SEVENTY-EIGHT-YEAR-OLD Daphne Harvey can still see the blood-splattered streets in her mind’s eye as clearly as she did that horrible day in 1947.

Sixty years is not enough time for her to forget the events surrounding the first political killings that took place on the border of Rose Town and Seventh Street in Kingston that October.

Harvey and her father had escaped the ‘battle’ minutes earlier because they had hurried home after the People’s National Party (PNP) meeting they were attending ended abruptly. But the following morning they were horrified when they saw the telltale signs of blood all over the community.

The rich dark stains told their own horror stories; they mapped the spots where four people were hacked to death and more than 200 others injured, in what later became known as the ‘Battle of Rose Town’.

But Reverend Al Miller, pastor of Fellowship Tabernacle in Kingston, believes that this shedding of innocent blood has placed violent communities such as Rose Town under a curse that can only be broken by atonement or repentance.

Miller was speaking last Monday at the ‘battle site’ at a function organised by Hands Across Jamaica for Righteousness, called a day of prayer, repentance and atonement. Hands Across Jamaica joined forces with the residents as well as community and church groups to pray along the borders of West Kingston and South St Andrew and, in particularly, Rose Town.

Miller, who was asked to pray on behalf of the political parties, pointed to scriptures in Deuteronomy which said when innocent blood is shed atonement must be made for the blood of the innocent that is shed, otherwise, the curse will be upon that people and that land.

Miller told the gathering that all these communities were under the curse of the judgement of God because innocent blood was being constantly shed with no atonement or repentance being made.

“From 60 years ago blood-follow-blood, and I declare blood will continue to follow blood until authority comes and break the curse. that is why we are here this evening,” he said.

In praying on behalf of the political parties, he said they were responsible for having started the bloodletting, and allowing it to continue even now.

“Both sides are responsible,” Miller emphasised.

Prayers were also offered on behalf of the colonial masters, the church, the security forces, the fathers, and the youths.

For Harvey, who still can’t shake the memory of all that blood from her mind, prayer is her only comfort. She is grateful to be alive.

“I thank God that on the night of that terrible event I was one of those who wasn’t injured,” Harvey told the gathering.

Harvey recalled that she was at the political meeting, being held for the then PNP candidate Ken Hill at the corner of Duff Street, when a group of Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) supporters allegedly started throwing stones and bottles at those in attendance.

“Several times the meeting was attacked by stones and bottles, and we had to take cover,” she said.

“Eventually, we were told that people are coming to destroy us and so they dismissed the meeting and told us we all should take cover and go home as quickly as possible,” she said.

Harvey said she and her father immediately headed for their Whitfield Town home, and barely just got out of Rose Town before the chaos started.

“The next morning we heard all that had happened,” she said, as her voice trailed off.

“We came over here to see, and there was blood all over the place, between Central Road and here. And all these empty lands that you are looking at, this is where the people were killed and [the others] injured,” she said.

“This is not a fairytale, it is something real and we all are living in the result of what took place that night,” Harvey told the gathering.

Harvey’s story supports that of an “eyewitness” account published in a newspaper article on April 2, 1948.

Gladys Ellington recalled that the JLP was having a meeting in Jones Town, at Thompson and Asquith Streets, on the same night the PNP was holding a meeting in Rose Town, at Nathan and Duff Streets.

Ellington alleged that supporters from the JLP meeting stormed the PNP meeting with a barrage of bottles and stones and any other available missiles.

Some people were badly hurt, including a youth named Murdock, who was taken to another PNP meeting being held at North Street and Oxford Street in West Kingston, according to the newspaper report.

According to Ellington, the crowd at that meeting on seeing Murdock’s injuries, adjourned the meeting and regrouped in support of the comrades in Rose Town.

By this time, Ellington said, the JLP had ended their meeting and had turned up at the PNP meeting in Rose Town.

The PNP supporters from North Street, the report said, arrived at the scene about the same time as the JLP supporters, who were caught between the two groups of PNP supporters.

“A pitched battle began, which raged for the rest of the night until next morning. I myself had to seek refuge under a house, in company with another comrade, and there we stayed for four hours while the fighting raged,” Ellington was quoted as saying.

The next morning when the dust had settled, Ellington said, four people were dead and more than 200 wounded.

It is this bloodshed, which Hands Across Jamaica believes has attributed to the continuous violence in and around these communities over the years.

“This genesis of political war/violence, spiritually has put a stranglehold on the land in general, and inner cities/garrisons such as Rose Town in particular,” said Yvonne Coke, founder and executive chairman of Hands Across Jamaica.

In addition to this, she pointed out that Rose Town, as part of South St Andrew, falls in the police area four division which carries the highest homicide rate in the whole nation.

“To take back the nation, a spiritual battle needs to be fought for Rose Town and be won, for us to see community transformation,” she said.

Coke noted that given the recent call by Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller – and the concurrence by the Opposition Leader Bruce Golding – for strong prayers and fasting for this upcoming elections, the time was right to share an invitation from the Holy Spirit to her. She said the Holy Spirit wanted her to find a prayer band of 70 people who will seek victory for the nation.

“Rose Town is a significant plot of land to the affairs of the Kingdom of God and the nation of Jamaica, to the extent that I heard the Holy Spirit say, as ‘Rose Town goes, so goes the nation’,” she said.

She said it was at the ‘battle of Rose Town’ that the tree of unrighteousness sprung up from the seed of division, distrust and hatred.

“It was at this spot in Rose Town where the forces of darkness took a significant advance in enslaving us under the burden of political violence and the consequent effect seen in the crime and homicide rates today,” she said.

The group of Christians, who were also joined by some residents, donned white T-shirts bearing the Hands Across Jamaica for Righteousness logo, and begun a symbolic march around the community. The Tivoli Gardens Marching Band and Drill team led the way. They marched down Seventh Street, before making a left turn unto Collie Smith Drive towards the stadium, where the JLP meeting was held on that fateful night, and back to West Road in the vicinity of where the ‘battle’ started.

This was followed by a time of prayer and worship, led by Judy Mowatt and Lester Lewis and the Singing Rose.

The male residents were, however, visibly absent. Some peered down the road from behind a wall, but very few ventured near the gathering.

Nora Blake of Hands Across Jamaica said the event was “a success”.

“A lot of people have been saying to me that they really appreciate this thing because they never knew about the Battle of Rose Town and about how the division started between PNP and JLP, and it is like they are looking at it now and saying we don’t have to continue like this,” she said.

Blake said it is the aim of Hands Across Jamaica to memorialise certain things about Jamaica so that they will never be repeated.

She said they had wanted to get more people to attend last Monday so they could have joined hands across the whole corridor from the very spot where they had the Rose Town meeting 60 years ago, to the spot where they had the meeting at Asquith and Thompson Street.

“I would also have hoped and prayed to see more men, but I believe we had a good traction that we can continue to work through the community group to get the teaching across,” Blake added.