Gareth Manning, Gleaner Writer

This is the final of a five-part series on the findings of a commission of enquiry conducted by the late Puisne Judge of the Supreme Court, Justice Ronald Small into the forced eviction of residents from Wilton Gardens (Rema) on February 2, 1977.

THE REASONS leading to the eviction of 40 families in Rema on February 2, 1977 are two-fold.

On one hand, it is said that the opposition Jamaica Labour Party, (JLP) led by Edward Seaga, was encouraging squatters in that community not to submit written applications for residence or pay rent for the premises they occupied. It was alleged this was done in order to embarrass the government.

On the other hand, Remaites say they were unable to pay because Junglists were attacking them whenever they went to pay their monthly dues at the Housing Office in Arnett Gardens or even the ministry's headquarters on Hagley Park Road, Half-Way Tree. They were being attacked they say because they were being pressured to adopt the PNP socialist persuasion. To add to this, a Municipal General Election was around the corner and a George Freckleton of Sites and Services was campaigning on a PNP ticket.

EVICTING NON-COMPLIANT RESIDENTS

Whatever the situation was, the Housing Ministry and particularly Minister Spaulding, was determined to evict non-compliant residents despite warnings from the security forces that an eviction exercise at that time would be dangerous.

Earl Henry of the Ministry of Housing and an anonymous witness only referred to as witness Z in our documents gave two contrasting views of what transpired that day and who and what were ultimately responsible for the eviction.

Mr. Henry gave evidence that suggested Mr. Spaulding was resolute in his stance to evict illegal residents despite warnings from the security forces, but was prepared to be sympathetic to the evicted.

But as his own testimony revealed, the ministry was already prepared to replace the evicted with over 20 other families from Hopeful Village and Trench Town, two People's National Party strongholds. The families arrived during the eviction exercise. Mr. Henry was slow to admit that their arrival was deliberate:

"Would you say it was timed to coincide with the eviction, the arrival was timed to coincide with the eviction?" Mr. Daley, who represented the Wilton Gardens Association, asked him. To that Mr. Henry responded: "I can't say it was timed. I can say that they arrived at a particular time, but as to the timing as to whether somebody was manipulating the system?"

Moreover, Mr. Henry's testimony also revealed that the Housing Ministry had employed about 45 people from Hopeful Village to help with the eviction. He claimed not to have knowledge of whether they were paid or who led them, but said he heard one man had been paid $850. He said he did not see Remaites being beaten by these folk nor did he see any furniture being destroyed, but nevertheless, during the confusion that ensued Mr. Henry recalled that he saw bullets hit the wall of the police station while he stood several hundred yards away from it.

The Housing Ministry's sympathy towards the evicted tenants also could not be quantified based on events of the day. Mr. Henry had testified that the ministry and he were sympathetic towards ill tenants and others with special needs, yet during the eviction a mother of fourteen children was chased out of her home. She had just given birth on January 27 and had returned home from the maternity ward on the 29th. A pregnant woman in her fourth month of pregnancy was also evicted. During the violence she had a haemorrhage while on the road and had to be rushed to the Victoria Jubilee Hospital, leaving her home ransacked and her three children alone. The ministry also seemed to have forgotten to extend mercy on a 59-year-old widow who had been blind for close to 40 years; a young mother who was shot in the arm and left deformed and a crippled dumb mother, who were all evicted.

An anonymous witness, witness Z gave more evidence that suggested the Housing Ministry and Mr. Spaulding were not sympathetic to the plight of Remaites.

HARASSMENT FROM COMRADES

He provided evidence in private that Remaites were finding it difficult to pay their rent because of harassment from Comrades at the ministry's Half-Way Tree office on Hagley Park Road. He testified that an old woman named Mother Mary was mobbed by a group of about four men when she went to pay her rent. He said because of the incident no other resident has been there to pay rent.

"Then if she is so old your Honour, and went up there and them mob her, much more me," he said.

Witness Z said while a formal letter was not written to the minister about why residents were not paying rent, a number of representations were made. He said Mr. Seaga had made the problem known to the minister on behalf of the people.

He said on the day of February 2, 1977 he saw about 50 men coming down East Road in Rema with machine and shot guns. He said they came with the police. They came down the street before the police, he testified, and started firing shots. He said he saw the police chasing a man and they fired shots at him. Afterwards he heard one man was dead.

He said after the man was killed a number of trucks turned up on the scene loaded with the people. The occupants of the truck then made their way into one of the buildings with beds, mattresses and other kinds of furniture.

"When I went there (to the building in which he lived) the children them gone, the baby mother gone, I don't know where them went to until long after I saw them come back," he said.

However, in his own testimony some time later, the Minister of Housing himself, Anthony Spaulding testified that the eviction exercise was peaceful.

"Evictions are not carried out on political grounds, it has nothing to do with political persuasion," he said in his testimony. He said the ministry was there to evict illegal tenants only, and was not aimed at people who were in arrears. In fact, he said, there was an effort to have those who were not legally occupying the premises to do so, but he had only received two applications in that regard. They were approved.

"There was not one directive from me to disturb anybody regardless of how much money they may have owed if they were legally situated in a unit," he claimed.

He accused the Opposition Leader, Edward Seaga and The Gleaner of blowing the whole exercise out of proportion. Mr. Seaga had issued a statement to the press the day after the incident condemning the PNP and accusing them of evicting JLP tenants to allow comrades to occupy the premises. Mr. Spaulding denied the accusations made by Mr. Seaga.

"It was not what happened at Rema that caused the enquiry, it was what Edward Seaga and The Gleaner did, what they manipulated. The investigation should be about wanton attack on people's life by the army about 2:30 that afternoon," he said. Mr. Spaulding testified that Mr. Seaga held a meeting in Rema a day prior to the eviction to organise a machinery to disrupt the eviction process. He was, however, unwilling to divulge the source of his information.

In his summary of Mr. Spaulding's testimony, the Commissioner, Ronald Small, drew this conclusion:

"The evidence, as I see it, shows that for him it is not as confrontation of People's National Party versus Jamaica Labour Party, but the Honourable Anthony Spaulding out doing and out classing Edward Seaga and the Daily Gleaner.

He holds that Seaga and his cohorts Papa Son have been undermining the ministry in particular and the PNP. Government by contrived defiance in spreading propaganda of non-payment of housing dues and securing the Gleaner Company to give adverse publicity and untruthful reports of activities of his ministry.

NON-PAYMENT OF HOUSING DUES

It is a fact without the slightest shadow of a doubt that the incidence of non-payment of housing dues has grown to alarming proportions within recent years. It is also a fact that with very little contradiction that the people of Rema­ the JLP stronghold, were inhibited in attending at the Housing offices in Rema and Arnett Gardens by reason of violence or the threat of it exhibited by the Junglists or PNP adherents in the north.

It is also a fact that the alternative methods of approach though roundabout and cumbersome could have been employed to keep these payments up to date, but that strong and subtle campaigning by adherents of the Jamaica Labour Party has made vast inroads on the efforts of the ministry officials.

Mr. Spaulding naturally sought to stem the rising tide of arrears and first addressed his efforts to those occupiers where he described as "squatter", that is those who have failed to submit written application on prescribed forms and obtain his approval for tenancy.

The legal owner, as indeed he is, he found is entitled to evict all those whom he had not by word or conduct approve to be his tenant- irrespective as to whether the evictee had been paying in the name of an accepted legal tenant. The practice of the evicted to reoccupy as soon as the eviction party had turned its back was to be stopped at all costs ­ come what may ­ on the occasion of the eviction exercise scheduled to take place on the 2nd of February. All this I find to be fully established by the evidence. But the events of that day brought untold suffering to many and have left a horrible stain on the pages of this nation's history as the rest of the world looks on and witnesses the sordid performance as shown by the news media."