Remembering the 'good old days'

Hartley Neita, Contributor

There is a friend of mine who believes that under colonial rule - i.e. when we were governed by Britain - those were halcyon days for Jamaica.

Young Jamaicans, he says, got first-class education. Young boys and girls did not have to go to university - there was no such institution here then - and they got their degrees through correspondence courses.

The few who were able to have the funds mobilised for them to pursue tertiary education in England, Canada and the USA, went to great universities, such as the University of London, McGill and Yale which were not the intellectual ghettos which ours is now.

Law students went to Gray's Inn and Lincoln's in London, and not to the Norman Manley Law School in Mona.

They were, therefore, better equipped to practise law in Jamaica than our home-grown graduates.

The police force, too, he claims, was far better than what we now have.

After all, they were led by English and Irishmen, some of whom had no previous senior service in the constabulary in their homelands, or anywhere.

He speaks constantly, with contempt, about our local leaders.

He derides the Jamaican police for killing more than 20 persons in the fracas in West Kingston in July, although there is no empirical evidence that this was so.

Not a word, however, about the killing of the four civilians at the United Nations offices in Afghanistan earlier this week by the US Air Force.

Enlightening

But let us take a little time out to look at the 'good old days'. I remember them with joy, and I am glad I lived in those years.

For me, it was a great learning experience, for I saw the change from propeller to jet planes, from Model-T Ford motor-cars which had to be started with a crank handle, and chugged their noisy way on our marl and stone roads, to the gentle purring of the Audis and Volvos on our highways.

From gramophones to stereo sound, and from cooking with firewood in out-houses to cooking with gas in indoor kitchens.

In those 'good old days', women could not become Justices of the Peace, or even sit as jurors. One judge even offered to excuse some of the early gentle sex who sat in the jury box because of the morbid nature of the details of the case they would be hearing.

Women could not vote until they were 25 years of age, while men could at age 21, and even then they had to take a literary test. Women could not become soldiers or join the police force.

And they were employed only as secretaries in the Civil Service. And if they fell in love they could co-habit with their men but could not marry them. If they did they had to resign.

A Jamaica male civil servant could, if eligible, enjoy paid travel for himself, his wife and up to two children under 18 years of age, to England for a six-month vacation, and return.

But in later years when married women could remain in the service the passages of their husbands and children were not paid for.

Entitlements

In the good old days, the highest post to which a Jamaican policeman could aspire, was that of Sergeant Major.

And the senior officials in the Government, and the Heads of Government departments were either English importees or the sons of English gentry living in Jamaica.

Permanent Secretaries in the Civil Service were entitled to a swivel chair with a cushion. The next-in-line were also provided with swivel chairs with cane seats, sans cushions. The third-in-line had swivel chairs with wooden seats.

The heads of our churches and the majority of parsons, even in deep rural areas, came from England, Wales, Scotland, the USA, and Germany. In fact, there were some members of congregations who would not take communion from a Jamaican assistant priest.

And 40 years ago, the parochial fathers in St. Thomas did not want Paul Bogle's statue as it was too black.

And girls could not do the high jump, or run the hurdles or race over distances above 100 yards.

In their athletic sports, too, their events were egg-and-spoon races, sack races and needle-and-thread competitions.

Great fun, of course, but then they were of the gentler sex.

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