Peter Espeut | Fashioning a free society

Last week I pointed out that when every year we celebrate Emancipation on August 1 (originally in 1834) and Independence on August 6 (originally in 1962) that is a huge historical jump, which should make us think. Although the arc of history over the decades and centuries tends towards justice and progress, for Jamaica the metamorphosis has not been smooth, but has come with its dips and fallbacks.

And in fact, neither Emancipation nor Independence delivered what it promised.

At Emancipation the newly free were really not articulated into Jamaican society; their human development was not provided for by the government of the day. In slavery, the plantation provided land for housing and the cultivation of provision grounds, provided salted/pickled protein, provided an annual allocation of clothing, and paid for doctors to tend to the health of their labour force. After Emancipation, the newly free were landless and powerless and had to fend for themselves.

It was the non-Conformist churches that bought land (often in secret), subdivided it, and sold it to their members so they would gain social status and the right to vote, and established schools to teach the children (and the adults) to read.

But the planters kept tight control of the legislature, the courts, and the security forces.

BAPTIST CHURCH

I keep emphasising the role of the Baptist Church, because it was that body – not perfect by any means – that nevertheless engineered the transformation of Jamaica from slave society to free society, and they are not given sufficient credit for their substantial effort at nation-building.

In 1859-1860 the Rev Dr Edward Bean Underhill (1813-1901), Secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society (1849-1901) in England, visited the Caribbean including Jamaica, and in 1862 published an influential book The West Indies: their Social and Religious Condition. His visit came during a severe drought (which badly affected both the plantations and the peasantry), and just after deadly pandemics of cholera, smallpox and measles. The price of sugar had dropped, in some cases below the cost of production. Estates were reducing the amount of sugar under cultivation, and cutting staff. Estate work was hard to come by, and when available, wage rates had fallen – conservatively – by an average of 35 per cent. The tax burden on the poor had increased, and toll gates charged peasants on the way to market (therefore with no cash yet in their pockets) “by foot of horse and wheel of cart”. At the same time, the US Civil War (between the northern and southern states) was in full swing; food and textile prices were high.

Praedial larceny and petty theft increased; The number of prisoners in the island’s penitentiaries jumped from 283 in 1861 to 629 by 1864; in 1865 the number was 710 prisoners, 617 of them for larceny.

Jamaica in 2024 is tough, but 30 years after Emancipation, things were much, much worse than today!

Prompted by his colleagues in Jamaica, on January 5, 1865 the Rev Dr Underhill wrote a letter to the Rt Hon Edward Cardwell, British Secretary of State for the Colonies, on social conditions in Jamaica. It is too long to reproduce here, but it was an accurate picture.

On January 27 Secretary Cardwell acknowledged receipt, and advised that he had forwarded the letter to Edward John Eyre, Governor of Jamaica, who was asked to report on its contents. Were they true of false?

PERSONAL AFFRONT

Eyre clearly took Underhill’s letter as a personal affront, as well he might; Underhill’s letter directly criticised both governor and assembly, and called on the Colonial Office to conduct an official inquiry into how Jamaica had been governed since Emancipation.

Eyre had the Underhill letter printed in the Jamaica Guardian on March 21, 1865, and in addition, widely distributed it in Jamaica: “to the Custodes of parishes, to the judges and magistrates, to the Bishop of Kingston, and through official channels to the clergy and ministers of all denominations requesting them to furnish him with the materials for his reply” to Underhill. It seems that Eyre thought Underhill’s letter ludicrous, and expected widespread refutation and condemnation.

But the opposite was the result. The planter interests responded as would be expected, but the newspapers took it up, and the series of public meetings thereby convened in most of Jamaica’s 22 parishes (called “Underhill Meetings”) largely supported Dr Underhill’s statements.

The Kingston Underhill Meeting was chaired by a brown man born into slavery – George William Gordon, Member of the House of Assembly for the parish of St. Thomas-in-the-East. Samuel Clarke, a black vestryman from St. David, reportedly warned the audience that whites could no longer “keep down negroes, and although you won’t give us education we will show them that we shall yet have a position in the country”. Black Jamaican Baptist minister the Rev. Edwin Palmer, pastor at Yallahs, St David, complained that “the government was oppressive, [and] that the merchants in Kingston would employ none but white or coloured men in their stores which was a disgrace and a shame, that the time would soon come when they would be compelled to do it”.

For the first time in Jamaica’s history (and maybe the only time) a cross-section of Jamaicans of all classes, colours, and stations in life – custodes, magistrates, farmers, workers, politicians and parsons – came together as equals to discuss matters relating to the common good. The Underhill meetings “conscientised” thousands of Jamaicans as to their plight and to its causes. The system on which Jamaica’s economy, society and polity was based was openly challenged. This moment could have been – even at this early stage – the beginning of a national movement to transform Jamaica.

But that was not to be. Governor Eyre used the opportunity of the Morant Bay Riot to imprison many of the participants in these Underhill Meetings, setting back the national movement by a century.

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and antiquarian. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com