Hartley Neita, ContributorPoliticians here and abroad quarrel and sometimes fight with each other. Much of it, of course, is playing for the gallery, and after the abuse is over they visit each other at home, and as Hugh Shearer has said more than once, they drink together and even lend each other money when they are broke.
This week I thought I would tell you a few more stories about past politicians which I hope can lessen the political heat which is being generated by what some would like to believe is the nearness of an election. To some of us, of course, this is nothing new as I have observed that Jamaica has been in a constant election campaign for the past 60 years, interrupted every now and then with the actual day of voting.
And this is a Guinness record.
Let's go back 40 years. The year ended with Madame Rose Leon resigning from the Jamaica Labour Party and announcing she was forming her own. Members of the Executive of her constituency, however, decided to invite her to try to "patch up" her differences with Bustamante.
On hearing of this Bustamante responded. "Patch up! My Party is not torn up. It's not in shreds, so there is nothing to patch up."
Then there was F.L.B. Evans, also known as "Slave Boy". It was said that he campaigned in his Westmoreland constituency by riding a donkey from town to town and village to village. He not only won his seat, but when he was angered by his neighbouring Member of Parliament, Clifford Campbell (who subsequently became Governor-General), he decided to contest Campbell's seat in the following election and beat him.
Evans was also one of the three Members of Parliament who have removed the Mace from the House. The Mace, as you probably know, is the replica of an instrument of war once used when men met each other face to face and toe to toe on the field of battle. Now, it is taken into the House by the Marshal at the start of each session of Parliament and removed by him when the session ends.
So when it is removed by anyone else, it signals the end of the meeting. Evans did so twice. So too did another Westmoreland Member, Maxie Carey, and also Keble Munn of St. Andrew. Naturally, they were each suspended by the Speaker.
Ken and Roy McNeill's father, Eustace McNeill, was a Member of the Legislative Council prior to 1944. He represented the parish of St. Catherine, and decided on one occasion to visit the Leper Home near Spanish Town as it was in his constituency.
While being escorted by the Matron of the Home, a Leper came to him. "Are you Eustace McNeill, the Legislative Council Member for this Parish?" the man asked.
Delighted that he was recognised, McNeill replied happily. "I am. Can I help you?"
"You can," the man said, picking up a cutlass. "I hear you asking the Government to move the Leper Home from here and set it up in the Cockpit country or some other wild place. Well, we've been waiting for you to come here to give you a beating."
So said, he shouted to his colleagues. But by the time they came, however, McNeill had hastily driven from the compound.
