Reprinted from a previous issue.
School callin’. Find yuh class. Kittitians, what class you in? Find yuh class. Nevisians, you in a class? Well find yuh class. This time school ain no joke; is serious business. Everybody, fine yuh class.
I am a Kittitian. My school is in St. Kitts it has three classes, PAM UNEP and Labour. I am going to find one of them. It is true, I am getting old, a bit old for school, but I can’t help; as long as I am alive and can hobble about, I have to find my class and answer to my name.
I live in Basseterre but my name is on the register in Tabernacle; so now that school callin that’s where I am going to answer my name.
It is very interesting, now that the bell has rung, how everybody has lined up to find his/her class. Some people who used to sit down in a certain class have suddenly found that that was not their real class and now since, the bell has rung, they have rushed to their real class.
I hear that Johnny has found his class again. Johnny was one of the bright boys in the Labour Class of 93. In the 1993 turmoil, when Simmonds blatantly and foolishly tried to govern without a majority, Johnny was in the forefront of the unrest, heaving stones and throwing bottles all over government headquarters.
Johnny believed in the Labour cause. He ardently believed that Simmonds was wrong to hold on to power after his dismal performance in the 1993 elections. He felt that Simmonds was insensitive to the feelings of the majority of the people of St. Kitts, who voted in their four candidates with huge majorities.
Moreover Johnny felt cheated when, as Nevisian Amory was calling for fresh elections to solve the impasse of a four-four tie between PAM and Labour in St. Kitts, another Nevisian, Parry was literally slipping through the governor-general’s back gate to be sworn in, to give Simmonds five seats with which to run a government.
A government of 5 against an opposition of 6 didn’t go down well with Johnny, who took a 6-month jail term for his action.
Things soured between Johnny and the government however, and the news around the town was that “Johnny turn against Labour”
He even made his bar available for the founding of the United Natoinal Empowerment Party (UNEP) of Henry Browne who has long been his close friend.
But just when everybody was sure that Johnny was a supporter of UNEP, the bell rang, and immediately Johnny found his class, and people can now see him flexing his muscles at Dwyer Astarphan’s campaign headquarters.
Johnny is typical of many Labour supporters. They treat the interim between elections as recess time and revel in their freedom to criticize their party and even to flirt with a rival party. They openly express their grievances and even swear not to vote for anybody again. When the bell rings however, they hasten to rejoin their ranks. They find their class.
Some months ago a friend looked me straight and said, “Boy Washie, Abba no better than Sabba.”
He must have noticed my look of surprise; for he knew that I knew that he was a big Labour man. “Boy, Washie,” he continued, “They ain no-good, alladem is the same. I-done wid dem.”
The night after the bell rang, I ran into him. His shirt and cap were red. He said: “Washie, all eight.”
That’s how St. Kitts people behave. They are diehards. St. Kitts people don’t change their political allegiance very readily No matter their many grievances and disappointments with the party which they support, no matter how they buse and cuss, when it comes to the crisis of an election campaign, they always find their roots/their party/their class.
I remember, many years ago when Robert Bradshaw kept his meetings at the Park, one night, a group of radical supporters including Son Crossman and Tuckett had him on the defensive. They confronted him, criticized him and forced him to answer their searching questions.
The way these men behaved, it was like an open rebellion. Anyone would believe that they were done with Bradshaw’s party forever.
Yet by the time the next election was called these New Town stalwarts were right there, solid as a rock standing at the gate to repel the onslaught of the opposition. They galvanized support for Glasford and helped him to beat Simmonds in the last ballot box by a narrow margin.
Although at every election there is the strident cry TIME FOR A CHANGE, if you ask me, change in elections in St. Kitts do not come quite so easily, because under normal circumstances party supporters do not easily withdraw their support from their parties. It takes a grievance as powerful as a category five hurricane to uproot a supporter from one party and transplant him into another party.
That is probably why it is the youth who change the government. After 15 years those who were children of 5 and 10 when an incumbent party got into power, take 10 and 15 years to cast their first vote against the Government, which they grew up under and learnt to hate.
The most interesting aspect of this finding your class is the way it plays out in the sister island of Nevis.
In 1960, Eugene Walwyn stormed the scene with the message that Nevisian politicians had no place in St. Kitts. It was a rousing message. It aroused the Nevis People to March towards Secession. On Easter Monday 1960, they made their first historic trek across the Channel to Government House in St. Kitts Petitioning for Secession.
It did not take long for Mr. Walwyn to decide that this was an illusive dream and when Robert Bradshaw rang the bell in 1966 he very deftly found his class in Bradshaws school and all but betrayed his own dream and that of those whom he inspired with it. He served as Bradshaw’s Attorney General until the people of Nevis voted him out of office.
Simeon Daniel and the NRP took the place of Walwyn and his party. The cries for Secession rose to a feverish temperature, reflected in an unofficial referendum in which 95% of the voters of Nevis favoured Secession
Temptation appeared in the guise of a coalition Government in 1980 and the NRP was diverted from its quest. Simeon Daniel, Ivor Stevens and Ural Swanston, became ministers in a coalition in which they were clearly outsmarted by the People’s Action Movement.
The people of Nevis reacted in typical style. They replaced Simeon Daniel whom they once loved with Vance Amory and the Concerned Citizens Movement. It was clear that the Nevis People knew where their class was better than the Nevis politicians.
This message was not lost on Vance Amory, when he had the offer to join a coalition and become Prime Minister in 1993. Mr. Amory’s instinct for self-preservation out weighed his ambition for high office. He knew that he would be the Prime Minister for the shortest possible time; that the coalition would soon breakup and that there would be a fresh election, which would in all likelihood end in a Labour victory.
After what happened to Simeon Daniel, Vance Amory would not take the risk of being marginalized by the Government in which at a time of crises he had played a pivotal role.
The Nevisians rewarded him in the subsequent local elections by increasing his majority by two.
It is obvious that Mr. Vance Amory knows where his class is and where his interest and that of his people lie.
