BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – SPEAKING at the recent 78th Commemoration Ceremony of the Buckley’s Riot, former Governor, notable historian and legal luminary Sir Probyn Inniss discouraged violent struggle among citizens in these modern times.
“We must all commit ourselves to the struggle of bringing about a better and brighter today and tomorrow. And I want to emphasise that in this day and age, we’re not advocating any kind of violent struggle. We are saying, let it be a moral struggle, let it be a spiritual struggle, let it be an intellectual struggle so that the best ideas will prevail. We’ll sit down and we’ll let ideas contend and the best ideas will emerge. We all will work together in order to advance so that the future of our children will be assured.”
In his presentation, Sir Probyn said quite often people think of struggle as being only physical, or even violent.
“But the struggle of which we speak which is an integral part of our history is not a violent or particularly physical struggle, because you see, struggle was an essential and integral part of the struggle of our people because they never, never accepted their lot as enslaved people , and so by whatever means they were able to utilize. They were forever in a struggle to overcome the oppression and to overcome the hatred, and overcome the brutality which part and parcel (was) part of the system of slavery and the system of colonialism.”
Sir Probyn said struggle is an integral part of the nation’s history.
“Do not give up the struggle. In this day and age, the struggle will be different. The nature of our struggle will be different, but we must never lose sight of the fact we’re moving towards a goal and that goal is to ensure that today and tomorrow, and the years to come will be better for our children and our children’s children.
“At this particular point in our history, we have to recognise that we run the risk of so dividing ourselves and destroying ourselves. And all the guns of the colonial and all of the whips of the massas could never have achieved. We are doing to ourselves today what the plantation owners could not do.
“They could not break us…the spirit of our people. They were resilient. They were always optimistic. Despite whatever happened they believed…yes, that they would arise, they would rise again and they would be able to handover to the next generation something of which they can be proud. So we all have a duty to celebrate the spirit of our ancestors and try, try as hard as we possibly can to derive some of that spirit of unity which seems to be escaping us, because at the end of the day they recognise that without unity as a people they could achieve nothing. It is for us to recognise that, yes there will be struggle.”
