The recent incident at Calabar High School has been criticised as ugly and undisciplined behaviour. I have not heard the side of the students so I am unable to say whether it was also a protest, although nothing can excuse the form in which the incident took place. If it were indeed a protest, it was a bad way of going about it.

But not all protests are bad. Fifty years ago, in May 1969, we had a week-long protest at Jamaica College when the students boycotted the canteen. While I will not go into details today, I will only point out that the protest was justified.

Christians will agree that not all protests are bad, because they live out their lives not only for personal holiness, not only to set an example to others, but also as a protest against the ways of the world. With respect to the Protestant Reformation, there were, in fact, things to protest about. However, as a Roman Catholic, I disagree with the divisive split from the original church founded by Jesus Christ himself.

The Roman Catholic Church was banned in Jamaica from the time of the invasion of the English in 1655 and it continued until 1791. The lifting of the ban was as a result of a petition — or a protest if you will — by Roman Catholics in Jamaica. So in many respects the religious protests worked both ways.

God Himself liberated the oppressed Jews in Egypt who arrived in the Promised Land of Canaan after 40 years in the wilderness. And in much later centuries the slaves who rebelled against slavery were also justified in their actions.

In Jamaica, we have had a series of protests regarding slavery that makes up much of our history. Indeed, all seven national heroes of Jamaica were involved in some form of protest.

In the last two centuries many trade unions all over the world morphed into political movements, and later political parties, that protested by fighting for political independence and the right of every adult citizen to vote for his/her government. These were good protests.

In the 1960s the Black Power Movement emerged in the United States of America as a united movement after a century of protests against injustices done to African Americans. One can think of Frederick Douglass, Booker T Washington, and Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey, who were the leading forerunners in the struggle.

It is in this setting that the heatwave of those protests were transferred to Jamaica in the 1960s and became one common cause with Garveyites and Rastafarians who were peaceful protesters for the most part from at least the 1920s in the case of Garvey and the 1930s in the case of the Rastafarians.

The mayhem that took place during the [Walter] Rodney riots in 1968 was not caused by the protesters themselves but by the unemployed youth in the streets of downtown Kingston who saw this as an opportunity to vent their anger against “the system”.

The protests in the USA also found common cause with Jamaicans. With the nation’s youth being so inspired, it was not surprising that there was a student strike at Jamaica College 55 years ago in March 1964 calling on the then headmaster to choose between two jobs that he held.

It was also not surprising that in February 1969 the entire prefect body at Jamaica College resigned in protest over a decision made by the staff and that there was the canteen boycott of May 1969. And in September 1969 the students’ council at Jamaica College came into being — initiated by the proposals of the same student who led the boycott of the canteen.

And, by the way, all of those student protests were peaceful, although the leaders, who became household names in upper-class society, were blasted as rebels in the verandah talk of upper St Andrew. How does this compare with the recent incident at Calabar? I need to know more before I make any comparison.

Wink Martindale ends his 1957 Deck of Cards story by saying “And friends, this story is true. I know I was that soldier.” Similarly, I know the story of the student who led the 1969 canteen boycott and was instrumental in the establishment of the students’ council at Jamaica College because I was that student.

Ta-ta…

And this is how the curtain comes down on my columns at the Jamaica Observer after 21 years and two weeks of writing columns for this newspaper. By time you read this I should have received a letter to the effect.

I thank the Jamaica Observer for affording me the opportunity of writing columns for the last 21 of my nearly 31 years as a newspaper columnist. Were it not for the Jamaica Record, the Jamaica Herald and the Jamaica Observer I would never have been sought after to participate in programmes on radio and television over the last three decades.

I have not always met the very high standard set by this newspaper for clear and focused columns. There have been times when I have tried to juxtapose different issues and have not always been successful in the experiment. I am, however, grateful for the high standards of the Jamaica Observer because it has helped in my on-the- job training, which is always useful.

So I leave knowing that in 21 years I did my best and I have nothing to be ashamed of. I thank my readers who have encouraged me over the years. These include successive governors general, prime ministers, and ministers of government on both sides of the political fence, and the senior clergy of many church denominations. Thanks to all my regular readers for overlooking my faults at times.

And I am happy for my detractors, who should be relieved that they will no longer see my columns here. But, who knows, I might appear elsewhere in the media in the future. Ta-ta for now!

Michael Burke is a research consultant, historian and current affairs analyst. Send comments to the Observer or ekrubm765@yahoo.com.

Editor’s note: The Jamaica Observer thanks columnist Michael Burke for his years of contribution to the nationa dialogue via our pages.