“Black Empress! Oh Black Empress! Defender of Black Pride: Black Anguillian Pride! Fearless fighter against the evil exploitation and oppression that the wicked and oppressive British are intent on visiting on us! A call to fight against the British bent on denying us our rights, our freedoms, our dignity, our Black pride. Hail, Black Empress! Black Empress Josephine!
Reading the press release by Mrs. Josephine Gumbs-Connor in The Anguillian of March 2, 2012, I was frankly taken aback. Many thoughts came to mind. I thought what a subjective rant and rave against the AUF’s leadership and members by the Black Empress. I was left scratching my head. Yes, the outburst, against the AUF, fired off in the press release has me wondering.
Why such an outburst from Mrs. Gumbs-Connor? What is it about the purpose, the tone, the content, reasoning and construction of the AUF letter to Rev. Dr. Clifton Niles of February 23, withdrawing from further membership of and participation in the activities of the Constitutional and Electoral Reform Committee, that has triggered such vituperation, such excoriation, such unabashed verbal abuse of the AUF, its leadership and members?
Meditating on the press release my mind ran on Claude McKay and his most famous poem “If we must die”. McKay, who died in 1948, was Jamaican by birth. He migrated to the USA as a youth and lived mainly in Harlem, New York, for many years. He is credited with being one of the pioneers of the Black Harlem Literary and Artistic Renaissance in the 1920s and the 1930s, associated with more well known icons of the movement such as the poet, Langston Hughes. McKay in “If we must die” states:
“If we must die, O let us nobly die
So that our precious blood may not be shed in vain
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back.”
McKay himself was no firebrand. He did not represent the firebrand resistance and liberation politics suggested in his poem. He was more moderate and measured in his political endeavours on behalf of the colonized and the oppressed. This is despite the fact that racism was rampant in the USA in his time and the British Empire was still in its ascendancy.
The British leaders held to the notion that the sun would never set on the British Empire. The colonies at the end of the 19th Century, and in the first half of the 20th Century, were exploited for their resources, yielding a major source of British wealth. The colonized peoples were subjected to harsh economic exploitation. The British also suppressed the aspirations of the emerging educated middle classes among its colonial subjects, denying their right to the exercise of self-determination and the pursuit of political, constitutional and economic independence.
I thought – how much the world has changed today! The eternal day of the British Empire of 100 years ago has turned to long dark night. The imperial sun has set. Only a few rays still shoot up the darkened sky of the imperial night, before the sun sinks well below the horizon.
Anguilla is one of the last rays of the British imperial sun. So are the other British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean and elsewhere.
The Empire fell victim to a powerful independence movement that swept through the British colonies in Africa, Asia, thePpacific and the Caribbean, starting immediately following the end of the Second World War in 1945. Over the next 40 years, most of the British colonies gained their independence. It was often achieved through sustained agitation, resistance and conflict, sometimes openly armed and violent struggle. It was also achieved peacefully at times. By 1985, the British Empire was reduced to 12 tiny territories with permanent communities and two with non-permanent populations. The 12, located all around the globe, consist of a mere 7,000 square miles and 260,000 inhabitants. The British Commonwealth replaced the Empire.
The Americans, since the Second World War 67 years ago, supplanted Britain as the world’s capitalist superpower. America won the Cold War against the communist countries led by the then Soviet Union. The communist block is no more, consigned to the archives of history.
Radical zealots of the independence era often brooked no deviance from their pure doctrine. They mounted sustained, belligerent and bellicose struggles for freedom and liberation from colonialism. Overtime, however, these same firebrands retreated from open confrontation. They replaced the gun with the ballot, pitched battles with boardroom battles, guerilla warfare and extremism with negotiation and moderation. They embraced peaceful protest and turned away from street battles and violent demonstrations. They began to promote friendship, cooperation and understanding with their former colonial masters.
I gave thought to the fact that the world has moved on significantly from the clashes of the age of decolonization, from the dismantling of empire, and from the social upheavals associated with this process. Today, we are in a world in which the right of every nation and people, of every community – to self-determination is duly recognized by the international community. Britain has to facilitate the exercise of the right of self-determination by its remaining colonies, to enable them to attain the full and ultimate measure of self determination. For me that goal is and must be independence. But we must prepare for it and must be sensible, strategic and tactical about it.
Direct political domination and the suppression by law and force of the free expression of the right of self-determination are no longer the order of the day – no longer the goal of the former colonizing and imperialist countries. A new international order is emerging in which mutual respect, inter-dependence, cooperation and collaboration are highly weighted. This opens the door for small national communities, like our Anguilla, to take their places at the table of nations.
The end of the 20th Century and beginning of the 21st saw the classic decolonization era (from the 1940s to the mid 1980s) come to an end. The conditions in which the former British colonies gained their independence hardly exist today. The press release by Mrs. Gumbs-Connor gives the impression that we are still forced into the political trenches to fight for our freedom today.
I remember the story of Don Quixote. Is Mrs. Gumbs Connor a kind of Sancho Panza to the Hon. Hubert Hughes’ Don Quixote, tilting at British political and constitutional windmills?
High hopes for better lives were held by the oppressed peoples at independence, fostered by the political elites and oligarchs who replaced the colonial masters. In many ways colonial masters were replaced by homegrown oppressors. There are too many tales of leaders robbing the wealth of their countries in cahoots with foreign investors and hiding it in Swiss bank accounts.
National leaders used the state to enrich themselves after independence. They hid their ill gotten wealth in places such as Switzerland, while continuing to deceive the people. I hope such is not the AUM’s secret plan promised by Chief Minister Hubert Hughes in the 2010 elections.
My reflections on the press release also brought to mind the radical sounding catch phrase, the cliché that says, “Seek ye first the political kingdom and everything else shall be added unto you”. This is reputed to have been made famous by Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first Prime Minister and President. The phrase suggests that it would be easier to satisfy all economic needs once political independence is achieved. Within a relatively short period of years, development and prosperity would be enjoyed by the people. The reality has been anything but that.
I also thought of the forceful and virulent reaction, of the extreme intolerance, shown by Mrs. Gumbs-Connor towards the AUF’s point of view set out in its letter to Rev. Dr. Niles. She should know that such hostility, attempted psychological blackmail and bullying, if not resisted, create the environment from which dictatorship springs. Thanks to the voices of moderation and tolerance, extremes were avoided in the Anguilla Revolution. Reason tempered rashness in the early days and helped us to arrive at the place we find ourselves in today.
The condition we are in today is not that of a “failed state”. Nor are we experiencing British exploitation and oppression as of old. Where are the British investors in business on Anguilla?
Anguilla has made substantial strides and, in the space of 32 years since 1980, has established a solid foundation for future economic sustainability. Anguilla is not a “failed state”.
I wonder whether we are not in time warp – whether we are not back to the past. Regrettably Hubert, and now Josephine, and I guess the AUM lieutenants and cohorts, operate politically as if the past is the present. But Anguilla is neither Algeria nor Angola. Britain is not France if we are Algeria; not Portugal, if we were Angola. We do not have strategic, nor economic, significance for Britain. Where are the British investors who want to get their hands on some of Anguilla’s wealth? Have they been invited to explore the phantom “vein” of oil and natural gas reserves, which the Chief Minister has claimed exist within Anguilla’s maritime boundaries?
Mouthing off. Abusive. Spouting invective. Spinning and propagandizing. A Black Empress? A Black Empress should not be an ordained demogagoue spreading false Hubertian promises of future plenty. Hubert is, and has always been, the king of demagoguery in Anguilla’s politics:
“I am chosen by God”. “Vote for me. I can and will turn straw into gold”. “I will turn around the economy in six weeks”. That is Hubert preying on our people’s trust.
The attack on the AUF by the learned legal professional reminded me of Hubert’s propaganda and vain promises. Alas, Hubert’s demagoguery continues to attract defenders. Imagine the same person who criticizes the AUF for its stance on the current state of the constitutional and electoral reform process, legitimizes Hubert’s confusion and mindless confrontation with the British. Ignorance and arrogance are enthroned as being more valuable than knowledge and humility.
I am always intrigued by those who are uncomfortable reveling in their Blackness. I am always astounded by those who seek to pass themselves off as one of the people. Yet their behavior and lifestyle suggest otherwise. They use the British symbols and ceremonies, the forms and trappings of the wicked British – these suppressive and oppressive masters seeking to maintain their domination over the people of Anguilla. Is that it? Imitation of the very people you decry.
The fact that the AUF letter was published just days prior to the arrival of the royal visitors for the local Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations, seems to have sent Mrs. Gumbs-Connor into a royal tizzy – spurred her outrage and anger at “Cousin Victor” and his band of British house slaves in the AUF. I am shocked that she should spew the kind of vitriol heaped on the AUF in her press release. The Royal Family has no executive authority in governance in Britain.
I would have thought that open and responsible discourse on our path to constitutional advancement, and the attainment of greater self-determination on the way to the full and ultimate measure of self-determination, would be healthy at any time. Not according to Mrs. Gumbs-Connor.
