TWO weeks ago, my column was entitled ‘Milestones in 2015’. There are even more milestones this year. It will be 75 years since the death of Marcus Garvey on June 10. February 6 will be the 70th anniversary of the birth of Bob Marley. This Saturday, January 24, marks 50 years since the death of Sir Winston Churchill.

Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born on August 17, 1887, and lived until June 10, 1940. Garvey established the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) to uplift black people, especially in business and awareness about themselves. His Black Star Line shipping boat project failed, but that did not lessen his impact.

Garvey preached Africa for Africans at home and abroad. He established co-operative businesses among black people and taught African history nearly every time he spoke. One of the things that Marcus Garvey said was: “We must emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because while others can free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind”. In later years, Bob Marley would put these words to song.

Garvey’s influence was felt around the world. He founded the People’s Political Party (PPP) and ran for the legislature in 1929. Because the only voters then were the taxpayers and land barons who were bitterly opposed to Garvey’s message, the PPP lost in every seat.

One result of the ferment brewing at the time was the founding of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union from the Jamaican branch of the UNIA. The other was the formation of the People’s National Party that fought for self-government and whose first president was Norman Manley.

As Michael Manley put it, while Garvey did not achieve many of his goals he certainly sowed seeds.

Robert Nesta Marley helped to put Jamaica on the map and was known to the world as Bob Marley. His reggae music was a hit throughout the world, and all who had previously not heard of Jamaica heard of our country through the music of Bob Marley. Not only did he magnify Garvey’s words but also those of Emperor Haile Selassie. ‘Until the world’s philosophy that holds one race superior and another inferior, is finally and permanently discredited, and abandoned; until the colour of a man’s skin is no more significant than the colour of his eyes, there will not be lasting peace’.

Of course, Marley was more dramatic. Instead of singing ‘there will be no lasting peace, Marley sang “everywhere is war, war in the east, war in the west”, etc.

As a nation that depends so much on tourism, we are yet to know the value of Marley in bringing tourists to our shores, both in his lifetime of only 36 years and in the 34 years so far since his death.

Sir Winston Churchill was the wartime prime minister of England during the Second World War. Adolph Hitler wanted to conquer the whole of Europe and perhaps the rest of the world. Churchill encouraged his troops sometimes with very few words. On one occasion Churchill addressed a parade of gunners by uttering nothing more than saying three times “Never give up”.

Winston Churchill was actually a very conservative politician who initially opposed all attempts of any colony to achieve political independence.

Mahatma Gandhi was the forerunner of many of the independence movements throughout the world in the 20th century. He fought for India’s independence. Gandhi was insulted by Churchill, who called him a half-naked kafir. Churchill said that he “did not become His Majesty’s (George VI) first minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire”.

Yet, it was the Second World War that eventually caused Britain to shed more than 90 per cent of its empire by granting political independence to many of the colonies. Yes, Britain won the war, just as Muhammad Ali in later years would win most of his fights. But having won the war, there was a cost to the physical structure of Britain and also to the country’s financial resources, just as many attribute Muhammad Ali’s ailments to the punches he received in boxing matches, although he won most of them.

In other words, the colonies became an economic burden, which was the real reason for political independence — not the work of the independence champions in the former colonies. All the best efforts of Norman Manley, for example, might have come to naught were it not for the Second World War.

The late Richard Hart wrote that initially America’s war was with Japan, which had bombed Pearl Harbour. England sought the help of the USA, which had self-government for the colonies as one of their conditions for entering the war.

They were tired of attempting to trade with British colonies to have to go through the red tape of approval from the British Government. That was one offshoot of the war.

Most of the British soldiers were injured although Britain won the war. To rebuild England they invited colonists from the Empire, especially Jamaica. And these colonists went without hindrance to England to live between 1948 and 1961.

While the economic problems of Jamaica might have been solved with some of the population going to England, there was an onset of social problems.

For example, of all the students who gave real trouble at Jamaica College, as indeed all high schools in the 1960s when I was a student there, more than half of them had been left behind by their parents who had gone abroad to make life better. They were eagerly waiting for their parents to send for them.

The war brought about the start of manufactured items in Jamaica. Things that simply could not be imported because of the war caused many Jamaicans to “tun hand mek fashion”.

The late Madame Rose Leon was the first person to put the ‘Made in Jamaica’ label on manufactured products. Hair oils and hair straighteners could not be accessed during the war, so she acquired certain formulas and made her own. To me, though, it was a sad sign of a lack of self-awareness that the first things to be manufactured in Jamaica were items to straighten hair so that women could ape the Europeans. But that was the origin of manufactured goods in Jamaica.

ekrubm765@yahoo.com