Dear Editor,

The jurisdiction of Morant Bay, the city with the parish council, tax office, and court has shifted. Are there any legal implications?

Should we understand that the capital is relocated in western St Thomas?

Can a town be expanded across its constituency border? The court, the parish council, and the tax office are usually the features that define the capital.

Will the historical Paul Bogle Square remained neglected, or will there be the re-installing of the statue and the development of the historical courthouse as the central Historical and Archival Society of St Thomas?

Will we see the neglect of agriculture and the sugar cane and banana lands cut up and sold to friendly, rapacious land developers? Up to the 1940s there were four or five ports in Morant Bay exporting processed cane products and also banana. At the same time, the major port at Bowden was in full swing.

History shows us that factories are the real transformative forces in any society. This manifested in St Thomas from the steel factory at Church Corner, in the area of the old Frank George garage, to the sugar factories. And, in later history, no one can deny the transformative role of the GoodYear tyre factory.

Robert Lightbourne built factories in Yallahs and surrounding areas. The Yallahs Valley Land Authority was a force in the development of crops in western St Thomas.

Service has its place, but it cannot transform and provide real jobs beyond minimum wage.

This town centre is a feature of globalisation known as urbanisation. It has to do with proximity, using agricultural lands to build service centres and spaces for land developers — the Trojan horse gift all over.

Houses and big buildings are not signs of development. We are yet to see plans for development from all the politicians from the parish. Lightbourne must be turning in his grave.

Louis E A Moyston

thearchives01@yahoo.com