Verene Shepherd | Time to reopen debate on new national heroes and heroines
In October 2007, then Prime Minister of Jamaica, the Hon Bruce Golding, appointed a committee of nine persons, including myself and the late Rex Nettleford, to review the system of National Honours and Awards. Among the Terms of Reference was one requesting the committee to consider whether “… the National Honours and Awards Act 1969, Section 5, should be amended and whether Bob Marley and Louise Bennett-Coverley, two persons frequently cited as deserving recipients, should be considered for National Hero status, or if the present complement of seven national heroes should remain.”
I will not elaborate on the deliberations, findings and recommendations of the committee here. I just want to indicate that, based on the growing advocacy around making leader of the 1760 anti-slavery war, Chief Takyi, a national hero, I suggested to the 2007 Committee that he be added to the list being considered. After all, Ka’Bu Maat Kheru, Black X and others had been lobbying for some time for Chief Takyi to be so elevated; and Ka’Bu had used her ‘Running African ‘In Search of Series’, in collaboration with the Jamaica National Heritage Trust, to turn the spotlight on this revolutionary icon, popularise his achievements and expand his biography.
Before revealing the outcome of the committee’s deliberations, and as the 263rd anniversary of the 1760 War is upon us, let me review the main aspects of the ‘Chief Takyi War’ used to support the recommendation that he be made a national hero, relying heavily on the pioneering work of Richard Hart ( Slaves Who Abolished Slavery), the 2009 Thesis by Maria Alessandra Bollettino, ( Slavery, War, and Britain’s Atlantic Empire: Black Soldiers, Sailors, and Rebels in the Seven Years’ War), as well as on my 2018 Chief Takyi public lecture and interviews with Enoch Tacky from Ghana.
Briefly, this war – which planters believe had been planned for months before, among the Ghanaian headmen on many St Mary plantations – broke out on Easter Monday 1760. The leader was Chief Takyi, probably a Fante, assisted by other chiefs, including Chief Jamaica, about which not much is known. Before daybreak on April 7, Takyi and his co-organisers and followers gathered at Trinity estate and from there made their way to Fort Haldane in Port Maria. They killed the sole guard and secured gunpowder, 40 muskets and a supply of cannon balls. The group then went through the plantations in the area, killing the surprised or sleeping white oppressors, securing more weapons, gathering more recruits and setting fire to canes and sugar works.
ARMED STRUGGLE
About 90 enslaved people from Ballards Valley, Esher, Frontier, Trinity and Whitehall joined the initial armed struggle. By dawn, hundreds more, about 50 with guns, had joined the war. But it was not long before the counter-revolution began, with planter Zachary Bayley gathering 130 fellow planters and co-opted enslaved and free Africans to attack them, killing eight and capturing four. The rest escaped into the woods; but the number of fighters soon grew to 100 or more and Bayley and his band could not contain them. Soldiers had to be called to their aid. Soon, a troop of 70 to 80 mounted militia, along with treaty-upholding Maroons and black counter-revolutionaries, was on its way to suppress the war. Lieutenant Governor Henry Moore dispatched two detachments, consisting of three officers and 60 privates each from the 49th and 74th regiments, to St Mary. He then called up the horse and foot militia of neighbouring parishes to guard against further protest. He declared martial law, sent regular troops to the borders of the parish to contain the war, and white militiamen patrolled the plantations to prevent further protest.
The torture of those caught made a public ceremonial display of white brutality. They were either whipped, hanged, burned and gibbeted alive in Kingston, Spanish Town and on plantations throughout St Mary; or exiled to Honduras and the southern USA. But enslaved Africans in St Mary, led by Chief Takyi, had made a bold bid for freedom, long before the Haitian Revolution and other 18th century liberation struggles, indeed, may have inspired them. Takyi’s bravery inspired activists to call for him to be made a national hero, a call that had grown stronger by 2007, the year in which Britain marked the bicentennial of the passing of the act to end the trafficking in enslaved peoples in which they were so heavily involved.
Let me now return to the outcome of the 2007 Committee’s deliberations. The committee designated a subcommittee to review the criteria for the Order of National Hero, and accepted the recommendation that the honour should be conferred on “an individual who has made outstanding contribution to the struggle against conquest, slavery and colonialism, for the creation of a Jamaican nation and/or subsequent development along an anti-neo-colonial path”. The larger committee also decided that the honour would be made posthumously, ruling out another case like Sir Alexander Bustamante’s, who, unlike the others, was still living when he was proclaimed a national hero of Jamaica in 1969.
TURNED DOWN
Despite the fact that all three new suggestions qualified under the criteria established, especially “or subsequent development along an anti-neo-colonial path”, the committee turned down Chief Takyi, Bob Marley and Miss Lou; and no new national hero or heroine was recommended. My objection was footnoted in the Report! While keeping the cut-off date to 1962, the committee did admit that a 1962 cut-off point still left open the possibility of admission to the Order of historical figures such as Takyi, but argued that not enough was known about him to declare him a national hero in 2007 and suggested that “a researcher be identified to write a paper justifying Tacky’s elevation to the status of National Hero for future consideration as the Committee did not have such a paper to guide it at this time”. This was despite the information I provided to members. So, the Order of National Hero remains restricted to existing national heroes so designated for having brought “irreversible fundamental and lasting change to the Jamaican nation and society, by challenging the institution of colonialism and, in so doing, have changed the course of Jamaica’s history, giving social and political freedom to its people”.
I think the time has come for the Government of Jamaica to request that the permanent cabinet subcommittee on National Honours and Awards review the Order of National Hero and revisit the public cry for Chief Takyi, Bob Marley and Louise Bennett-Coverley to be declared national heroes and heroine, respectively; add to that list if so recommended, and accept the 2007 Committee’s recommendations which did not “rule out for future consideration persons who contributed prior to 1962 and subsequently” and which also left the door open to let in Chief Takyi. There are now many more sources on this warrior forcibly taken from Ghana and relocated in St Mary, Jamaica, for a justificatory paper to be written and submitted, perhaps by the UWI, Mona History Department, hopefully before the 264th anniversary of the war he led in the interest of Jamaica’s freedom.
Send feedback to reparation.research@uwimona.edu.jm