BLACK RIVER, St Elizabeth – Shamed, it seems, by widespread public criticism, some members of the St Elizabeth Parish Council are now saying they will support a resolution circulating across Jamaica urging meaningful celebration of next year’s 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade.

But St Elizabeth will have to wait until September for another chance to endorse the proposal made initially by the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC).

Under local authority rules, once a resolution is decided on, six months must go by before it can again be debated.

“I think it is good for us to reflect on our past (because) that will help to guide us on the way forward, so on that basis I would have had to support the resolution,” Black River Mayor and chairman of the St Elizabeth Parish Council, Frank Witter (JLP – Junction division) told the Sunday Observer.

Witter, who was ill at the time, missed the March 13 meeting at which the KSAC resolution was rejected.

Four of his colleagues, Rodney Barnes (PNP – Balaclava division), Ernest Hendricks (JLP – New Market division), Donald Simpson (JLP – Malvern division) and Kern Smalling (PNP – Black River division), all of whom were at the March 13 meeting, later told the Sunday Observer that they too supported the KSAC resolution.

“If we try to forget where we are coming from, then we won’t know where we are going.,” said Smalling.

He, as well as Barnes, Hendricks and Simpson claimed that the KSAC resolution was rejected because most councillors, themselves included, had not fully grasped the details when it was read to the council.

The KSAC resolution, moved by councillor Delroy Williams (JLP – Seivwright Gardens division) and seconded by Sylvester Brown (JLP – Dallas division) called on the Jamaican government, the KSAC and all parish councils to make meaningful plans to celebrate the bicentennial of slavery’s abolition in the British Empire.

It urged that a campaign be initiated to raise funds to erect statues and establish monuments at major places within the cities and towns, in honour of the roles played by British and Jamaican citizens, and for the renovation of existing historical sites ahead of Cricket World Cup 2007.

“We actually hadn’t seen the resolution (before it was read) and might have been ignorant of what the resolution said,” Simpson commented to the Sunday Observer.

“I would concede that in future we need to be more alert in terms of these things, to make sure that whatever goes out is actually the consensus of the thinking in the council.”

Barnes suggested that the majority of the councillors had simply been tired and distracted after a long meeting.

“I believe that if it was another day, or maybe earlier in the day. that the resolution would have gotten some different interpretation,” he said.

They were reacting to public outcry in recent weeks at the rejection of the KSAC resolution without even a debate.

When the resolution was read to the meeting in March, councillor Broderick Wright (JLP – Lacovia division) was the only one to stand and speak formally – urging its rejection.

Wright argued that slavery and the trafficking of slaves were shameful aspects of Jamaica’s past that were best forgotten.

Citing what he said was a position taken decades ago by National Hero Sir Alexander Bustamante, founding father of the Jamaica Labour Party, Wright declared that Jamaicans should ‘celebrate our achievements (but) we should not look back at our shame’.

While remaining in their seats, a few other councillors from both the JLP – which controls the council 9-6 – and the People’s National Party (PNP), supported Wright’s position. It is customary to rise while addressing the council.

The decision to reject the KSAC resolution quickly followed.

When the issue was again raised at the most recent meeting of the parish council on April 13, several members rose to declare that talk in the print and electronic media triggered by their decision in March had cast the St Elizabeth Parish Council in a bad light.

They urged Witter to speak to the media on the issue in order to reflect what they said was the true position of the majority of the councillors.

A reminder that, based on the rules formal debate would have to await another six months, soon brought the discussions to a halt.

But before that, Wright and Winston Sinclair (PNP – Myersville division) declared themselves unrepentant about the decision taken by the council in March. While noting that dissenting councillors had only themselves to blame for not making their positions known and debating the issue at the council meeting, Wright triggered laughter by thanking the Sunday Observer – which initially published the story – for “very good publicity”.

Sinclair, who backed up Wright in an interview with the Sunday Observer last month and subsequently in the electronic media, insisted that “this is a free country, and, if we are free, then we are free to express our opinion”.

The stance taken by the St Elizabeth councillors in March was in sharp contrast to that of central government and a range of non-governmental organisations currently planning to join the international community in marking the 1807 abolition of the British slave trade.

Last December, former Prime Minister P J Patterson named a national committee, including representation from both political parties, to organise activities to mark the bicentenary.

Between the 15th and 19th centuries, millions of Africans were transported in chains by Europeans from their homeland to the Americas to work as slaves on plantations.

Historians say that in some cases, as much as half of a ship’s load of slaves died on the trans-Atlantic journey in cramped, unsanitary conditions, which usually lasted from five to eight weeks.

Slavery itself was finally abolished in British colonies in 1838. It would persist in non-British-run sections of the Americas until well into the latter half of the 19th century.

The majority of Jamaicans are the descendants of slaves brought from Africa.

Parish councillors who spoke to the Sunday Observer in the past two weeks said they had learned a valuable lesson from the entire episode: that under no circumstances should a resolution be allowed to go by without being properly read and understood.

“Resolutions like these should be circulated for people to read paragraph by paragraph before any decision,” said Hendricks.

editorial@jamaicaobserver.com