Sixty per cent of Jamaicans say we would be better off if we still had the Queen, according to a Gleaner poll. I believe the large percentage which holds the opinion that we would be better off with the Queen is really a symptom of ignorance. Up to 90 per cent of Jamaica’s physical development was attained since Independence in 1962.

Some say that the development of Jamaica’s infrastructure would have happened anyway, if Jamaica had remained a colony of England because British colonies like Grand Cayman and Bermuda have surpassed Jamaica.

But Britain is able to finance those colonies to that extent because they shed most of their colonies by granting them Independence.

It is like a couple having 10 children and seven are now working adults who have their own independent income. The couple would now be able to spend more money on the remaining three children than they spent on the seven older ones in their childhood years.

Does Britain treat all of its colonies equally? Isn’t it a matter of who they consider to be priority for their own reasons? Does Montserratt get the same treatment as Grand Cayman? Who is to say that Jamaica would be a priority colony to Britain today just because Jamaica was the number one priority colony of Britain in the days when sugar was “king”? What was the real reason Jamaica gained political independence? Was it because of the efforts of our national heroes or because the colonies had become a burden after World War Two when England needed to be rebuilt?

The fact that Britain and her allies won the war does not mean that Britain was unscathed. On the contrary, England was sufficiently ravaged that they solicited colonists to work there. This is why so many Jamaicans left their homes between 1948 and 1961 on the MV Empire Windrush to England. Indeed, Jamaica received Independence “on a silver platter” instead of fighting for it as the United States of America did. And this explains the difference in attitude between Jamaicans and Americans to Independence.

Jamaica was granted Universal Adult Suffrage in 1944 which was before the war ended in 1945. In the Sunday Gleaner of January 1, 1995, Richard Hart wrote that it was a condition of the USA entering the war on the side of Britain and its allies, including the Soviet Union. The USA would have simply fought Japan after the Pearl Harbour attack and would have kept out of the much bigger war between England and Germany. But the USA, according to Hart, was sick and tired of the “red-tape” of having to get permission from England to trade with a colony as Jamaica then was.

Jamaica is not Israel where history has been priority going back to ancient times, as seen in the Book of Exodus. It was at Meribah and Massah (Exodus 16:3) that the Jews asked Moses why had they been taken to that barren desert to die of hunger and thirst and that they were better off as slaves under Pharaoh in Egypt. In Psalm 95:8 we read, “Harden not your hearts as at Meribah as on that day at Massah in the desert, your ancestors tested me though they had seen my works.”

In the annual Jewish Passover they recall the history from slavery to freedom with different types of food representing important points of Jewish history. In 1989, some Jews who are Israeli citizens, but were working on contract in Jamaica, asked me about the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865. They told me that because George William Gordon’s father was a Jew, they learned in school about him because he died for Jamaica. That is how serious the Jews (in Israel at any rate) take their own history.

But history is not a priority in most Jamaican schools. The private sector big-wigs want employees with business subjects, so for later employment students at the secondary and tertiary levels feel obliged to do those subjects at the expense of learning history. “The market for history is not strong” as one extension school principal said to me.

In his Sunday Gleaner column of July 3, Martin Henry wrote about the oath of allegiance but seems to have forgotten that the oath was changed in 2002. The prime minister, ministers of government and members of parliament no longer swear allegiance to the Queen as of October 2002, but to the people of Jamaica.

Henry asked if Jamaica would be better off economically as a republic. While Jamaica would not be better off economically just by becoming a republic, psychologically we would break the umbilical cord with the Queen and collectively begin to determine our own future. I wrote last year that we should have an octave of “emancipendence” (or eight days of prayer), between July 31 and August 7 to commemorate Emancipation and Independence. I had my own private octave last year and I hope others will join me this year. It might help to combat the utterances that are really symptoms of ignorance.

ekrubm765@yahoo.com