Devon Dick

R. J. Hopkins, of the Farquharson Institute, in protesting my article 'Britain still rules Jamaica', said, "The Queen is our queen by accident of history, or is the Lord's anointed, dependent on whether you are a non-Christian or Christian" (June 1). This quotable quote is frightening!

I do not believe the British Queen is Head of State for Jamaica by accident or because she is anointed. Based on Hopkins' reasoning, I am neither a Christian nor non-Christian.

The British Queen is not our queen as an accident of history. The British did not invade, occupy and exploit Jamaica as an accident. British forces did not get lost and end up in Jamaica. The British Queen is our queen as a result of a legacy of a foreign policy of colonisation.

It was no accident the type of colonisation Jamaica experienced. George Pottinger in his 1977 PhD dissertation, Analysis and Evaluation of the Contribution of the Methodist Society to Jamaica 1938-1967, said there were two groups of colonies in the British Empire, with one group of colonies having self-government in internal matters similar to Britain such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, where there was a predominance of English settlers.

Inferior race

The other group, which was ruled by an Englishgovernor who was a representative of the Crown, treated the majority subjects as an inferior race. These colonies were located in Africa, the Caribbean and India. The type of colonialism experienced by the latter group can be defined as direct and overall subordination of one country and a people to another, on the basis of state power being in the hands of the dominating foreign power. Was it an accident that the colonies that were dominated by persons of colour were subjugated, while those dominated by Caucasians had self-government?

In addition, those colonialists who came to Jamaica, came to get rich quickly and to return to England with no intention to settle and establish systems for the proper functioning of a country. In fact, the British foreign policy still maintains colonies and will fight a war to keep its colonies. For further details about British colonies, just use the google search engine.

Is the British Queen the Lord's anointed? I did not know that people still believe in rule by divine right. We know that she was not democratically elected, but is she the Lord's anointed? I will tell you what I believe by relating a story. According to Dorothy Ann Ryall in her 1959 Ph.D. thesis about the Role of Missionaries in the Diffusion of British Culture in Jamaica, there was, in 1839, a James Beard, a Methodist class leader of many years of Bogg Estate. He inquired of Mr. Laidlaw, a special magistrate who was visiting the estate, "were the Israelites made apprentices when they came out of Egypt?"

And Laidlaw said no. And Beard asked the magistrate to swear on the Bible that it was God that had made them apprentices. When Laidlaw indicated that it was God who had anointed them to be apprentices, Beard said, "God has done us an injustice." If God has anointed the British Queen to be the Queen of Jamaica, then it seems He has done us an injustice. God would be saying that no Jamaican would ever be able to be Head of State. Why, Lord, why? Is it that we are not competent or righteous enough? The British Queen being the queen of Jamaica is no accident or anything to do with anointing but as a result of her being an heiress of a deliberate foreign policy of exploitation.