…WI in Britain
There’s talk about Britain apologising for its treatment of Black West Indians who’d arrived in the wave that brought over 500,000 of them after the Windrush in 1948. But Britain had joined the anti-immigrant wave since 1968 when Conservative MP (and Minister) Enock Powell gave his infamous “rivers of blood” speech to Conservative party members in Birmingham.
He claimed to be quoting a constituent when he said that “in 15 or 20 years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man”. And ended with a quote from the Aeneid – Virgil’s poem about Rome – predicting civil war with “the River Tiber foaming with much blood”. The man was a classical scholar!!
At that time, it was only 20 years after the Windrush had landed with its hold chock-full of West Indian blacks – paying their own way in a reversal of the Middle Passage – to perform the menial tasks even a war-battered British working class wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole. It said a lot about the desperate conditions in the West Indies after Britain had ruled us for over three hundred years: we’d been cast aside like bagasse!
But the British had convinced us by then that after fighting by their side to roll back the “fascist Germans” to “save democracy”, our “motherland” needed us one more time. So we ran the “underground”, the buses, the garbage trucks and whatever else was beyond the pale to build back “old Blighty”. Hell…back in the West Indies we even signed along the dotted line to supply them with sugar in “perpetuity” for their “cuppa”!!
Anyhow by 1968, the welcome mat had been worn threadbare…especially since TT-born Stokely Carmichael had visited the year before and personally introduced the claims of “Black Power”!! Powell was only saying aloud what the Brits had always thought about us. Contrary to the claims of CLR James about our Cricket, our equality hadn’t reached “beyond the boundary”!! We were the children of Ham and we were born to be servants and slaves to ‘real’ – read “white” – Christians. After their economy recovered, the racism – always there – became muted since it was not “politically correct”.
So why this newfound contrition by PM May about how Britain welshed to the descendants of the Windrush generation – who’d been taken so fast off the ships to perform their grubby tasks their papers hadn’t been even straightened out? Simple: Britain is hosting this year’s “Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting” (CHOGM)!! With them out of the EU, they need the Commonwealth to strut on the world stage again!!
On our backs!!
…and into the streets
Now that Clive Thomas has been tossed out of GuySuCo on his ear, it’s not surprising to hear that his SARA is now going into the streets to fight corruption!! It’s clear it’s “the night of the long knives” for the WPA. First, they came for Roopnaraine…then Hinds…now Thomas. And who’s the “they”?? Did YOU, Dear Reader, think the PNC really forgot how Rodney and the WPA ridiculed and humiliated their Founder Leader?? Fat Boy!! King Kong!! King Midas of Doo-Doo!!
The WPA should’ve sensed something was amiss when SARA – explicitly in charge of recovering STATE ASSETS – was bypassed for SOCU, to recover assets supposedly “given away” by the PPP! Thomas is – and always will be – a paper pusher: he hasn’t the faintest inkling how the real world operates! It’s easy to spin tales about “the criminalising of the state” – just like he used to do about “the rape of the South”. Translating that into action is a dimension he has never entered!!
So, let’s see what he does about “street” corruption!! Three-card hustle??
…for stonewalling
The PAC, chaired by the Opposition, is mandated to inquire how allocated Government funds are spent. Because the PNC’s PAC was years late, the spending checked was moot. Unlike the PPP – like with the money spent and no drugs.
Don’t just throw the delinquents out – jail them!!
