politicians-from-jamaica

"[asked about similarities between a character in The Star-Apple Kingdom and Michael Manley] DW: I think what I was concerned about was that Michael does have a profound love of his country, Jamaica, and he's a fighter, and I wanted to catch the poise of anguish that comes from wishing for a kind of order that can only perhaps be imposed by a kind of discipline, 'heavy manners' if you want."

"Where political sovereignty has been conceded but economic power remains untouched, equality remains a myth, social justice proves unattainable and even freedom becomes an ambiguous phenomenon."

"If we look about us we see the lengthening shadows of a thousand small corruptions creeping across the landscape of our nation. This is monstrous, for it is not the evening of our history; it is the morning and the shadows should be forming the other way."

"We believe that the idea of equality is the only enduring principle by which mankind may be guided in the conduct of national and international affairs."

"Any realistic vision of change must be based on the notion of empowerment of people."

"The globalisation of the world economy has not led to a more equitable distribution of wealth but is facilitating its further concentration."

"All organized societies depend on a power system; and politics is the business of power, its acquisition and its use. Observation of history suggests that there have been three approaches to politics and, therefore, three approaches to the use of power. There are men, perhaps the majority, who see power as something to be acquired for its own sake. Then there are those who see power as something to be used for purposes of minor adjustments in the society. Finally, there are the idealists who seek to arrange fundamental change. (from Introduction)"

"The more that I have thought about the morality of politics, the more there has emerged for me a single touchstone of right and wrong; and the touchstone is to be found in the notion of equality...The more I have thought, therefore, about social organization, the more I have concluded that here is only one supreme, moral imperative that cannot be affected by time, by circumstance, by the seasons, by man's moods or intellectual distractions, by the injunctions of philosophers or the sermons of pastors; and it is the notion that social organization exists to serve everybody or it has no moral foundation. (Introduction)"

"In the early post-colonial phase of a developing country, only political movements devoted to the politics of change have relevance. An analysis of the legacies of colonialism suggests a degree of social debilitation together with economic and social malformations so grave as to make the politics of tinkering within the status quo, irrelevant to our condition. (1: The Setting for Change)"

"As Hegel divined philosophically, and as every physicist since Newton knows as a matter of course, history is the story of action and reaction. (4: Self-Reliance and the Problem of Attitudes)"

"Government today must not only reflect the politics which have been described as the art of the possible. It must reflect also the pursuit of the ‘impossible’, so that our own capacity may be confirmed to ourselves and self-doubt banished. (4: Self-Reliance and the Problem of Attitudes)"

"Self-reliance refers to our capacity to accept responsibility for our own development within the social grouping; while social responsibility implies our awareness that our development must take place in the context of a general respect for the interests of others in the group. So too, with nations. (4: Self-Reliance and the Problem of Attitudes)"

"At the international level, colonialism is an extension of the slave-master relationship as between classes within a society to the larger scale of the relationships between entire peoples and nations. I suggest, therefore, that the consequences of the relationship as between nations locked in the colonial equation is markedly similar to those that arise amongst people locked in the slave equation. Here, of course, one has used slavery as an example only. It must be remembered that the master-servant, superior-inferior relationship has taken many forms in history. European feudalism, czarist despotism, Latin American military dictatorships operating at the behest of an oligarchy, South African apartheid and Dixiecrat racism are all variants of a common theme. Similarly, colonialism in the sense of the rule of one people by another is an extreme form of a generalized historical phenomenon in which societies, for one reason or another, are externally dominated. Thus, one must make distinctions within a common category to understand history. (4: Self-Reliance and the Problem of Attitudes)"

"your first duty is to challenge the chain that ties tomorrow's possibilities to yesterday's conclusions. The task is to break the chain even at the price of shocking the society. Indeed, it is desirable that one should shock the society, because only by the act of shocking are you likely to generate a form of collective introspection through which people will begin to re-examine the basic workings of their own unconscious assumptions. (from Introduction)"

"when we talk of an open foreign policy we are seeking to establish the fact that the entire world is the stage upon which a country, however small, pursues this perception of self-interest. Nor does one have to conclude that self-interest is either an immoral or an amoral phenomenon. National self-interest for example, leads no wise man into war. War has often been the resort of fools like Mussolini or knaves like Hitler. They shared a common fate. And even successful wars of aggression set in train forces that undo the temporary advantage that they may confer. The only wars that are morally justified in history are those dedicated to national liberation where it is clear that no other method can succeed. Therefore a policy of enlightened self-interest will commend to any intelligently-led nation the conclusion that peace is in every man's interest in the end. Hence every country, and Third World countries even more so, has a tremendous investment in the success of the United Nations. But even as a supporter of the United Nations, it is also important that our foreign policy reflect a clear adherence to principle and the expression of those principles in the councils of the United Nations...The commitment must be to principle but tempered with a cautious recognition that many of the issues of international politics bristle with difficulty. In fact, it is the very complexity of these problems and the tensions that they create in the world that makes it so imperative that the United Nations itself survive and increase in influence and strength in the world. Hence a foreign policy must include a concern for everything that affects peace in the world which in turn implies a constant vigilance about international relations generally. (3: Foreign Policy)"

"Art is the mirror through which a society perceives itself; and it is a mirror that must be held up to young societies constantly if they are to achieve a sense of their separate identity in the world. Clearly, therefore, the development of the latent artistic talent of a society is important to its growth and critical to the process of psychological transformation with which we are concerned. (4: Education)"

"Class divisions and social justice are incompatible. Hence, if the latter is to be achieved the former must yield. However, as with all human behaviour patterns, class attitudes are deeply entrenched. The difficulty of the task leads many political leaders of idealistic commitment to shrink from the remedies that are required because these are drastic. It is clear that the process of transformation from a stratified to a classless society must begin with the educational process. (4: Education)"

"If people are to acquire self-confidence and rediscover the cultural continuity to which they are heirs, the mask of obscurity and shame must be ripped from the face of our African heritage. Once again, this will disturb the establishment, but it is a pre-condition of national maturity. Cultural exchanges between the Caribbean and Africa and the introduction of a stream of basic teaching about African history must take their place alongside the flow of European artists who are understandably encouraged by the British Council and similar metropolitan bodies. If we are to know ourselves, we should know at least as much about the Ashanti wars as about the Wars of the Roses. If we do not know ourselves, we cannot hope to acquire the self-confidence upon which the spirit of self-reliance must rest. (4: Education)"

"If the moral purpose of this mission is to remain intact, it must be approached in humility and supported by prayer. Hegel once remarked that 'history is the march of God in the world'. Ours, then, is the task to see that the road tends ever towards justice. (6: First Directions)"

"Missing from the book was an analysis of imperialism, capitalism, socialism and tribalism within the Jamaican political system. Each of these represent an important element in the understanding of both international and national politics. The extent to which they were incompletely recognised or understood was to have a significant bearing on events between 1973 and 1980."

"In a macabre way, debt, drugs and development all have a bearing upon each other. All three are incapable of being defeated in the case of drugs; of solution in the case of debt; or of progress in the case of development, if pursued in a purely national context."

"time is not on the side of a country like Jamaica. The world economy is evolving in both technical and structural terms at an incredible pace. Our ability to maintain and if possible increase our position within that framework will be largely determined by our success in education. The commitment has been made to treat education as the central social priority of the 1990s. The old sterile debate about whether education is a right or a privilege has long since been overtaken by a new reality. The training of the young is the critical investment in a nation's future and its capacity to provide a better life for its people. The attempt is now being made to persuade an entire nation to understand this fact and to commit the resources necessary to do the job."

"…all sorts of things that don’t even look political got mixed up with the 1970s and the new politics. So, that was how, when I came here, how I viewed Mr. Manley and Woodside. Anything that was out of the current order then was now possible. As if Mr. Manley had shattered some sort of glass globe and people could go inside and take what ideas they felt like having. It was really quite revolutionary, if unstructured."

"the man...was a great guy, a formidable person!...As a matter of fact, I think that in law, Manley is much more interesting than in politics. Because as you know he was a great lawyer and a man of really brilliant mind."

"Democracy means far more than the right to vote every five years. It means the right to participate in every aspect of national and community life. The people must believe that they can take part."

"To understand today’s politics one must always begin with yesterday’s economics."

"Democracy should be as much a system of participation as a method of representation."

"Just as surely history is the product of those forces which seek to dominate in the name of glory or profit, equally is history the product of the forces of those who rebel.”"

"In a plural world, it is the right to self-determination, and not its outcome, which is the inalienable right of every man. And it is wherever the absolute right to self-determination is denied that peace is most at risk."

"There has been a number of concerns expressed about the loss of productivity that this measure (COVID-19 curfew hours) is having. We need to get back to normal but, of course, to do so safely. This is not to say that we are abandoning work from home totally; it will be an option but not a requirement."

"Hungry men have no respect for law, authority or human life."

"We were the first Fascists, when we had 100,000 disciplined men, and were training children, Mussolini was still an unknown. Mussolini copied our Fascism."

"We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is your only ruler, sovereign. The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind, because man is related to man under all circumstances for good or for ill."

"If you have no confidence in self you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence you have won even before you have started."

"The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities' League is a social, friendly, humanitarian, charitable, educational, institutional, constructive, and expansive society and is founded by persons, desiring to the utmost, to work for the general up lift of the Negro peoples of the world. And the members pledge themselves to do all in their power to conserve the rights of their noble race and to respect the rights of all mankind believing always in the Brotherhood of Man and the Fatherhood of God. The motto of the organization is: One God! One Aim! One Destiny! Therefore, let justice be done to all man kind, realizing that if the strong oppresses the weak confusion and discontent will ever mark the path of man, but with love, faith and charity toward all the reign of peace and plenty will be heralded into the world and the generations of men shall be called Blessed."

"When the facts of history are written Haile Selassie of Abyssinia will go down as a great coward who ran away from his country to save his skin and left the millions of his countrymen to struggle through a terrible war that he brought upon them because of his political ignorance and his racial disloyalty."

"When the war started in Abyssinia all Negro nationalists looked with hope to Haile Selassie. They spoke for him, they prayed for him, they sung for him, they did everything to hold up his hands, as Aaron did for Moses; but whilst the Negro peoples of the world were praying for the success of Abyssinia this little Emperor was undermining the fabric of his own kingdom by playing the fool with white men, having them advising him[,] having them telling him what to do, how to surrender, how to call off the successful thrusts of his [Race] against the Italian invaders. Yes, they were telling him how to prepare his flight, and like an imbecilic child he followed every advice and then ultimately ran away from his country to England, leaving his people to be massacred by the Italians, and leaving the serious white world to laugh at every Negro and repeat the charge and snare - "he is incompetent," "we told you so." Indeed Haile Selassie has proved the incompetence of the Negro for political authority, but thank God there are Negroes who realise that Haile Selassie did not represent the truest qualities of the Negro race. How could he, when he wanted to play white? How could he, when he surrounded himself with white influence? How could he, when in a modern world, and in a progressive civilization, he preferred a slave State of black men than a free democratic country where the black citizens could rise to the same opportunities as white citizens in their democracies?"

"I read "Up From Slavery," by Booker T. Washington, and then my doom--if I may so call it--of being a race leader dawned upon me in London after I had traveled through almost half of Europe."

"I asked, "Where is the black man's Government?" "Where is his King and his kingdom?" "Where is his President, his country, and his ambassador, his army, his navy, his men of big affairs?" I could not find them, and then I declared, "I will help to make them.""

"A Race without the knowledge of its history is like a tree without roots."

"In the early 1950s-the Garvey movement-I went to Harlem and saw Black Ethiopia. These were my people and they didn't have accents, but they were Ethiopians. I mean, they didn't have African accents. Those that I listened to spoke just like everybody else and that broadened my light a great deal, my own understanding of our oneness... it must be remembered that in Garvey's heyday, there were not that many West Indians anywhere in the United States. His existence was used as a focal point for the West Indian community and they were able to stay together, but the Black American, without his charisma and his presence, went on into other things. But the tales of the Black American who didn't want to be connected with Africa can be recounted as the West Indians who didn't want to be connected either, who would say, 'I'm a British citizen'... The self loathing which is always part of oppression had its way with all of us."

"Marcus ... maintained forcibly that although the Afro-American people were legally "free" as a people, something of the slave mentality was still characteristic of them. Mentally they were still in chains on account of the crippling effect of an inferiority complex. Somehow the sunlight must be allowed to flood the dark corners of their minds, so that they could be truly free and truly men, confident of holding their own with men of other races."

"(What direction do you see the movement in the U.S. taking at this time?) I think it has become less domestic and more international. Marcus Garvey tried to articulate, after all, quite a long time ago, and even Frederick Douglass, that the situation of the black American slave was tied to the situation of the slaves all over the world."

"Marcus Garvey believed that blacks should return to Africa and build up and accept Africa as their home. And he led a movement, here, in the United States, and he got caught up in a lot of scandal, and, eventually, it collapsed, and that was that...I read everything I could about Marcus Garvey, and my father was such an ardent Garveyite that he would talk about him all the time."

"there arose early in this decade the case of Marcus Garvey. I heard of him first when I was in Jamaica in 1915 when he sent a letter "presenting his compliments" and giving me "a hearty welcome to Jamaica, on the part of the United Improvement and Conservation Association." Later he came to the United States. In his case, as in the case of others, I have repeatedly been accused of enmity and jealousy, which have been so far from my thought that the accusations have been a rather bitter experience. In 1920 when his movement was beginning to grow in America I said in The Crisis that he was "an extraordinary leader of men" and declared that he had "with singular success capitalized and made vocal the great and long suffering grievances and spirit of protest among the West Indian peasantry." On the other hand, I noted his difficulties of temperament and training, inability to get on with his fellow workers, and denied categorically that I had ever interfered in any way with his work. Later when he began to collect money for his steamship line I characterized him as a sincere and hard-working idealist but called his methods bombastic, wasteful, illogical and almost illegal and begged his friends not to allow him foolishly to overwhelm with bankruptcy and disaster one of the most interesting spiritual movements of the modern world. But he went ahead, wasted his money, got into trouble with the authorities and was deported. As I said at the time: "When Garvey was sent to Atlanta, no word or action of Ours accomplished the result. His release and deportation were a matter of law which no deed or wish of ours influenced in the slightest degree. We have today, no enmity against Marcus Garvey. He has a great and worthy dream. We wish him well. He is free; he has a following; he still has a chance to carry on his work in his own home and among his own people and to accomplish some of his ideas. Let him do it. We will be the first to applaud any success that he may have.""

"Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, Amiri Baraka and other black male leaders have righteously supported patriarchy. They have all argued that it is absolutely necessary for black men to relegate black women to a subordinate position both in the political sphere and in home life."

"Marcus Garvey...roused the consciousness of the Negro from New York to British Guiana and from the Gold Coast (Ghana) to Kenya. Without ever setting foot in Africa he was able to kindle nationalism in the hearts of the young Kenyatta, Azikiwe and Nkrumah, giving them a purpose for dedicating their lives to their country."

"In the course of his conversation Marcus Garvey said that ninety thousand of the people on the island of Jamaica were colored, and only fifteen thousand of them were white; yet the fifteen thousand white people possessed all the land, ruled the island, and kept the Negroes in subjection. I asked him what those ninety thousand Negroes were thinking about to be dominated in this way, and he said it was because they had no educational facilities outside of grammar-school work. He wanted to return to his native home to see if he could not help to change the situation there. Instead he went to New York, began to hold street meetings, and got many of his fellow countrymen as well as American Negroes interested in his program of worldwide Negro unity. For a time it seemed as if his program would go through. Undoubtedly Mr. Garvey made an impression on this country as no Negro before him had ever done. He has been able to solidify the masses of our people and endow them with racial consciousness and racial solidarity. Had Garvey had the support which his wonderful movement deserved, had he not become drunk with power too soon, there is no telling what the result would have been. Already the countries of the world were beginning to worry very much about the influence of his propaganda in Africa, in the West Indies, and in the United States. His month-long conference in New York City every August, bringing the dusky sons and daughters of Ham from all corners of the earth, attracted a great deal of attention... It may be that even though he has been banished to Jamaica the seed planted here will yet spring up and bring forth fruit which will mean the deliverance of the black race-that cause which was so dear to his heart."

"For the Negroes in America, the death of Malcolm X is the most portentous event since the deportation of Marcus Garvey in the 1920s."

"My father, the Reverend Earl Little, was a Baptist minister, a dedicated organizer for Marcus Aurelius Garvey’s U.N.I.A. (Universal Negro Improvement Association). With the help of such disciples as my father, Garvey, from his headquarters in New York City’s Harlem, was raising the banner of black-race purity and exhorting the Negro masses to return to their ancestral African homeland—a cause which had made Garvey the most controversial black man on earth."