BASSETERRE, St, Kitts – AFTER declaring that the people of the Federation exist in a state of mental enslavement, Washington ‘Washie’ Archibald advises that the path towards achieving mental emancipation is thorny and requires substantial mental fortitude.
In an article published by SKNVibes on Tuesday, August 10) entitled “Washie says Nation still in mental slavery”, the social commentator, historian and teacher suggested that notwithstanding receiving physical freedom from the plantocracy in 1834, people of the Federation still suffer through mental slavery.
He also asserted that the people of this land demonstrated their resilience through the 1935 Buckley’s Riot and Strike of 1948 and were well on their way to attaining mental emancipation, which would have proven a perfect complement to their freedom from physical slavery. With mental emancipation fully in sight and grasp, however, the process failed to be completed.
“We would have emancipated ourselves if we had won that victory in 1948. If we had succeeded in bringing the sugar industry to its knees so that the planter could disappear and leave the land for the labourers to squat upon and develop their own local farming industries, that would have been the high watermark of our mental emancipation. But it didn’t happen. Our leaders capitulated. Our leaders decided to surrender and to end the strike and the planters were able to rebound and get money to borrow to continue their exploitation of the workers until 1973. From 1948 to 1973…a whole generation.”
How are we still enslaved?
Despite and exodus of the plantocracy, Archibald expressed, exploitation of the working class continued but was now being perpetrated by the government, which took control of the sugar land.
“It is in 1973 that the planters eventually surrendered. And what happened? When the planters surrendered, the government went and helped them. The government still kept our people in the plantation system. The government now became the plantocracy and continued to subject us to labouring in the sugarcane fields. The government became political and so you moved from a situation where you were mentally and physically enslaved on the plantation to a situation where you were mentally and physically enslaved in politics.
“You had to support a political party to survive. In order for your children to get a university education, you had to be loyal to a political party. Your daughters had to subject themselves to indignities in order to make a place in life in our political system. That is mental slavery! People were threatened with their jobs…This is the political culture….so people are intimidated. They became mindless slaves. Nobody shackled their feet and their hands but they are enslaved by the system by intimidation.”
In 2010, the teacher explained, “We have gone full circle” and are experiencing a return of the ‘white man’ to whom we must subject ourselves for survival.
“The white man is coming back. The white man, the Chinese, the Indians, all of them are coming back and launching an attack on the Negro and the African. Our mental slavery is increasing, accelerating at a tremendous pace. How is that happening? It is happening because just like in 1623 when the white man came and claimed this land and put us under slavery, it is happening again…You go around the country and you find that our land is being gravitating again to the white people.
“The sugar industry closed down and the land remained out of reach of the villagers. You live in a village, sugar land all around you, no cane being planting, and you can’t touch the land. You cannot go onto the land and plant some pumpkin and pigeon peas and cucumbers. The land is in the village and it is out of reach; you can’t touch it. It is being reserved there to sell to white foreigners who will come and control the land and control our mind, because we are going to have to work for them. That is mental slavery!”
Breaking the bonds of mental slavery, easier said than done?
A critical ingredient in the recipe of freedom from mental enslavement, Archibald opines, is independence; the absence of dependence to any oppressive power or force.
“One of the things that must be done in order to free yourself from domination by other people is to be independent. To be independent means that you must not have to rely on people for a job. You should not have to rely on a political machinery for a living, otherwise you are going to be enslaved to them, you are going to be bounden to work for them, to vote for them, to ensure that they continue in power. That is what politicians do. They put a stranglehold on their supporters, make them dependant on them, and this syndrome of dependency is what enslaves our people.
“On the plantation it was the same thing. The slaves had to work for their masters for food. If he didn’t work for the master, he wouldn’t get any food, and in addition he would get punishment. Those slaves who were free…they did so because they were able to remove themselves from the plantation system. And they were able to open their own shops, they were able to become carpenters and to do services for people in their own time, in their own way and at their own price. This is the essence of independence, but if you have to be tied down to a political man, to accept what he says and believe in what he does without any question, that is slavery.”
Independence from the plantocrary more than 170 years ago was no small feat; it came to fruition with the sanction of the power that was - Great Britain.
It is Archibald’s conviction that just as the slaves gained their physical freedom with the help of Britain, in order for mental emancipation to be achieved the government would have to slacken its “hold” on the people of the land. Whether or not this would happen, however, Archibald said he is uncertain.
“When you find yourself in that kind of position, then you are a slave. You are not thinking for yourself, you are not acting on your own volition…you acting either out of fear, intimidation, or out of favour because you are not your own person. The system would have to relax itself to give us independence and this is not happening. The system is preventing us from becoming small businessmen. They are bringing in Chinese and they are bringing in strangers to take the position of businesspeople so as to rob us of the opportunity to have our own. But there are some people who are free! The fishermen are free, the vendors on the street are free; they could say what they want, they could believe what they want.
“We cannot do it without our own effort. The government is not going to help us to do it, because the government has an interest of keeping us enslaved. The only people who are going to be free are those who could work for themselves…You are looking at a gloomy and dismal future which is not good at all.”
