor of this country - I don't see the poor through the eyes of PNP, JLP, NDM or UPP or anything that exists. I see them as people whether they live in Tivoli, Rema, Maxfield Avenue or Waltham Park Road. I've always seen them that way. I've been called all kinds of names because 'a yuh wrap with ragamuffin'. When there was a "Community Leader" named Starkey, people knew of his "leadership qualities" but he had not been arrested by or charged by the police. And they planned, as I understood it, to go and kill him. I said no! And PNP people were very happy. "Press along, D.K., Press along."
Because there are certain basic common law rights, some justice rights that until you can prove that man is guilty of so and so, you can't just go and shoot him so and they were going to do it. Now if you have on your PNP lens, or your JLP lens - if it happen to the PNP, JLP say great, if it happen to the JLP, the PNP say great. But I say it must not happen to anybody.
It must not happen to anybody! People say, 'if yuh sey dat people going misunderstand and sey you are a labourite'. If, my support for and concern for what happened in Tivoli is shared by Edward Seaga and that makes me a labourite, then make me a labourite. But it's not for my own personal self, it's because I know where we are coming from because I was a part of it and for that I am sorry. Because I could have left the People's National Party in 1974 when that thing was introduced.
But you know this thing, you stay inside and you argue and dem say majority win and whatever, whatever. In any case you buy the argument. I bought the argument mek we just do a likkle ting quick, quick, quick, because Michael said this thing is a short-term thing. A short-term thing which lasted way down until 1994. We could see it, all of us who are MPs in the inner-cities or in areas where criminal activity may or may not occur - we know, we give the policeman the right to just walk in your house without a search warrant and think, that in those days they were just kicking off your door.
For those who don't know, come mek wi go down there one a dem day, come mek wi go live down there fi two weeks. I'm willing now for me and yuh, anyone a yuh go down deh and live in a dem place deh for two weeks, and you see how much time dem come kick down yuh door. Looking for one man and dem kick down thirty-five doors - or sey dem looking for one man. So he who feels it, knows it.
Maybe what Mr. Seaga should have done for the ease of the JLP is to move out of there into a nice respectable constituency where he doesn't have to deal with people, just deal with issues.
So I'm not saying that because this is West Kingston dinner. Those who know me, know it is not my style. If this was a Region 3 conference, it's the same speech I'd be making - same speech. Because I feel very strongly about what took place down there.
So therefore, as I said I want to relay the message about justice and injustice, but in its stark ways - in as graphic a way as possible, for you to feel the feeling. Because I could speak about some nice abstract issues, which would be very safe. But what we're facing now is institutionalised repression. And coming in the wake of the Braeton incident. They have a saying, I cyann fully remember it but dem sey, 'First time is mistake, second time is purpose, and third time is habit'.
IN THAT HOUSE IN BRAETON
And I have said this to my friends, many of whom are my children who are sitting over there, that I could have been in that house in Braeton. I personally know that, not through some abstract thing, but through practical reality. [Karl whey you think bout this part in red]I was a Member of Parliament who mix-up with everybody mi neva skin up because every man have a right fi him own destiny. And I can envisage myself in the 1970s or 1960s when I was in the Black Power movement, sitting down in a room with some set of youths saying 'Listen, we have to reason out how dis ting go, what we can do wid wi life.'
Because this thing don't work through no public meeting and no whole heap a thing, we have sit down and reason, you have to reason, it's one on one, it's likkle small groups - that's where you get to the minds and to challenge the youth and thing of this country.
You cyaan just come down and spend half an hour and say 'I was there, and they look poor.' So I could have been there reasoning with them and Mr. Adams could have walked in there and sey, 'See it deh, see the b_ _ _ h deh', and just shot wi! That's exactly how it would go, that's exactly how it would have gone. And I want to put it as starkly as possible, because I want you to know that you face 'a clear and present danger.'
And I was very disappointed when we went down to the funeral that Sunday afternoon, and saw the chairs, set out in anticipation of civil society, empty. I don't want to interpret Edward Seaga, but I felt like how I think he felt, when a question was put to him on the Breakfast Club and he answered by saying, 'My heart tells one thing, but my head tells me another.' Nutten nuh lef fi sey afta dat.
I don't even want him explain it to me - don't you know when you're fed up and yuh feel like sey 'What in the name of God, why people cyaan see that something is wrong? What is it going to take for people to know that something is wrong?'
The South African Constitutional Court in 1995, when they were dealing with Truth and Reconciliation, said:
"It is only if there is a willingness to protect the worst and the weakest amongst us that all of us can be secure that our own rights will be protected." That's from a court sitting in a country which has reason to hate - good reason to hate and good reason to retaliate.
So to bring up all kinds of irrelevancies, either of the past, the present or the future, when you are dealing with a reality of the moment, to me, makes no sense. It shows, and I don't want to judge too much, but I have to come to certain conclusions. I was very disappointed and I would appeal to people to see these people as human beings.
These few words that I've tried to put together this evening are dedicated, not to New York, but to West Kingston where I want to see the flag fly half-mast. More people died there in three days than the four weeks of the 1938 uprising. But, who are these people?
As the Member of Parliament explained, hand-cart man, rum-head - what I hear they call now in certain places of the inner-city, 'Waste man'. That's what they call them now, that's what we have come to. And we have come to that because we have allowed the institutionalisation of repression to continue to satisfy our immediate gratification in the hope that if them kill ten now, then everything will be solved. Well, mek I tell you if you kill ten now, a hundred going come up.
And where as in a particular point in time the Suppression of Crime Act allowed them to just kick off the door, come in and gun butt yuh and tek yuh to jail, now dem come in, gun butt yuh and shot yuh in yuh head. That is what it has come to, and we sit by and talk about why yuh nuh go policeman funeral and go dis and go dat. Of course, everybody is sorry when anybody dies. But as James Baldwin said, 'If they come for me in the morning, they are going to come for you in the night.'
And in paying respect to those people, we have a Commission of Enquiry, like so many other Commissions of Enquiry into another crisis in the country - a Commission of Enquiry which just in an instant can't see the sense in getting up immediately from their chairs and going down to West Kingston and look, immediately. Sometimes I feel like 'Yuh mad', if a man sey 'a shot from here so to there so', doesn't it suit you to go look to see if there is a wall in front of it. And the Reverend Garnett Brown of the church, he can go down dere by himself, him don't have to wait for the di commission meeting.
Don't anyone of dem can tek a taxi down there and go look? It doesn't have to be a formal look. Go look where Tivoli Court is and where the man dem fire the gun from. I'm not making any judgement on what happened in any fullness thereof. But what I am saying that any State security operation which ends up with 28 people being killed, no matter how they died is an abject failure and must be seen as that. And I would love Jamaican people to understand that each human life is important.
For if memory serves me right you thought they were all criminals and got what they deserved from Adams the butcher!
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