Controversy has dogged the statue of National Hero Marcus Mosiah Garvey from the moment it was raised and installed on the campus of The University of the West Indies, Mona.

This controversy has had distinct elements to it, ranging from “wrong resemblance” to “wrong location”. But from the time of the conceptualisation of the idea for the Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey’s statue to be placed on the UWI campus to its installation, removal and reinstallation, the strong differences in the tide of opinions of a multiplicity of various groupings within the society, has risen to a crescendo, resulting in deliberate damage to the Garvey monument.

Who or what is responsible for the damage? Given the knowledge of some of us regarding the course of our history and the role of Garvey, the damage to the National Hero’s statue could be from none of the seemingly obvious directions. But one thing is certain — an opportunity presented itself for someone or some group to seize and to act destructively. Whatever may have been Marcus Mosiah Garvey’s warts, there is no doubt that the causes he championed on behalf of the black people particularly, and for all people generally, are timeless.

He stood against injustice, racism, oppression of the underprivileged — the lost, the least and the ‘leftouts’. In his efforts he did not only just talk, but set up organisations and institutions to give effect to the manifestation of his message and his mission.

He identified inferiority complex in the black underclass as one of the intangible tools of their enslavement, perhaps more pernicious than their physical enslavement. Mental liberation for black people was one of Garvey’s strategic goals without which, in his view, nothing else in his agenda would prevail. Having returned through deportation from the United States of America to Jamaica in 1927, Marcus Mosiah Garvey launched his People’s Progressive Party (PPP) in 1929. The party manifesto was prescriptive as it was inventive … creative as it was assertive. And even though by 1935 the PPP ceased to exist in structural reality, its ideas have unquestionably played a catalytic role in fashioning the political agenda of modern Jamaica. For indeed the issues of poverty, landlessness, inequality and injustice, bigotry on the part of some members of the economic ruling class, crime and violence are still with us in this generation. Practically, when the People’s Political Party collapsed back in the 1930s many of the leaders, including members of the famous four H’s (Hart, Hill brothers and Henry) joined with Florizel Glasspole and Noel Nethersole to form an organisation called the National Reform Association (NRA) the immediate forerunner to the People’s National Party (PNP).

Sir Alexander Bustamante was also a member of that group and in 1938 when the NRA transitioned to the People’s National Party with Norman Manley as leader, Bustamante stood by his side on the platform of the launch of the PNP at the Ward Theatre in 1938 in Kingston, Jamaica.

Comrade Alexander Bustamante remained a PNP member until he broke away to form his own political party — the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), five years later in 1943. The Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU) like the PNP, was formed in 1938 and the manifesto of the union was written by solicitor and academician extraordinaire, Richard Hart, on the instruction of the PNP leader Norman Washington Manley. And so the BITU… (not the NWU, formed 14 years later in 1952) was the first union of the PNP.

The content of the PNP manifesto roll-out was by and large a replica of Marcus Garvey’s People’s Political Party manifesto. Issues such as land reform, legal protection for trade unions and workers’ rights, quality public education, community development, institutionalising of political parties, and the pursuit of a programme of democratic nationalism, among others, were headlined and highlighted. These are some of the same issues with which we grapple today.

But as in life so in death, our National Hero Marcus Mosiah Garvey remained controversial. He had his detractors for sure in the white world and yet not everyone… just like in the days of slavery in Jamaica when several white planters gave material and logistical support to their slaves to fight for their freedom, and had their female slaves become mothers of their children.

Worthy of note also were those two white sailors who abandoned the British Navy ships HMS Sparrowhawk and the HMS Racehorse, anchored in the Mobay Harbour during the Sam Sharpe Rebellion of 1831-32, joined the rebel slaves and begun firing at their mates… still in their uniform.

Most of the slaves’ weapons and ammunition, for the years of rebellion particularly under British slavery, were sold to them by white Jewish merchants and smugglers, most of Sephardic strain, the cargoes arriving in western Jamaica from South and Central America at the Old Dutch Wharf near the community of Whitehouse in Westmoreland. Such were the elements of racial cooperation, perhaps sometimes motivated by enlightened self-interest or alternatively driven by a moral imperative to do what is right and just, but which have not been receiving sufficient attention in discussions relative to our historical journey as peoples from disparate geographical and racial origins who have dynamically converged and coalesced in the same space… Jamaica.

Our Jamaican history is much more than a story about a perennial struggle of slavemaster versus slaves for freedom. It is also about whites who supported Garvey, earlier supported the abolition of slavery (eg Quakers)… and much more. And in all of this it appeared that Garvey was never naïve nor totally lacking in discernment in his time. But Garvey’s detractors are also to be found among, one might not have thought, the least likely location in the Jamaica: the Rastafarian community.

Not every member of that community share the same disquieting view about Marcus, however, but the number is not insignificant. The Garvey detractors within that community, in outlining their issues with Garvey, listed three major areas which gave them cause to pause: A feeling that Marcus Mosiah Garvey in his international campaign, occasioning his many speeches, did not and had not given sufficient visibility and primacy of place to Emperor Haile Selassie as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. Those brethren find it unsettling and disturbing that Garvey, in the heat of the struggle for black liberation, had secret meetings with the head of the Klu Klux Klan in the United States of America and subsequently some things began to happen. But most of all, the brethren wanted full disclosure of what transpired during those secret meetings with the symbol of the arch enemy of black people throughout the world… the KKK.

I must confess that I am extremely curious myself. Then regarding the issue of the Back to Africa movement, many questions were being asked. The KKK wanted black people living in America to get out of their country and to go back to Africa. And some people openly asked … was that what the meeting between Garvey and KKK leaders all about? They also wanted to know, given the size of the continent of Africa — 50 states with different languages and sub-languages and other cultural diversities and idiosyncrasies — how much work needed to be done before the mass exodus of ‘Back to Africa’ began, and whether the purchase of ships from the Greeks was not a bit premature as more time was definitely needed for planning, coordinating and implementing such a humongous undertaking.

On a recent radio discussion programme with Stephen Golding on Love 101 FM, he acknowledged that sections of the Rastafarian community are less than enthusiastic about National Hero Marcus Mosiah Garvey. Golding’s response was that it was not only sections of Rastafari who had misgivings, but other people as well. I agree. One thing that is certain, despite his flaws and faults, is the National Hero’s positive impact on our lives and millions of others has been encouraging and enlightening and I, like many others, accept him with all his imperfections and alleged missteps.

And I do so without equivocation or any mental reservation, whatsoever. I salute him. And clearly nobody told him that the road would be easy.

Our generation has elevated him to the highest honour that this nation can offer to its citizens, that of national hero.

Brother Marcus, you have played your part, and then depart. But we will meet you in the morning. Your monument, most importantly, is in our hearts, and we thank you very uch. Intended or unintended ….. multiracial Jamaica has found accommodation for people of every ethnicity and, despite some residual negatives that persist, we are still wonderfully mixed up, strongly wrapped up, decisively tangled up, diffused, sublimated, assimilated and integrated into a rainbow of a colourful — physically and psychologically — and excitingly rich tapestry of a most interesting set of people. But it is a work still in progress even as we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow. We remain a practical and commonsensical people one of our greatest assets, indeed. And so we will survive, I believe.