Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 24/Sep 04:55

Kambon: Examine Lady Young

The inspiration for the Caribbean Freedom Project began with former prime minister, the late Basdeo Panday questioning why Trinidad and Tobago still had a major street bearing the name of Lady Young. Despite some criticisms made later in the press, Caribbean Freedom project director Shabaka Kambon said Panday’s views inspired the project that evolved into one that led a national conversation about Christopher Columbus and his public veneration in regional spaces. That eventually led to the removal of Columbus’ statue from a square on August 6 by the Port of Spain City Corporation. Kambon and Newsday began a series taking a detailed look at monuments, statues and street names and their significance to the current social landscape. The series began by looking at former governor Sir Ralph Woodford. Kambon is now suggesting that a closer look is needed at the road bearing Lady Young’s name. The picturesque roadway links the Eastern Main Road, from Morvant Junction, to the Queen’s Park Savannah. This is not the only reminder of Lady Young’s presence in TT but the Anglican Christ Church in Cascade bears a plaque which reads: “Laid by Lady Young 17 November, 1938.” [caption id="attachment_1180032" align="alignnone" width="1024"] The Anglican Christ Church in Cascade bears a plaque which reads: "Laid by Lady Young 17 November, 1938."[/caption] In a face-to-face interview with Lady Young Road as the backdrop, Kambon said, “When I was much younger and on one of those occasions when the late Basdeo Panday was the prime minister of the country, he came to the Emancipation Village as was the custom of prime ministers since ANR Robinson in 1985. “He gave an incredible speech in which he mentioned that we had all these street names dedicated to people who were so racist against both Africans and Indians. He highlighted Lady Young and that was actually the first moment I started to think critically about the people and values we honour in our public spaces.” Lady Young presents people with the opportunity to think about what colonialism really was like, he added. She came to TT in 1938 with her husband, TT’s 12th British governor, Hubert Young. “They came from Rhodesia, which was the previous name for Zimbabwe, one of the most notoriously racist white settler colonies in the world.” For him, the story of the Youngs required a short pit-stop into the history of former UK prime minister, Robert Arthur “Lord Salisbury” Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil. Rhodesia was named after him, Kambon said. He added that that prime minister was famous for the Dying Nation speech delivered in 1898 in which he said it was natural for the world’s “stronger” nations to encroach on the world’s weaker nations. It was informed by biologist, naturalist Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest. “When they looked at the world through that lens, already establishing themselves in their imagination as the superior race, they would gradually encroach on the weaker races who would die out, in time. “There was a genuine sense among Europeans that they were the superior race and the inferior races were in a process of gradually being supplanted as they (Europeans) populated more and more of the world.” [caption id="attachment_1180031" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Caribbean Freedom project director Shabaka Kambon.[/caption] That was the philosophical basis for white-settler colonialism in that period, Kambon said. TT played a significant role in that. The University of the West Indies’ (UWI) predecessor was called the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture (ICTA) and it was set up by Lord Alfred Milner. This was not for the purpose of educating Caribbean people but to act as a place for Europeans who were about to go off into Africa, Asia and other parts of the world to learn the art of tropical agriculture and effectively occupy the lands of non-white people in different parts of the world, he added. Hubert and Lady Young came from Rhodesia where the overriding sentiment about race was shaped by these ideas, Kambon said. Hubert had distinguished himself there by suppressing the effort of African workers, particularly coal miners, to receive just and fair wages. “He was handpicked to come to TT, at that time, in the 1930s, when Butler (Tubal Uriah), Cipriani (Arthur Andrew) and the labour leaders were trying to do the same thing in TT.” But TT’s labour leaders of that time were no joke and, even before Hubert came, they did research on him and marched through Port of Spain with signs which read: “TT is not Rhodesia and Welcome Sir Hitler Young.” The leaders branded him as such because there was some facial hair similarity to Adolf Hitler, Kambon said. During the Youngs’ short stay in TT (1938-42), their dislike of the country was well-documented, Kambon said. Hubert described Trinidadians as hateful and said they treated foreign dignitaries and their wives very badly. “His wife would have described Trinidad as a kind of exile.” The Youngs found it difficult to get along with anyone in the country including the white, colonial elite at the time, he said. For example, he said, Lady Young decided to set up a local branch of the British Red Cross Society as it was difficult for her to make friends and she felt this would endear her to people. “There was a coloniser who decided to set up, just after Lady Young set up her own version and just as World War II was starting, a similar type of organisation to provide relief to the war effort.” He added that everyone in the local elite was turning to the other woman’s charity and they had little interest in Lady Young’s. “She became jealous and upset... “When she was leaving the country, she made her famous statement, to the effect that the white people in TT had become inferior in a sense because of their proximity to Africans and Indians, whose cultural practice and ethos had come to govern the society.” Before the Youngs left TT in 1942, her husband seized the opportunity to have his wife’s named plastered on it. Hubert commissioned the road in 1939. When the road was opened 17 years later, TT was burdened with this “hateful, racist woman’s name seemingly in eternity,” Kambon said. But now that the country has begun critically assessing the people and values that it celebrates, Kambon thinks the time has come to revisit Lady Young’s Trinidadian legacy. Even though some argue that TT’s preeminent historian Dr Eric Williams did not challenge the names of some of these and ask why should others, Kambon thinks Williams would have got around to it had he lived. Kambon said Williams initiated the process of critically assessing the people and values we celebrate from as early as independence. In 1962, Williams renamed Marine Square to Independence Square in honour of the country’s change. He also renamed Princess Margaret Highway to Uriah Butler Highway. The process of that name change was completed under George Chambers. Williams also had intentions of renaming Milner Hall at the UWI but he did not do so at the time because Lady Alice was chancellor at the time he was in power and her family were friends with Milner’s family and felt it would have been an embarrassment to her had he done so. “He knew Milner was not fit and proper to be celebrated at the UWI,” Kambon said. It was renamed Freedom Hall in 2017 after a student-led campaign to have it done. Kambon believed had Williams not died when he did he would have instructed those in his party – the PNM – to continue the process he began. He said in the 1980s as people removed further from the priorities of independence and anti-colonialism, a new impulse emerged and people began to accept the people and monuments bequeathed to them by colonialism. Newsday will take a monthly look at some monuments, along with guests, and their importance to the TT landscape.   The post Kambon: Examine Lady Young appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.