Dear Editor,

The present land squatting and subsequent demolition dispute in the Cooper’s Pen community of Trelawny must be carefully examined and critically assessed through the historical lenses of Jamaica’s plantation and colonial past.

Indeed, during the 183 years of sugar cane plantation slavery in the British Caribbean islands, all land was owned by slave masters, most of whom lived in Britain as absentee landowners. Their West African slaves were deemed as chattel, and by extension, their property. They were added in their ledger as stocks and assets to support the cruel system of capitalism and slavery.

Paradoxically, through the famous Somerset v Stewart case of 1772, Chief Justice Lord Mansfield, in his judgement, made it a criminal offence for slavery to be practised on English soil.

The Slavery Abolition Act, 1833 and the Slave Compensation Act, 1837 made clear provisions in law for all slave owners to be financially compensated. The planters argued that West African slaves were their lawful property and investment and the end of slavery would cause many of them to become bankrupt. As a result, £20 million was given to them as compensation.

Meanwhile, the so-called apprenticeship system between 1834 and 1838 had nothing to do with training enslaved West Africans for freedom. Instead, it was used by planters to extract the last drops of negro blood, sweat, and tears from their human chattel investments.

There were no clauses in the Emancipation Act which took into account the real social and economic welfare of the soon-to-be ex-slaves, nor did the Act make any clear references to the impending antagonist landownership dynamics which developed between the haves and the haves-nots soon after 1838.

Interestingly, landownership was seen by the planter class in slave colonies, including Jamaica, as very important to maintaining political, economic, and social control over the black masses after full freedom in 1838. As such, many generations of land barons continue to own hundreds of acres of land in Jamaica, to this day.

After the end of slavery, most of the land in Jamaica was either owned by the families of former sugar cane plantation owners or the colonial government. The remaining small plots of land were free village peasant farmlands, which were bought and given to ex-slaves by Baptist missionaries; land owned by indentured East Indians and Chinese labourers; and land owned by Maroons.

Another significant point is that in the mid-19th century majority of the inhabitants had no ownership of a little piece of this rock they called Jamaica. In 1865, the antagonist political power dynamics which existed between the ruling class landowners and the landless masses spilled over in St Thomas. This resulted in the Morant Bay Rebellion.

Ironically, like the present Cooper’s Pen situation, the colonial powers, in 1865, displayed callous indifference towards the suffering masses of homeless black Jamaicans. In fact, Paul Bogle and George William Gordon were brutally murdered for standing up for their landless brothers and sisters and against the State in that eastern parish.

It is indeed self-evident that the nature and characteristics of the plantation economic system, which forms the backbone of Caribbean societies, almost make it impossible for the majority of the population to be landowners.

The late Prime Minister Michael Manley understood this landless working class-elite dynamics, so he founded the National Housing Trust (NHT) in 1976. It is my opinion, however, that this major national institution lost its way a long time ago.

It is clear the NHT has not been meaningfully responding to the housing needs and crisis of ordinary working-class Jamaicans. Over the years, it seems to have become either a budget-deficit automated teller machine (ATM) for past and present governments or nothing more than an organisation that exists to feather the financial nest of bourgeois landowners, many of whom are in the business of making large profits by constructing expensive houses to sell back to this State agency. Manley must be turning in his grave right now.

Homeownership is undoubtedly a real problem in Jamaica; and the passage of Hurricane Melissa has made it even worse. Indeed, it has been 161 years since the Morant Bay Rebellion and 88 years since the 1938 Labour Riots. Both unrests are significant, and it was the poor and landless masses of this country who were rebelling to improve their social and economic status.

Moreover, if [“the] law is not a shackle…”, as was declared by former Prime Minister PJ Patterson some years ago, why then don’t we try to fix this persistent problem once and for all with meaningful constitutional reforms? Surely, any politically independent Caribbean island that claims openly it is on a progressive path to full decolonisation must recognise that access to landownership by ordinary working class people must be central to this process.

After all, if the land was the main agent by which our people were brutally enslaved, then their social and economic liberation must come through ownership of this asset, because only then will they experience the fruits of true decolonisation.

Norman “Teacher” Collins

St Andrew

normandellacollins@yahoo.com