WESTMINSTER’S CHAINS
By Olutoye Walrond

The legendary Willie Lynch, reputedly of plantocratic lineage, is supposed to have left a blue print for slave owners for the effective, psychological control of their slaves. He was so confident about the efficacy of his method that he guaranteed its success almost in perpetuity.

Whether Willie Lynch actually existed – and there are credible questions about this – the story points to a problem among us as African Caribbean people that needs to engage more of our attention. I speak of the psychological enslavement of which we are still victims. With or without the existence of Lynch we seem to be in perpetual bondage with the people who enslaved, brutalised and murdered and our foreparents.

It is this self-affliction which forced Bob Marley to pen the words “emancipate yourself from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds....” Marley had recognised – living in Jamaica, where I understand brown-skinned people are virtually worshipped - that well over a century after the abolition of slavery, the psychological umbilical cords of African Caribbean people were still firmly linked to Westminster. It is a problem that tends to afflict all subjugated peoples, but Caribbean people seem to be the worst affected by it.

We are still very much like the chicken raised in the coop. After years of confinement he will not venture beyond the threshold of the coop even though the door is wide open. His mind has been conditioned to enslavement. What an awful state for anyone to be in!

I know we are chickens raised in a coop when after forty years of independence we still have as our head of state the supreme symbol of the old, colonising power; when our political leaders pledge allegiance, not to the people who elected them, but to the individual embodying this symbol, her heirs and successors.

Let us take this farce to its ultimate: given the appropriate circumstances some teenage boy in London could become the head of state of Barbados and many other sovereign states! This is the kind of constitutional absurdity visited upon us by our subservient, political leaders – Westminster’s choir boys as Gabby called them.
Without being subjected to the Willie Lynch formula, these ‘respected’ leaders have nonetheless allowed themselves to buy into the notion of class and white supremacy, which is really what the British has foisted on us, with this idolatrous notion that the humans born into their ‘royal’ line are somehow special beings to whom the rest of us, lesser mortals must bow down and make obeisance.

What utter and complete rubbish! The sordid lives lived by these royals portray them as anything but special – if we needed any proof.

The British monarchy was an integral unit of the system engaged in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and plantation slavery in the Caribbean. To this day it has refused to offer even a symbolic apology for this role, unlike the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches. By what mental gymnastics could our leaders have arrived at the notion that this is an institution worthy of our continued patronage!!

When, some years ago, the former Prime Minister, Owen Arthur, touted the idea of Barbados abandoning this subservient link to the Monarchy and becoming a republic, some of us breathed a sigh of hope that perhaps all was not lost with us as a people. We were excited as we listened to John King sing the republic song and saw the establishment of the constitution review commission. We smiled as our leaders spoke like truly liberated people about having a Barbadian as our head of state.

Well, little did we know that it was all just a nice, little fantasy – something to tickle our fancy for a season. Afterall, weren’t we told that Nelson would be relocated.

But what a wonderful legacy would it have been for any leader to have brought us beyond the threshold of a British-sanctioned constitution to the real sovereignty of republican status. It would have placed Mr. Arthur right up there with great leaders like E. W Barrow, Eric Williams, Michael Manley.
Unfortunately having let it slip, he will probably now have to settle for an ‘also ran’.

But I make bold to posit that Arthur’s diffidence is rooted is the very problem engaging our attention. It is essentially a lack of confidence in self, and by extension a notion that we cannot be completely separated from the old master. Remember the chicken: free but not willing to walk free.

You see, most Barbadian and Caribbean people have not even begun to put the colonial experience in its true perspective. There is still a widespread notion that this was some kind of benevolent relationship with the British in which we were the recipients of things we could not otherwise have had.Many are unaware of the utter brutality and subjugation of the slave and colonisation periods.One workmate of mine actually told me she considered it good fortune to have been brought to the Caribbean through the slave trade, because of what she considered the inferior lifestyle on the African continent! Marcus Garvey must be weeping at the abject darkness in the minds of our people.

The much revered E.W. Barrow is perhaps singular in his analysis of this relationship with the colonial power. Speaking during the independence debate in parliament in 1966 he had this to say:
“Colonialism is the reason for the present impasse in West Indian affairs and we cannot afford to wait. I am not going into a recital of what the British have done and what they have not done. Their relation with our people has not been a happy association. It has been a very unhappy association, and it is regrettable that we will have some of the down-trodden, who feel that they are now slightly privileged, fighting on the side of the people who perpetrated all these acts of inhumanity against our people.”

Barrow certainly knew what he was talking about, for it was he who asked us what we see when we look into the mirror. He was well aware of the problem we’re discussing. Regrettably, he didn’t do too much to address it.For it has been my contention that it is precisely because nothing was done to bring our people out of the colonial mode after independence that we are still enslaved to values and traditions alien to our environment and culture.

When we look into the mirror the image we see – or want to see - reflects the phenotypical characteristics of the Caucasian. Hence our women feel compelled to bleach their skins and straighten their hair; our male pop artistes seek out brown-skinned girls with Caucasoid features for their music videos – never black sisters; our ‘beauty’ queens come in the same phenotypical mode and our home-grown soap-operas reflect a preponderance of actors of light pigmentation in countries with 90% black people.
In short our notion of beauty is, once again, determined by a Caucasian blueprint.

One hundred and sixty-seven years after emancipation, Caribbean people, are still walking in the shadows of Westminster. We are free, physically, but our minds still hang on to the values and traditions of our erstwhile enslavers. The chicken refuses to fly the coop. Look at the hesitance over the Caribbean Court of Justice. Some leaders – those in the Bahamas being the most shameless – confessing outright that they have a preference for the British Privy Council.

What are these leaders saying to us? They are saying that they have more confidence in a group of privileged men four thousand miles away who know little about their countries and care just as much, than they do in their own people. This is not normal behaviour; but we must remember it is said that the oppressed often develops an allegiance to the oppressor over time.

So who will cut those chains to Westminster? “None but ourselves can free our minds”. It’s up to us to see the beauty and strength in our melanin-rich skins and its links to proud civilisations that once led the world in science and technology; that built the great pyramids of Egypt, to this day an architectural wonder.
We can establish our own institutions and symbols for recognising the excellence of our artistes, instead of jumping up and clapping our hands when others deem our work to be worthy of their honours.

Why give them the privilege to set standards for us?
What is a Grammy other than a symbol of what the hip hop community in the United States deems to be good music?
What standards are we setting for our own artistes?

Something is just not right when after four decades of independence our citizens are still being honoured with Commanders of the British Empire and other irrelevant British titles like Knights and Dames. These terms have absolutely no resonance in the history and culture of our people.
And on top of it all, they are being bestowed by the very institution and society that enslaved and oppressed our foreparents!

Just last year the Clement Payne Movement bestowed me with the annual Clement Payne Award. What a wonderful example of the kinds of honours our people should be getting. Clement Payne was a fighter for the oppressed masses of Barbados – now a national hero. An award of this nature would be a true honour for any Barbadian citizen.

We can cut Westminster’s chains by choosing to design a form of clothing that is suitable to our climate, rather than continue to stew our bodies in the tight wintry garb of our colonial masters. They dress to suit their cold climate and when they came to these shores they brought that dress with them. But it doesn’t take an Einstein to see that a man walking around Bridgetown or Kingstown at 12 noon dressed in a long-sleeved suit looks patently odd. Is it really beyond our imagination to devise a formal dress that speaks to the heat of the tropics and the colour of our environment?

Even the coats of animals like the bear and the sheep are designed according to the climate in which they live. The Polar Bear has a different coat from the brown bear, and the tropical Black Belly Sheep has much less wool than its counterpart of colder climes.

We help to cut Westminster’s chains by giving our children and ourselves names that reflect our identity as an African people – those of us who are African. Only property bears the stamp of its owner. There is no Chinese named John Smith; no Indian called Peter Parker; no European called Odinga Lumumba. Why should African people in the Caribbean who are no longer the property of Europeans bear English names?

What is a beautiful, black child in the Caribbean doing with the French name Andre or Sean? We need to cut Westminster’s chains.

* They downpress our minds, like millstones around the neck,
Stifling our confidence, frustrating our nationalism,
Tarnishing our mirror image:
The old, umbilical cords of Empire,
The chains of Westminster.

Down with Westminster’s chains!
A new nation let us create, of proud citizens, rich and poor, small and great,
With Lord Nelson guarding our city’s gates,
His gaze fixed, his dominance clear
The only non-hero in Heroes Square.

Westminster’s chains have rattled our identity and ruffled our unity,
Turning us into a fragmented mass of petit nationalities
Scattered across the waters of the Caribbean sea:
Vincentian and Dominican and Barbadian and Jamaican and Trinidadian and St. Lucian. banana republics, wilting at the first growl of the imperialist lion.
But the dormant spirit of Caribbean unity shall rise up to wrestle with the beast of fragmentation:
One people, one destiny! CARIFTA, CARICOM and the C.S.M.E
- with Guyanese ‘foreigners’ and Vincentian ‘small islanders’ doing battle at Grantley Adams ‘gainst immigration officers, next to white tourists, blushing before black, smiling natives bearing gifts of carnations: “welcome to Barbados, Sir’.Trinidadian coast guards casting flying fish nets to catch Barbadian Fishermen: ‘dah beach is yours; this sea is mine’.
Freedom of movement, but not without passports;
Freedom to work, but not for Julian Rogers.
Who will buy my white sand and who will buy my grey sand?
Cari-coming, coming, coming, but never arriving.
And the peacock parties continue with full pomp and pageantry:
Leaders, bedecked in wintry garb, ascending the podium on their hinds legs, speaking in lofty terms of ‘the regional integration process and the historical and cultural strands that bind our people together in this age of globalisation and the vulnerability of small states in the new world economic and social order’.

Words, words, words.
The Fishermen yawn; Rogers weeps; the people perish.

The chains of Westminster have been weighed in the balances and found wanting: ‘mene mene teckel, eupharsin!’
The writing on the wall heralds the dawn of a new consciousness among the children of the sun.
No longer strangers to our environment, living the lie of summer and winter in a land of tropical splendour.
Let’s break the power of Westminster’s chimes and free our minds to embrace our environment and clime – dancing with the cabbage palms and riding the trade winds.
Who says the sea doesn’t have a back door?
Let’s ride the crest of the Caribbean surf and dazzle our eyes with the sparkle of the golden sand, while the scorching rays of the tropical sun battles with sweating bodies decked in the robes of winter: the three-piece suit, stockings and boots.
The peacocks are sleeping through the dawn.

Westminster’s chains have saddled us with the justice of alien lords – barons of privilege and prestige passing judgement from the benches of distant courts: Pratt and Morgan, Bowe and Davis.
Judgement by remote control, shaking the sovereign foundations of the house of justice, and rousing the architects of regional unity from slumber:
A new court of justice for us by us!
The die is cast; the fanfare sounded, but only two will rise to respond to the blast.
‘Inferior justice!’, cry some of the rest, ‘Westminster’s justice and nothing less. We trust no Judge but Caesar’.
The cage door is open but the bird refuses to fly.
“Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds,” less we be found loitering on colonial doorsteps after closing time.

Three centuries of Westminster’s chains have left us drained – drained of the natural inheritance of a proud and noble lineage: Hannibal and Nefertari, Bussa and Nanny Grig.
The children of Kings and Queens, heroes and heroines now appendages of alien civilisations, minions and mice.
Let’s cut Westminster’s chains with swords washed in the spilt blood of the ancestors.
The new millennium for us shall be an occasion to usher in our great, new republic, to finally rupture the umbilical cord of slavery and colonialism and establish our place in the word as proud, honourable men and women: Knights and Dames of St. Andrew, Officers and Commanders of the British Empire.

This is our new republic.
Long live our great republic!
Long live the Caribbean!
LONG LIVE WESTMINSTER’S CHAINS!

* An edited version of the NIFCA Bronze award-winning poem, Westminster’s Chains, by the Olutoye Walrond.