In recent months, the morning dailies covered stories on controversies relating to the Paul Bogle monument. The representation by the artist may have lacked beauty in terms of grasping Bogle’s heroism, and by so doing obfuscated the sublime. It is clear that while the statue can be described in terms of conflict, it is important to have a contrast. The statues of Manley and Bustamante, in terms of appearance, are far from the inert feature of the Bogle monument. Let the conflict remain and let us build a contrast that is appropriate for the most important 1865 event. More important is that marbled wall at the monument in Stony Gut. Some of the wordings on that wall is most misleading and must be changed – there can be no compromise on this issue.

The 1965 to 1966 period represents a special moment in the history of the Paul Bogle-led 1865 uprising in Morant Bay. It may have been in 1965 that Ray Fremmer excavated the grounds of the Morant Bay Courthouse, exposing the skeletal remains of some of those who were executed and buried behind the building. It was a horrifying sight. Following this significant archaeological find, stories about Morant Bay began to spread around the parish. I entered high school – Morant Bay High – in 1966, and some time in my earliest years of high school one of the workers on the compound who identified himself as a member of the “tribe” of Bogle presented to Mr Stanlie Parkins, headmaster, a picture of Paul Bogle. Then the unveiling of the Bogle statue followed. I do not recall the themes and speakers, but I recall the grumblings of some people that “It nuh fayva Paul Bogle” and “Yuh nuh si seh dat deh man deh surrender”, among other concerns involving the warped idea of post-slavery black aesthetics. As a schoolboy, I too thought that there was a mood of surrender reflected in that monument. I was never looking for the real Paul Bogle but for a monument celebrating 1865. I too began to develop my own perceptions of a monument – one with Bogle and others with their guns and machetes in full flight – depicting the fighting in the same tradition of the other fighting heroes of dominant European nations in wars and conquest in their public art.

The problem is not an easy one to solve, because even worse is the inscription on a “marbled wall” at the Bogle monument in Stony Gut. The inscription says that Paul Bogle struggled for the “humble people of St Thomas”. This direct quote is a gross mis-interpretation of Bogle’s 1865 mission. Why did they not use a quote from Bogle’s 1865 Proclamation in that citation on the “marbled wall”? What is important here is that artists and writers can make the same error in their interpretation of historical events. What is clear is that many writers and artistes who are of European ancestry have great difficulty to see through “our eyes”. The Emancipation Park monument, the 1938 monument “Negro Aroused” are some anomalies, and so too are the interpretations of our experience by some of the writers and social theorists who advocated, for example, “pluralism” as the basis for “Out of many one people” post-independence thinking. Also, much about the capturing of history and events in Jamaica, struggles against domination and racial inferiority is hidden by the use of certain types of social theories as frameworks to record and interpret the history of struggles of the Jamaican people. In the case of the words on the monument, “for the humble people of St Thomas” , they must be changed because they are gross misrepresentations of the fact, especially when the facts are available. These are not “words as symbols” in the same way the statue is a symbol. “Humble people” and “black people” are not the same – even by simple logic.

This justification about Bogle as a “Christian soldier” is true in a way but also very misleading. It is misleading because the tradition of native Baptist leaders from George Lisle, Sam Sharpe, and Alexander Bedward, represented a special type of leadership far from traditional Christian soldiers. The native Baptist soldiers, contrary to the Christian soldiers, were associated with combative black prophetic spirituality. They fought with the word as well as the sword. Both Sharpe and Bogle did not spare the sword. Secondly, fighting to advance Christian morality in 1865 was not the same thing as fighting to advance a “black morality”, as with the case of Paul Bogle’s defence of black nationalism. If the thinking of the man and mission by the artist is contrary to the history, then the outcome of the monument may be misleading.

What is happening in St Thomas must be treated carefully. It is an important step for a mass-based revision of the people’s history. There was a sort of warped conception of beauty that was ingrained in the ex-slaves from centuries of white superiority – the thinking that blacks were at least nearer to monkeys than to human beings. So the idea of beauty is something black people need to grapple with. The notion of a “real Paul Bogle” has to be interpreted in terms of not “real” according to facial features but “real” in terms of representation of the will, the character and activities of that man during that time. So the critique in the beauty of the statue is not about the facial beauty but aesthetic, relating to the representation of the will and character of the man and people. Most important is the sublime – what inspiration is generated from a symbol.

According to one of the commentators, an appropriate statue is needed, one from which the energy generated is powerful enough to inspire the new generation of St Thomas’s children. The argument is worthwhile. It is about the representation of will in beauty and the radiating inspiration of the sublime. That national monument – the conflict – must be restored to its former position. What is needed is a contrast, that which will be reflective of the “will and representation of the man, the time and the place”. The1865 event was more than about Paul Bogle. Should we not have a monument with Bogle and a representation of the others? Again, this “great man” interpretation of history has failed to tell the story of the man, the time and the place.

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