Dear Editor,

The current social ills of squatting has been clothed in the injustices of slavery, which ended in 1834.

At Emancipation, the formerly enslaved people moved out from the plantations to make their own land stakes. “According to historian Richard Hart, the ex-slaves were not only refused financial compensation but were denied access to a good land, forcing them to move to the hillsides and gully banks. Entrance to these communities was often via abandoned river courses.” (Land Reparation Now, Jamaica Observer, November 11, 2020)

Injustices with regard to land began occurring around 1840 when a law was passed which took land from many whose ownership gave them the right to vote as a means of controlling the election outcomes. It is these families, whose lands were reverted to the Crown, for whom we seek land reparation.

We need to abandon the cognitive dissonance of blaming slavery for our current ills. Rather, it is the tribal mentality that resides in the psyche of the two major political parties (Jamaica Labour Party [JLP] and People’s National Party[PNP]) that has been exploiting the miseries of the poor and landless through the creation of ghetto communities as a means to gain political power.

This is why the “Clifton demolition” should be a court case, in that, Jamaican laws require prior approval of housing plans at the local parish municipalities. Sadly, a great gridiron of ignorance exists amongst our people whose lack of knowledge is often exploited by politicians and fraudsters. It, therefore, means that the St Catherine Municipal Corporation ought to be sued along with the PNP and the current Andrew Holness-led Administration for allowing squatting in the first place. The Office of the Public Defender should explore this one in light of justice for the poor because the State has failed to protect them.

The Clifton demolition is one of the plethora of ills whose genesis is in the failure of local governance, resulting from the unconstitutional dismantling of the parish councils in the 1980s.

The only legacy of slavery is poor wages, modelled on the apprenticeship system between 1834 and 1838. It took 100 years, in 1938, to address this injustice.

Political tribalism over the past four decades resulted in both hyperinflation and low wages, thus reversing the struggles of 1938. Should we wait another 16 years (2038) to rise up against the economic injustices of low wages?

Government is said to be the largest employer of minimum wage earners. If they begin paying living wages, perhaps this will force the private sector to follow suit and workers will be able to purchase their own houses rather than squatting. We urgently need to decolonise labour.

Dudley C McLean II

Mandeville, Manchester

dm15094@gmail.com