Vendors want purge of colonial-era street names in Kingston

As the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge prepare to visit Jamaica today on the second stop in a three-country Caribbean tour, local vendors have called for the renaming of streets and places honouring the monarchy in the capital.

Royal visits have long stoked controversy in the north Caribbean island, which celebrates its 60th year of political Independence but still clings to colonial-era institutions such as the Commonwealth and the Privy Council, its final appellate court.

Perhaps nowhere in the island is there an abundance of odes to Britannia as in Kingston, with Victoria Pier and a clutch of corridors such as King, Duke, East Queen, and Princess streets.

Karole Stubbs-Jamieson, immediate past president of the Kingston Craft Market, said the time has come for the island to honour its own icons and celebrate its legacy rather than venerate colonial rulers.

Stubbs-Jamieson said, in a Gleaner interview, that she would prefer to see the names of national heroes and Jamaican sprint stars such as Usain Bolt and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, as well as reggae icon Bob Marley, stamped on the streets of Kingston.

That view is shared by Lincoln ‘Jimmy’ King, who has sold pet fish for more than 40 years near the intersection of King and Tower streets.

“Shoulda all have one Nanny Street, Paul Bogle Street, Louise Bennett Street and dem way deh,” he said, referring two of Jamaica’s national heroes and, latterly, the country’s most famous folklorist who elevated Patois into poetry.

Stubbs-Jamieson believes that the renaming of streets and places would be a solid step towards burnishing Brand Jamaica, a move she said would help erase the memory of British hegemony.

“I would say honour the heroes, the people who have fought for this island Jamaica, persons who have made significant contribution to we culture and growth,” she said.

Black Lives Matter and nationalistic movements have tapped a groundswell of fury against white supremacy and colonial power, toppling dozens of statues and scrubbing from public spaces names that idolised political and military leaders.

One by one they have fallen, confederacy advocates, slaveowners – including the removal of the statue to Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson in Bridgetown, Barbados.

But despite strong anticolonial sentiments here, the Jamaican Government has not embarked on a campaign to remove sculptures of monarchic supremacy or sought to change the street names of Kingston that are rich with royal deference.

Steve Lawrence, a craft dealer on the No. 1 Pier in downtown Kingston, said that colonial names belong to a bygone era, emphasising that it was time to “change up things”.

Lisa Tomlinson, a Caribbean studies lecturer at The University of the West Indies, Mona, believes that Jamaica has not done enough to evolve culturally.

Officialising Jamaican Creole as a means of cultural cleansing and self-identity is a key step that should have been taken, she said.

And although the Queen is merely the titular head of state, Tomlinson said there remain too many reminders of colonial power in public spaces.

“Many of the ceremonial activities held in Jamaica resemble Britishness,” Tomlinson remarked during a Gleaner interview on Monday, referencing as well the convention of judicial wigs and military parades.

The renaming of streets is “a minor start”, the academic said, but she insists there needs to be more meaningful reform.

“There needs to be a profound attitude change in the negative ways we view ourselves, often through colonial perspectives of inferiority,” said Tomlinson.