Michael Manley and free speech
TODAY is the 85th anniversary of the birth of Michael Manley. The anniversary of his birth comes at a time when some view with concern the one-year ban meted out to the football coach of Jamaica College because he expressed himself after a semi-final football match. While the Inter-Secondary Schools Association has its code of ethics regarding schoolboy football, which includes the behaviour of coaches, the punishment seems very unfair and unduly harsh. It also appears to be anti-free speech.
Before I go further, congratulations to St George’s College on winning the Manning Cup this year as they did last year. Congratulations also to Jamaica College on winning the Walker Cup for the first time ever. I listened to Look at life on RJR last Sunday. The programme is sponsored by the denomination of Christian Brethren in Jamaica. They were magnanimous enough to congratulate St George’s College and perhaps strategically, Ruel Reid, who takes turns in hosting the programme, was not the host last Sunday. As some might know, Ruel Reid is the principal of Jamaica College.
One little mistake, though. It was said on Look at life that St George’s was the first school to win back-to-back Manning Cup Football. Not quite so: the first six winners of the competition in the teens of the 20th century was Jamaica College every time. That aside, I do not like what I am hearing and I am hereby calling for an investigation into schoolboy football so that the facts can be established once and for all. I have heard that there is a system in place for appeals against decisions, but it makes no sense trying because the appeals are simply ignored. Is this true?
Is it true that the JC team was the only one this season which had to play five matches in 13 days? Is it true that JC had the most matches in the gruelling 1 pm sun? If this is so, I would like some answers as to why. If this cannot be explained adequately, then the JC students will continue to feel that the school is being victimised. What about the behaviour of the referee at that match? Was it excellent? If there are satisfactory answers, then this will be cleared up. I do not think it is good for youngsters to grow up believing that it is OK to behave in this way as it is the way to get ahead.
And if there has not been fair play then they should be publicly assured that every effort will be made in the future to ensure that it does not happen again. If the coach has been banned for speaking his mind, then it raises certain “what if” questions. No student in any government-run school can be expelled or suspended at someone’s whim, as the education code provides for a process.
If the JC coach is treated like this for speaking his mind, what would happen to students without certain stipulations in the education code? Would they be expelled or dismissed at the whim of the same principals who voted to discipline the JC coach? But then we do seem to have a problem of abuse of authority in Jamaica. It is reminiscent of the old slave culture when everyone wanted to be the slave driver who cracked the whip rather than having the whip cracked at their backs.
The complaints of the JC football coach brings two things to mind. One is the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation strike of 1964 and the other is the School’s Science Exhibition of 1970. According to Michael Manley in his book, A voice at the workplace, the strike was caused because the workers had asked for a raise of pay and when it was not granted two workers had it put in the newscast. At the time the JBC was wholly owned by government and Edward Seaga was the minister of development and welfare under whose responsibility the JBC fell.
That was grossly unfair and was certainly an attack on free speech. The winner of the Science Exhibition in 1970 was St Andrew High School. Their exhibit was a Jamaica Defence Force helicopter and it was explained by soldiers at a time when there were no women soldiers in Jamaica. I was a prefect at JC then and in my view St Andrew would have been disqualified because the exhibit did not show any effort of St Andrew. Instead they won. I asked the then acting principal Ruel Taylor to protest and he simply said that sometimes one has to let things go.
As I grew older, I figured it out that Mr Taylor had not yet been confirmed as principal and the Science Exhibition judges were perhaps the same officials at the ministry who could impact on any decision regarding confirmation in the post. Anyone, including myself, would in the circumstances have acted the same way. But the decision to award St Andrew High the top prize in the Science Exhibition that year was not a good example for children.
Michael Manley certainly had his detractors while he tried to construct Democratic Socialism in the 1970s. But everyone had a right to criticise him, and criticise him they did. Manley accepted the right of the people to express themselves within the law. The principals need to follow this example.
