Louis Marriott, Contributor
This is the 18th in a series of articles reliving the years up to Independence by a journalist/broadcaster whose childhood and maturation coincided with Jamaica's.
SHORTAGES and price increases resulting from World War II were causing havoc in Jamaica. Grocers used the shortages to get rid of overtime stock. They took chances by flouting regulations imposed by the Competent Authority, the Government agency charged with maintaining equity in the marketplace. The grocers married unwanted goods to scarce items in demand. To get that pound of rice or flour, the consumer had to settle as well for something that neither she nor the shopkeeper wanted.
Daddy's fishing and cultivating served the family well in those days, but there was a memorable breach in his programme of self-reliance. The family got its meat from the local butcher, Mr. Falconer, whose animals were allowed to graze on the tall grass at the back of our premises.
On one occasion, the curried goat's mutton that we had for dinner tasted awful as well as awfully strange. Soon after, we discovered that Mr. Falconer's donkey Jack, our favourite among his animals, was missing. No amount of questioning could elicit a clear answer from the butcher as to the whereabouts or fate of Jack.
Besides shortages, price inflation, rationing and air raid drills, all direct results of the war, there were rumours of enemy submarines anchoring in Kingston Harbour and of German sailors shopping for goods on King Street and for services in brothels on Hanover Street.
During the mid-year school holidays in 1942, when I had just turned seven, I was packed off to spend a fortnight with the family of my maternal great aunt May on Mount Rosser, a kilometre above the Ewarton town centre.
Aunt May's husband claimed to be African, chanted in strange tongues, and chose to be called Daraho, but his official name was decidedly Anglo-Saxon. He had been involved in a transaction with Daddy involving the custody of Daddy's goat Shirley, which once lived with us at Berwick Road.
Two of my maternal cousins had immediately preceded me on holiday at Mount Rosser. They had profoundly upset Aunt May and Daraho by frequent pointed references to the uncannily close resemblance between Shirley, whom Daraho had reported to have died, and a goat that was very much alive and kicking with several offspring in his herd. Alone, I now bore the brunt of my hosts fury as my offending Kingston cousins were safely back in the bosom of their immediate family. My hosts never allowed me a moment's peace of mind, no doubt mindful of the adage that 'If yu cyaan ketch Quaco, yu ketch im shut'.
After two or three days, I had had enough. At dinner, I told them that indeed their goat bore a striking resemblance to Shirley. The following morning at about 4:30, before Daraho would have gone to the field, I stole out of the house with my suitcase containing all the personal effects I had there, struggled down the hill and walked the 12 torturous kilometres to Linstead.
In Linstead, I inquired about the location of a garage owned by Dudley Graham, husband of Aunt Lilla, Daddy's sister. A kind policeman walked me to Uncle Dudley's garage, helping with my luggage. Aunt Lilla sent a telegram to tell my parents that I was safe and sound with her in Banbury, a village near Linstead. I nurtured within me the hope that no one would tell Aunt May and Daraho that I was accounted for.
I spent a very enjoyable fortnight in Banbury with Aunt Lilla, Uncle Dudley and their several children, mostly girls. It was my first sojourn out of the Corporate Area of Kingston and St. Andrew. My cousin Bob and I shot birds out of trees with slingshots, which we made from Y-shaped pieces of wood, strips of rubber from old tubes of bicycle wheels and leather from the tongues of retired shoes. I got thrills from picking navel oranges and tangerines from trees for the first time and tasting honey from the hive of Mr. Harvey, a neighbouring beekeeper. I was amused by the morbid fear of duppies that the villagers harboured. This fear was compounded by their dread of a jackfruit tree that hung menacingly over the only road between Linstead and Banbury, because every jackfruit tree was notorious as the Mecca of duppies. Bob and I made a habit of standing near the jackfruit tree and enjoying the body language of pedestrians who were obliged to go past it.
Back home, I had a playful scuffle over raw okras with Olive Bascombe, who was fostered by one of my aunts. Olive was about five years my senior, was deliciously naughty, taught us many tricks, and was enormously popular with me, my siblings and maternal cousins. When we scuffled over the raw okras, which I had produced in the bed Daddy allotted me, it was all in fun. But a Royal Engineers (RE) soldier married to Aunt Daisy, one of my mothers sisters, apparently didn't understand that the scuffle was a game.
The soldier, very unpopular in the family because he was rumoured to be a wife-beater, approached me, taking off his soldiers belt to flog me. I would have none of it. I retreated to a pile of stones. By then everyone in the family except the hapless soldier knew that I was deadly with ground apples. I pelted the man from Up Park Camp, who was then seen in his RE uniform, stones flying about his ears, pedalling his bicycle furiously westward along Berwick Road to the wild amusement of the neighbourhood.
In Jamaica as a whole, there was much tension, as an already dire socio-economic situation was exacerbated by the effects of the war. There was fear that the result would be social unrest.
The demand for constitutional change, which was kick-started by the events of 1938, especially the formation of the People's National Party (PNP), was given a new thrust with the forging of co-operation among the emerging nations progressive forces. The PNP adopted a Statement of Policy at its annual conference in September 1942 which read, inter alia: The unanimous approval of the (Legislative Council) Elected Members Association, the PNP and the Federation of Citizens' Associations of a form of constitution is of the first importance and the Party will do all in its power to maintain that unity. The following month, the three groups signed a memorandum embodying joint proposals for a new constitution which they sent to the British Secretary of State for the Colonies through the Governor.
For his part, the Governor, Sir Arthur Richards, continued along his autocratic path, using the emergency war regulations to silence opposition and dissent. Seeing in the socialist PNP a greater menace than the trade union movement, he systematically mended his fences with Bustamante, now signalling political ambitions, and zeroed in on the left wing of the party.
On November 3, 1942, he detained the 4Hs the brothers Ken and Frank Hill, Richard Hart and Arthur Henry, leaders of the Trades Union Council (TUC), the umbrella organisation for a number of small unions and the radical element of the PNP. He had earlier imposed severe restrictions on strikes and other forms of industrial action and had outlawed unions whose leadership included persons outside the workforce they represented. Richards was ordered by the Colonial Office to rescind this latter order, which he did a fortnight after interning the 4Hs. The Daily Gleaner reported in mid-December 1942 that the Jamaica Constabulary Force now had a Special Branch comprising three officers, a Detective Sergeant and a number of sub-officers and men. The report did not specify the role or functions of the Special Branch, but in practice it seemed to be concerned with monitoring the activities of trade unions and political parties, especially those on the left of the socio-political spectrum.
Louis Marriott is a journalist and broadcaster, a former BBC radio producer/presenter and Press Secretary to the Prime Minister of Jamaica.
