- NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 31/Aug 04:41

Is Massa Day really done?

On March 22, 1961, a few months before this country’s most divisive election and about a year before independence, PNM leader Dr Eric Williams delivered an explosive speech at Woodford Square. In those years, he was fighting the established “colonial residuals.” He began by criticising prominent businessman Sir Gerald Wight and the Guardian newspaper. Laying out his premise for “Massa Day Done,” Dr Williams began: “On December 4, 1960, the Trinidad Guardian announced that Sir Gerald Wight had joined the Democratic Labour Party (DLP)…and therefore the citizens of TT should follow the lead of Sir Gerald Wight.” Williams felt he couldn’t have got a better “Massa-type” straw man. He declared: “I poured scorn on the Guardian reminding them that our population today was far too alert and sophisticated to fall for any such claptrap.” And so his crusade began: “I told the Guardian emphatically: ‘Massa Day done.’” Now “Massa” was derived from plantation life, where the owners or bosses were considered superior, excessively dictatorial and exploitative. Were Sir Gerald, the DLP and the Guardian really part of a “Massa conspiracy”? Williams explained: “Massa was more often than not an absentee European planter exploiting West Indian resources, both human and economic.” As Williams described it, the enslaved people or indentured labourers would run up to the plantation boss with “Massa this, Massa that, Massa the other.” That is, every labourer’s little complaint or need depended on “Massa.” Today, it’s: “Minister this, minister that, minister the other.” Not only would Massa exploit the country’s resources, Williams explained, but when things got tough, he deserted the country, with families migrating too. While Massa’s table displayed “the most glaring examples of gluttony,” enslaved Africans and indentured Indians had a “rake-and-scrape” daily existence. The word “Massa” carried troubling psychological implications which account for its political durability. With image-laden phrases at the university of Woodford Square, Dr Williams was more polemicist than university lecturer. As Williams pointed out, the British government was not blind to injustice. It appointed a royal commission of inquiry in 1897 whose recommendations for relief were ignored. Another commission appointed in 1930 again condemned Massa’s rabid exploitation. But as Williams noted: “Massa was able to do all of this because he had a monopoly of political power in the West Indies which he used shamelessly for his private ends as only the DLP can be expected to emulate…” Does this “monopoly of political power” still exist, allowing politicians to use it for their private ends? Are politicians without accountability our new Massas? In this memorable speech, Williams repeated how those who monopolise political power could perpetrate social injustices. “Massa was able to do all this because he controlled political power in the West Indies and could use state funds for his private gain.” As in many places throughout history up to today, Massa didn’t feel guilty over the inhumane working, housing and food conditions he inflicted upon the enslaved and indentured labourers. He prepared his conscience by first dehumanising them, convincing himself that they were “inferior beings.” Williams told the packed crowd, “Massa developed the necessary philosophical rationalisation of this barbarous system.” In other words, if the politically powerful wish to exploit or discriminate against a lesser class, they first sanitise their conscience: they believe the lesser class is so inferior that it deserves no better. In the middle of his speech, Williams again repeated the abuse of power: “Massa was determined to use his political power for his own personal ends. He had no sense of loyalty to the community which he decimated or even to the community from which he had originally sprung.” This is where party supersedes loyalty to nation. I keep wondering whether this “abuse of political power for personal ends” still exists. Massa was anti-intellectual, said Williams. The political class remains not only anti-intellectual but has self-destructively substituted political expediency. Williams claimed Massa Day done in TT since the PNM’s advent in 1956. From workers’ rights to “made-in-Trinidad” small industries, Massa was gone. He added: “To educate is to emancipate…the PNM will go down in history as the author of free secondary education… “Massa still has his stooges,” he noted, “who prefer to crawl on their bellies to Massa.” Yes, the ghost of Massa still haunts the masses, who, not yet understanding political emancipation, persist in living under the yoke of the British political system preferred by Williams himself. The political elite rotates the “monopoly of political power.” Toning down the Massa rhetoric, the PNM leader soothingly warned: “You members of the PNM must understand once and for all…you do a great disservice to your national cause if you think that every white person or every Indian is anti-PNM or that every black person is pro-PNM.” The post Is Massa Day really done? appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.