Truth and reconciliation is a better formula for a society than denial. There is an old saying “Truth crushed to the ground shall rise again”. There is also the religious adage that Cain killed Abel but could not bury and hide his body, the ground kept yielding it up. In my recent Fb article a blog ensued detailing the conflict and split of 1965, which this current generation would like to dismiss as bygone, irrelevant and from which the party has survived and must continue to press onward. Read any narrative and hardly a paragraph would be afforded to describe what axiomatically became the fulcrum dividing the black community politically which set the stage for the demise of 150 years’ worth of entrepreneurial development of the black merchant community. 1965 to 1998 is 33 years and more than a generation which saw at the beginning a black community with solid foot prints in every field reduced to near oblivion. Integration was not the sole blame, lack of empowerment and political representation was. Our merchant faced the disingenuous invitation and handshake of the oligarchs who were only interested in maintaining their political position while suppressing their long term competitor. While on the other hand this merchant group was ostracized by a now labour party for its own politic labelled black merchants as Uncle Tom. The black merchants were ideologically forced into the coffers of the UBP they tried at great risk an alternative in the form of a “black caucus” the members of whom were threatened and intimidated into abandoning the effort. Just imagine if there was no split in 1965 more than likely the PLP would have been in power in 1968. Then imagine political power with the then established black business community of the 1960’s. The issue of banking the issue contracts being favorable to black business. When you weigh the cost including the corresponding social degradation the events of 1965 are too huge to dismiss without circumspection. The younger generation are bound to repeat the saga if the genesis of the division is not properly understood by them. What is needed is a truth and reconciliation where the party goes through a catharsis. It would cause a complete shake-up and redirection but would have the potential of a true amalgam of class and identity. The PLP was originally made up of two words, progressive and labor. However its current identity truly is based on only one word labor because the progressive element, which preceded its formation, was cut off in the 1965 split.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 13:43:10 +0000
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