John Maxwell

'They ate her alive' was the opening sentence of my 1997 column following the death of Diana, the ex-wife of the heir to the British throne. It continued:

'As she lay broken and covered in blood, as she lay helpless and mortally wounded, they were, as always, professional, shooting fast, furious and careful of camera angle,  hoping perhaps to capture her last breath, to profit one last time from her suffering,  to take the million dollar photograph which would  put them at last  on the same level as their prey, enjoying a life of ease and big money.

They always wanted to make a killing from Diana.

Last Sunday morning in Paris, they succeeded.

It is  horrible to imagine  that Diana’s  last view of this world might have been the flashing cameras of the cockroaches of the Press.’

Michael Jackson was luckier. He died at home, apparently of a heart attack, although if you read the British newspapers  the day after – tabloid or 'quality' – you might believe that Michael Jackson was murdered or died of a drug overdose. There was no more evidence of those things than there is that Jackson was a child molester, but to say that is to court ferocious hostility and hate because there are people in this world who KNOW the truth and are not to be contradicted by evidence unless delivered by divine messenger. Jackson died without   permission from the media.

If one looks carefully at the mass media of the western world it soon becomes apparent that the death of Michael Jackson is the biggest money-making opportunity for them since the death of Diana. The Daily Mirror makes it explicit with a tag-line following every Mirror story on the web. It reads:

 “Michael Jackson dead at 50. All you need to know about the King of Pop.”

And, if like the Times, most of their stuff is second or third or fourth hand, or invented, malicious and libellous, who cares?

 Jackson is dead and can't sue, and under American libel standards set by their Supreme Court 42 years ago, were he alive he couldn’t sue even if he wanted to, because as a public figure, and a public figure more public than any other in history, it would have been almost impossible for him to sue even if he could prove that his maligner knew that what he was saying was untrue but said it anyway with reckless disregard for the truth. With Jackson surrounded by bloodsuckers of every breed, rank and description, from crooked district attorneys to suborned employees and journalistic moles, there was so much crap  in the air that it was impossible for anyone – perhaps even Jackson himself – to disentangle truth from fantasy.

Public personalities and particularly show business personalities  are, ipso facto,  all creatures of fantasy.  Canute, king of England, Denmark and Norway more than 900 years ago faced a smaller but no less intractable problem. His courtiers may have seen the ocean's tides disobeying the king, but that was no doubt because the King was playing a game.

What the Nanny ‘saw’

As the old nursery rhyme says

 Big fleas  have little fleas

Upon their backs to bite 'em

And little fleas have lesser fleas

And so on ad infinitum

I was reminded of this by a bizarre story in the Sunday Times of London.  The beginning of the story should prepare you for whoppers to come:

"Grace Rwaramba who cared for King of Pop and his children has shocking secrets of his addictions and bizarre nomadic life."

This elaborate work of art details how Grace the Nanny, fired by Jackson in 2008, was  “working  through her phone calls to LA on Friday, desperately trying to ensure that the children were comforted after losing their father, she sobbed and screamed and became more incoherent.

“Yes, this is it . . . because (crying) this is it . . . because he started avoiding everything. We were trying to help him and they fired me because of this (sobs).”

Yet, not knowing where the children were and not having spoken to them, Grace Rwaramba, in a London hotel,  informs the  credulous Times reporter that –

'the children had been anxious about their father and had been trying to care for him — “he hasn’t been eating and the kids have been so scared for him”.

'Worried by the endless goings on in the Jackson compound Grace turned to me at the end and said: “The youngest one has been saying, ‘God should have taken me not him’.”

Clearly, Grace is either telepathic or  psychopathic.

Why was the Times interviewing the nanny in the first place? They are silent about this, but clearly the intention was to dish up as much dirt as possible to coincide with what would have been a triumphal return for the King of Pop in 50 concerts sold out almost as soon as they were announced.

It’s a dirty job, but hey! someone has to do it.

The Times is owned by the world's voyeur in chief,  Rupert Murdoch, who owns the Sun, the News of the World and the New York Post a well as the unfair and unbalanced Fox TV news network.

Other newspapers were not much better except that most of them seemed somewhat more discreet with rumours and hearsay.

 

Blaming the fans

In the  Times the lady who wrote "What the Nanny saw" followed up with a learned disquisition  entitled "The fans killed their idol; they always do"

Disingenuously she tries to turn the blame onto the fans and away from the real criminals:

"We know how the stars loathe the paparazzi, smash their lenses, call them — as Hugh Grant did this week — wankers and losers. But what they can’t, daren’t, say is how deeply they loathe their fans — their pestering, cloying, snatching, the demand for photos amid a private dinner, the sneaky snapping with their crummy mobile cameras while a star is buying a latte, pushing his kid on a swing, their high-horse outrage when a demand is politely refused."

She blames the fans when it’s the media voyeurs and intruders who manage the lunacy. She carps at Angelina Jolie whose "fanbase are the  reason, as much as great wealth, that Angelina Jolie feels she can demand a no-fly zone over part of Namibia while she gave birth there …"  Guess what, the no-fly zone was to protect the mother and child from paparazzi who hired planes to try to peep into the most private moments of a family's life. If one had crashed into the house, obliterating mother child and father-to-be Brad Pitt,  it would, no doubt,  have been ascribed to the onerous responsibilities due to Freedom of the Press.

Fans don't kill their idols; the murderers are in my so-called profession – now, more than ever – a refuge for pimps, prostitutes, sexually dysfunctional and psychopathic reporters and editors, peeping toms and frotteurs, who are the guys who can gaze at a trembling, shattered human being, on the verge of suicide, and yell "Jump! Jump!" as they make sure their cameras are correctly  focused.

I once met Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and when I told someone at work the next day the girls gathered round. It was Burton they were interested in.

“Did you shake his hand? " one asked.

‘Yes.”

“Which hand?" she asked

“Why, the right one of course”, at which the young woman took my right hand and kissed it.

This happened in the BBC World Service newsroom, not among a gaggle of semiliterate hysterics.

This week Elizabeth Taylor herself, in whose violet eyes I would have drowned given time, declared that she cannot imagine life without her friend Michael Jackson. His ex-wife, Lisa Marie Presley, Quincy Jones, Diana Ross, Oprah Winfrey, Paul McCartney, Dionne Warwick, Beyonce, Martin Scorcese, Donna Summer, Stephen Spielberg,  Mariah Carey, Uri Geller, Cher, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jane Fonda, Lisa Minelli, Sophia Loren, Celine Dion, Madonna,  and many many others famous and noteworthy, who knew him and loved him, grieved at his death, along with millions more round the world. They grieved because they had lost someone important to them. Crusty steelworkers in Gary,Indiana, his hometown, grieved, as did millions more young and old, rich and poor, famous and unknown, people in prisons and Nancy Reagan and  KIm Dae Jung, former president of South Korea, Imelda Marcos, black, white and every shade in between, and their grief propelled several of Jackson's hits back into top spots on music charts all over the world, causing, among other things, a near 2,000 percent increase in demand for his songs on US radio stations and the slowing down of the Internet itself.

To the imperial media Jackson was guilty of everything of which he had ever been accused, like Jack Johnson, Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King, Elvis Presley and John Lennon. The problem with all of these and with Bob Marley, Patrice Lumumba and Jean Bertrand Aristide  is that they connected in a fundamental way with ordinary people, and that, to the rulers of our world and their servile media , is supremely dangerous.

Lennon said "All we need is Love"; Jackson sang "We are the world"; Martin Luther King, Bob Marley and Aristide preached “Get up, Stand up! Stand up for your rights!”

All of them clearly reckoned without the Imperial Media and the new Lords of the Earth.

 

Copyright 2009 John Maxwell

jankunnu@gmail.com

 

it never matters what you truly think

the prize turns to be only fools' gold

and what is written's just a waste of ink

 

no hero's there to save you on the brink

nor is the story like what you were told

it never matters what you truly think

 

since each of us is just another link

now this whole history is very old

and what is written's just a waste of ink

 

don't whine or argue you'll go in the clink

while all the scoundrels still shall be extolled

it never matters what you truly think

 

as each tortfeasor is passed on the wink

while the examiner will treat you cold

and what is written's just a waste of ink

 

such is the law so just go have a drink

forget about the foolish and the bold

it never matters what you truly think

and what is written's just a waste of ink

what has been lost in that one languid scene

that moves the western soul so we've been told

as much as oil and far far more than gold

is any sense of what else might have been

before the truth that nothing was serene

what seemed the warmest turned out dull and cold

the wildest moment most tightly controlled

nothing what what we thought it had to mean

the object found was other than the sought

a glimpse of hope en route to where truth fell

before the onslaught of the shining lies

right where the innocent young fools were caught

believing to the last this was not hell

and what they saw were the redeeming skies

there are no boundaries in human time

we may not cross or otherwise respect

unless as you or other fool direct

since we are bound to creep out of the slime

ignore the sweetness of most daring crime

and only take those goods the herds reject

choosing to be in sombre tones bedecked

for only silence tastes of the sublime

gold alone rules whatever may be law

in heavy book that we know to be fact

in this reality we have not made

when what seems best is just another flaw

and no one ever will come through intact

we have no choice except slowly to fade

John Maxwell

The Haitian constitution of 1805 was the first national constitution in history to declare that all human beings were equal with equal rights, privileges and responsibilities. After a short preamble the constitution declares that it is made –

"… in presence of the Supreme Being, before whom all mankind are equal, and who has scattered so many species of creatures on the surface of the earth for the purpose of manifesting his glory and his power by the diversity of his works, in the presence of all nature by whom we have been so unjustly and for so long a time considered as outcast children.

"Art. 1. The people inhabiting the island formerly called St. Domingo, hereby agree to form themselves into a free state sovereign and independent of any other power in the universe, under the name of empire of Hayti.

2. Slavery is forever abolished.

3. The Citizens of Hayti are brothers at home; equality in the eyes of the law is incontestably acknowledged, and there cannot exist any titles, advantages, or privileges, other than those necessarily resulting from the consideration and reward of services rendered to liberty and independence.

4. The law is the same to all, whether it punishes, or whether it protects.

"We, the undersigned, place under the safeguard of the magistrates, fathers and mothers of families, the citizens, and the army the explicit and solemn covenant of the sacred rights of man and the duties of the citizen.

Some of the duties of citizenship are enumerated in the constitution; Among them:

9. No person is worth of being a Haitian who is not a good father, good son, a good husband, and especially a good soldier.

10. Fathers and mothers are not permitted to disinherit their children.

11. Every Citizen must possess a mechanic art.

21. Agriculture, as it is the first, the most noble, and the most useful of all the arts, shall be honored and protected.

Under the Constitution, the army is the creature of the state and obedient to it; Due process is guaranteed, the house of every citizen is an inviolable asylum, and the Emperor is prohibited from making wars of conquest.

While the head of state is styled Emperor, the position is elective and not hereditary.

The entire text of the constitution may be found here:

 http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/history/earlyhaiti/1805-const.htm

I am no expert on constitutions but I would bet that there are few if any that attempt to define the responsibilities of citizens to the extent the Dessalines constitution did.

What is particularly striking about this constitution is the emphases placed, first on parental responsibilities, then on skill and training and finally on the on husbandry of resources by protecting and  and developing agriculture.

These three principles suggest to me that the founding fathers of Haiti were, in the most essential sense, serious environmentalists understanding the duty of the citizens to husband the national patrimony   in the interest of all.

'…the vilest scramble for loot'

Haiti was one of the products of the crazed scramble for gold and other emblems of wealth following European exploration of the Western hemisphere and Africa. Millions of indigenous people were exterminated or enslaved, their civilisations laid waste in a multi-century pillaging described by Joseph Conrad as “the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience”.

The so-called Industrial Revolution was a process by which raw materials stolen from 'primitive' populations were transmuted into unexampled wealth by human fuel in the form slaves and serfs supplemented later by  the fossil fuels coal and petroleum.

Within a century and a half of the start of the Industrial Revolution a Swedish scientist, Svante Arhenius, was warning that human activity was warming the globe by what is now known as the Greenhouse Effect.

Nobody took the threat of global warming seriously until about half a century ago when results from the first International Geophysical Year began to create alarm, strengthened a little later by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring which described all life on earth being caught in the deadly crossfire from new chemicals, plastics, herbicides, pesticides and others that were transforming the American Way of Life into the American way of Death.

Humanity began to wake up to the fact that all of us, black or white or brown, poor or rich, were on a collision course with disaster.Following the Stockholm conference on the Environment in 1972,  the United Nations was moved by growing concern "about the accelerating deterioration of the human environment and natural resources and the consequences of that deterioration for economic and social development."  In 1983 the UN   General Assembly recognized that environmental problems were global in nature and determined that it was in the interest of all nations to establish common policies for sustainable development. The UN decided to convene the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), known by the name of its Chair Mrs Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former prime minister of Norway. The Bruntland Commission echoed the Haitian constitution when it declared that "Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

The Haitians version was  that no one was allowed to disinherit their children.

The  Bruntland Commission prepared the way for the groundbreaking conference of heads of government – the so-called Earth Summit of 1992 at which every country in the world was represented –  to design a road map for sustainable development to give all human beings an opportunity to satisfy their basic needs within the limitations of the environment's ability  to meet present and future needs.

The Earth summit was an attempt to give effect to the promise of universal rights through universal action. The key element  of the agreement, the Treaty of Rio – Agenda 21 –was that every community in the world should be entitled to decide its own way to sustainability and that every person should have a say in this global decision making.

It was a noble aim and every world leader signed on to it, including our own P.J. Patterson  and George Bush I of the US.  The signatories committed themselves to a variety of objectives, the most important of which was t h idea of community Agendas designed by the people for the people.

Spectacular Disrespect

Few states in the world have failed as spectacularly as Jamaica to honour their obligations under the treaty. We actually drew up a document to guide Local Development Planning in Jamaica but there has essentially been no action to enforce the people's rights to a clean, supportive and productive environment. The main guarantee of this, Environmental Impact Assessments, are a bad and stale joke.

The European countries, six years after Rio, drew up an agreement designed to give their citizens the rights envisaged in Agenda 21 – the treaty signed by Jamaica and nearly 200 other countries.

This agreement, the Aarhus Convention   on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters – is a document which more than any other single instrument, epitomises the real meaning of democratic rights and self government in the modern world.

In the words of the UN Environmental Commission for Europe –

" The Aarhus Convention is a new kind of environmental agreement. The Convention

- links environmental rights and human rights

- acknowledges that we owe an obligation to future generations

- establishes that sustainable development can be achieved only through the involvement of all stakeholders

- links government accountability and environmental protection

- focuses on interactions between the public and public authorities in a democratic context.

The subject of the Convention goes to the heart of the relationship between people and governments. The Convention is not only an environmental agreement, it is also a Convention about government accountability, transparency and responsiveness.

The Aarhus Convention grants the public rights and imposes on states and public authorities obligations regarding access to information and public participation and access to justice.

Jamaica has more than most other countries, demonstrated a contempt and disrespect for the principles enshrined in the Agenda 21 and in the Arhus convention.

We have talked the talk, big time, but we have not only not walked the walk, we have sedulously avoided doing so.

If we go back long before Agenda 21 we will discover that Jamaica, like many other countries, treated the environment with disrespect, if not outright hostility. We destroyed the most productive protein producing piece of seawater in the world, Kingston Harbour and transformed it into the world's most beautiful toxic dump and cesspool. We did not have to do it. Even in the 1920s when we decided to use the harbour as a sink for human waste, there were well known and reasonably priced alternatives. As always, we chose the easy way, the destructive way out. Our laws in relation to bauxite mining were well meant, but were studiously ignored. More recently we have come close to destroying our premier botanic gardens, an erstwhile valuable educational and economic resource and recreational asset, like Kingston harbour, because some greedy developer wanted to put an upscale housing scheme in what would inevitably have become a private park.

Destroying National Treasures

We are trying our damnedest to destroy the Cockpit Country, an asset of almost unimaginable potential, a cultural, historical, ecological and hydrogeological resource which we have not properly explored before we decide to destroy it.

 

We are in the process of stealing public amenity in our public recreational beaches to be handed over to Spanish hotels and other private interests and we are in the process of transforming one of our most beautiful towns into a colonial slum dedicated to the processing of excrement and other wastes from cruise ships and to make it a tourist-only apartheid facility in which the only Jamaicans will be those who serve the foreign visitors.

 

Pretty soon the only beach available to Jamaicans may be Puerto Seco, handed over to the Jamaican people by Kaiser Bauxite who should never have had any ownership rights in the first place.

 

We are in the process of destroying Negril, fifty years ago one of the world's most beautiful beaches. The destruction is caused by illegal groynes – built against expert advice –  by the UDC, a public corporation, and by sewage pumped into the Negril Morass by the UDC, which, together with the humic acid released by UDC dredging of the morass, has killed off the sand-flake producing algae and finally, by the over fertilisation of the sugar plantations on the fringes of the morass.

 

The morass is itself a valuable resource because it is the main guarantor of the Negril beach as well as an important nature reserve with multi-million dollar potential as an attraction for Jamaicans and visitors. We prefer instead, to build artificial attractions, featuring imported wild animals while we kill off our indigenous plant and animal  life by a process of malign neglect. Because we have not thought about housing the thousands attracted to the development areas we have officially encouraged squatting and the misery, squalor and crime which accompany these developments.

 

But, there are of course,  always the end-of-pipe solutions. The IMF killed off our 1978 plans to restore Kingston Harbour to economic productivity both as fishing grounds and as recreational area. We would have restored the hillsides, removing the squatters who destroy nearly US$100 million worth of land every year and putting them to grow food on the flat land still monopolised by sugar cane. Now, thirty years later, we are going to go back to the IMF to get some useless, expensive and counterproductive advice which will simply saddle us with more debt, more homelessness and more crime.

 

Two hundred years ago the Haitians said that no one has the right to disinherit their children.

 

Jamaicans do not agree.

 

Copyright©2009 John Maxwell

 

jankunnu@gmail.com

 

 

this is the turning point and luck will burn

whichever way the earnest choice is made

so it won't matter if you seem afraid

both rich and poor must dance round in their turn

laugh for a while look up and hope to earn

what good they can from honest simple trade

before the sparks come down in last cascade

and all goes out that is the truth we learn

now under the same sun we build the fire

for angry hearts that have not felt the sway

of that fine rule we want the world to seek

past the first moment of youthful desire

since we discovered that was not the way

but now are grown too wise simply to speak

John Maxwell

Fifty years ago last Monday, an event occurred which transformed Jamaica. The launch of the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation transformed the Jamaican culture,  theatre, music, politics, journalism and the Jamaican language.

In its periods of independent existence the JBC transformed the Jamaican idea of Jamaica, of Jamaican personality.

I am one of the few survivors of that day. Most of that small band are dead and most of those who aren't are scattered to the four winds. The JBC was Jamaica's real entry into the modern world and it excited enthusiasm and animosity in equal degree, provoking a struggle which persists to this day between those who know themselves to be Jamaican and those who charitably  patronise things Jamaican and other pastiches of a Jamaica which never existed outside of travelers' tales.

On June 14, the day before the official launch, the new broadcasters of the JBC presented an ambitious showcase of their talents, programmes ranging from a major radio drama, a concert by the JBC Orchestra playing Jamaican music, Jamaica comedy and  high-class soap opera, Jamaican news and a Jamaican newsreel bringing Jamaicans for the first time face to face with themselves and their work, the commonplace and the sublime.

Two of the items for which I was responsible on that day were an interview with Hollywood star Errol Flynn and an interview recorded on a mule-drawn dray carrying supplies for fishermen on the road to Portland Cottage.

We stunned Jamaica.

The papers and the verandahs for weeks afterwards could talk of little else but the Jamaican accents which had never before been heard on radio. Until then two kinds of diction were permissible on Jamaican radio: the clipped BBC accents of Dennis Gick and his ilk with  their J.B.Priestley plays,  or the real (and occasionally fake) American accents of the announcers on Radio Jamaica. Jamaicans heard instead, for the first time, at last, the voices of Miss Lou (Louise Bennett) Mass Ran (Ranny Williams) Charles Hyatt, "Pro Rata Powell" (Ken Maxwell), Jack Neesberry (Carrol Reckord).

 But what amazed everyone was the fact that the news – world news and Jamaican news, were written and edited in a Jamaican newsroom, and read by Jamaicans like Reggie Carter, Joy Gordon and Richard Harty.  And,  for the first time at last,   it wasn't really necessary to listen to the BBC – which we continued to  broadcast once a day to calm the nerves of those  who could not believe that Jamaican journalists could possibly compete with English journalists. When I went to work for the BBC News  eight years later I realised that we had been  working twice as hard for half the pay and delivering a product at least as good as our august competitors and often better.

 A decade and a half later, in 1975, I was congratulated for my handling of Britain's deputy Prime Minister, James Callaghan, one of the rudest and stupidest politicians I have ever met. The man who congratulated me was Sir Robin Day, then the doyen of  British TV journalism. With a group of English journalists, Day came up to me in the Sheraton hotel where all of them had been watching my nightly interviews with people like Archbishop Makarios and Indira Gandhi at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference

"Great work." said Robin Day, "I hear you are called the Robin Day of Jamaica!"

"Oh!" I said, you must be the guy they call  the John Maxwell of British television!"  and after some more  good natured banter we all repaired to the bar to talk about politicians.

Norman Manley, whose idea the JBC was, was never in any doubt that Jamaica and its people were as good or better than any nation anywhere and when the JBC began to prove it by exposing Jamaican musicians, like Carlos Malcolm, Foggy Mullings, and Ernie Ranglin, Don Drummond, Toots Hibbert, Count Ossie and Bob Marley, Jamaicans were astonished at the depth and breadth of Jamaican musical genius and the idea that world class could mean Jamaican.

It was the JBC whose attention to the mento, jankunnu, kumina  and rastafari cultures brought them to the notice of their own people and the world. It was the JBC that created the market for Jamaican musicians and producers where none had existed before.

In the three years before independence the JBC was identified as a threat by those whose idea of Jamaica had concretised in 1944, when people spoke of demoracy-in-embryo and the need for tutelage in governance. When the JBC presented public affairs programmes that began to expose the realities of the society many were alarmed. C.L.R. James was astonished by a documentary I did in 1960 about the people who lived on and off the Dungle, who were allowed to tell their stories as if they were important. James thought that this was revolutionary stuff and prophesied that the powers that be would not long allow that sort of exposure.

He was right. When the JLP won the pre-independence elections in 1962 the JBC and myself in particular became immediate targets. One dispute was about JBC's alleged disrespect to the new government. The JLP said that JBC news was not dignifying  Ministers by terming them "Honorable" as they said we had always styled the PNP Ministers. Fortunately we were able to produce a memorandum written by me two weeks after the JBC opened, in which we decided that honorifics such as "the Honorable" would be dispensed with except in cases of official announcements and things like death notices.  They still didn't believe us.

We were always suspect, because we were not intimidated by anyone. In 1960, during the so-called Reynold Henry 'uprising',  Wills Isaacs, acting as Premier while Manley was on a few days leave, insisted that we publish a ministerial statement by him calling upon Jamaicans to hunt down and capture and hogtie all stray bearded men  in the interest of national security. We refused to broadcast the speech. Wills called me up, as the person then in charge of the newsroom and when I again refused he called Mr Manley. I told Mr Manley, when he called, that I had referred the speech to our legal adviser, Leacroft Robinson and he had agreed with me that the broadcast was an incitement to violence. When I told Manley this he agreed that we were right and told Wills to cool it.

A very similar row broke out  in late 1961 or early 1962 when the JLP wanted us to put out a news release calling on "JLP Freedom Fighters" to give Mr Manley "a hot reception" on his return from pre-independence talks in London. I was again the person responsible for refusing the broadcast, on the same grounds I'd given Isaacs  in 1960. Seaga and Lightbourne were at Bustamante's house and got the old man to phone me to persuade me to allow the broadcast.

I refused and then Busta  put on the Commissioner of Police, Noel Crosswell who said he saw nothing wrong with the release. Again I had Leacroft Robinson's advice and again I refused.

When Manley arrived at Victoria Pier by motor-launch from the airport all hell broke loose, with Seaga's "Freedom Fighters" locked in battle with Isaacs' Group 69. During the fracas Isaacs' licenced firearm fell to the ground and fortunately was picked up by a responsible adult. No one was seriously injured but I have always wondered what would have happened if Seaga's call to arms had been broadcast.

When the 1962 elections finally came  I was not among the JLP's favourite people. Within weeks I was again in trouble. In my weekly news review I had been scathing about the departing British. After 300 years, I said, they had made the munificent bequest of one million pounds, sufficient to run the basic administration of the country for eleven days. They had also generously donated Up Park Camp, which I said was simply because they could not take it away.

On the following Monday Mr Seaga with Sir Alexander Bustamante in tow, both dressed in funereal black, arrived at the JBC to see, by appointment, the chairman, the jeweller, L.A. Henriques. They got him to agree that I should be sacked, over the objections of Hector Bernard who was then the Acting General Manager.

When the rest of the JBC Board heard what had happened they immediately convened a meeting to inform Henriques that he had no authority to sack anyone. He was forced to resign.

I was reinstated.  A few weeks later the entire board, with the exception of Henry Fowler, was sacked.  A few months later I was again fired, on a trumped up charge and by way of a post-dated letter signed by the General Manager, A.L.  Micky Hendricks, who at the time was in London on JBC business.

The new government of independent Jamaica did not understand the necessity for the autonomy of a public service corporation such as the JBC. They saw malice in any decision that went against them and were totally unable to accept any criticism. The PNP, demoralised in defeat, was unable to defend the principles on which we had always operated. Eventually in 1964 the newsroom rebelled against the attempt by Seaga and the new JBC Chairman Ivan Levy's  to be news editors.

Despite the first largely middleclass strike and the longest in Jamaican history until then, the gallant workforce of the JBC was defeated and most forced into exiles

The JBC was transformed into a partisan mouthpiece – an image which it never shook – because the JLP were determined to destroy everything we stood for.

I had another innings at the JBC in the 1970s when I was personally painted as the implacable enemy of the JLP and of Edward Seaga, because I had run against him in the 1972 elections when the PNP could find no one willing to run in the brand new garrison of West Kingston. Although my candidacy was solely to prevent Seaga running unopposed and being elected on nomination day, it was taken as an impertinence and an insult to Seaga.

Despite this, however, the JBC managed to recover some of its self-respect. I personally remember with gratitude the opportunity I was given to start the first real talk-show in Jamaica, the Public Eye.

Public Eye had a few signal achievements, presenting for the first time  public exposure of police brutality in the person of Peter Tosh, whose account of his mistreatment brought Jamaica up short. People knew that police brutality was fairly common, but few realised how pervasive it was. When I spoke to Peter Tosh he was still relatively obscure but well enough known to make a big impression.

Public Eye was also mainly responsible for the successful campaign to reverse the unfair convictions and secure the release of Michael Bernard and six other men on death row because of perjured evidence.

Our greatest achievement, however, was in raising the Jamaican consciousness about the condition of working class women. Shortly after the programme began in February 1974 I interviewed Rosamund Wiltshire and Gillian Monroe who had just done an undergraduate thesis on the treatment of domestic helpers, up to then called servants and maids.

 

After the interview I invited the domestic helpers of Jamaica to phone me and tell Jamaica their stories. Soon, telephone locks were being imported by the thousands, so that householders could prevent the truth being told. I was accused of scandalising the middle class and one day an expensively dressed  chatelaine in a stush Mercedes Benz spat at me as I walked down South Odeon Avenue. After more than a year of agitation Michael Manley, at the instigation of his wife, Beverley, called me up to Jamaica House one day.

 

"What are we going to do about the helpers?"

 

I had an answer –  suggested by the helpers themselves. Since they couldn't form a union and couldn't strike the society had to find the means to protect them from exploitation. A National Minimum Wage was the answer, but a National Minimum Wage policed by a special office which would also be responsible for defending all their rights.

 

Manley knew that everybody had said a national minimum wage would never work, that if implemented it would cause mass unemployment; but he, Beverley and I thought we should do it because it was right. Without consulting his Cabinet except for David Coore, he simply announced in Parliament that the government had decided to implement a National Minimum Wage and an office to supervise it.

 

Pandemonium. Jamaica knew the time had come for justice for the largest section of the labour force.  Respect was due.

 

The impact of the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation on Jamaica has never been measured. It is my opinion that in its short periods of independence, the JBC helped begin the transformation of Jamaica from an ignorant colonial  backwater into a civilised society. We have a long way to go, but the JBC proved that we have the brains and the will to do it. 

 

 If our traditions had been maintained I cannot imagine that 50 years later a Jamaican Governor General would be flying to Buckingham Palace to be knighted by the Queen as if he were some middle-ranking British civil servant.

 

In our cosmology, honour flowed not from England, but from the cane-cutters and domestic helpers, from the small farmers and the higglers, from the Rastas and all the people who constitute Jamaica, as we know it

 

When they say "Respect is Due" we know what they mean.

 

Copyright©2009 John Maxwell

 

jankunnu@gmail.com

 

 

these noted imperfections of old light

enough to drive a god of patience mad

tell us that death is not the lord of night

 

on days like this the chance of change is slight

we take the hoped-for good with the hard bad

these noted imperfections of old light

 

provide no proper guide for damaged sight

nor helpful hand though willing lass and lad

tell us that death is not the lord of night

 

since other forces keep their moments bright

and not all changes lead us to be sad

these noted imperfections of old light

 

are simple facts not signs of hurt and blight

the signs that fate will catch up to foul cad

tell us that death is not the lord of night

 

our choices do not always turn out right

but we are still entitled to be glad

these noted imperfections of old light

tell us that death is not the lord of night