On the heels of historic visits to the island this year by USA president Barack Obama (April) and UK Prime Minister David Cameron (September), last strong Jamaica attempted, for the second time this year, after The University Singers’ opera, 1865, to re-write (if not re-right) part of its own history. On 25/10/15, more or less 150 years to the day of the gruesome resolution of Morant Bay Rebellion, Pan-Africanist Attorney-at-Law Bert Samuels’ dramaturgy, directed by Michael Holgate, The Trial of Governor Edward John Eyre, was enacted in the new courthouse in Morant Bay, St Thomas, eastern Jamaica.The rebellion, which began as a protest against the harsh conditions facing the Afrikan population in “post-slavery” colonial Jamaica ended with over 1000 homes destroyed, the flogging of several hundred and the brutal massacre of 439 (official figures) – making martyrs out of eventual national heroes Paul Bogle, who had lead the rebellion and influential businessman, landowner and Politician George William Gordon who was also a vociferous critic of Eyre’s governorship. In the aftermath of the massacre the Jamaican legislature passed an Act of Indemnity exempting Eyre and the military officers and civilian officials under his authority of all legal liability for their actions. For its part the UK government responded by suspending Eyre from his governorship in early December 1865. But following an investigation their Royal Commission of Inquiry found that Eyre had responded with “skill, promptitude and vigour” in quelling the rebellion.
Fast forward a century and a half and Samuels’ play sees Eyre tried for conspiracy to murder all 439, represented by four victims: Bogle and Gordon as well as Mary Ward and Leticia Geohagen, as a form restorative justice. After deliberations of less than five minutes the jury found Eyre guilty of all counts.
It is important to note that Samuels’ work was not only written on behalf of Jamaica’s National Commission on Reparations, his dramaturgy could be said to follow in the tradition cathartic ritual dramas like the Nation of Islam’s The Trial or St. Paul Community Baptist Church’s The Maafa. Such efforts are consistent with what USA based playwright and educator Paul Carter Harrison terms The Drama of Nommo: “The black theatre is a Spirit House where the collected energies of black people coalesce to define their peculiarly humanistic place in a ravaged society…” (Harrison, The Drama of Nommo, p 196)
The reparatory process in Jamaica has a range of elements to address as evidenced on the one hand by the Daraine Luton’s February 27, 2015 article in the Jamaica-Gleaner: “150 years after the Morant Bay Rebellion … St Thomas begs for development,” and on the other there is what University of the West Indies Professor Verene Shepherd had referred to as “the lingering legacies of that period… anti-black racism masks as classism and manifests itself in the hierarchy of privilege and poverty.”
However, not everyone appears moved by the transformative process embodied in Bert Samuels’s dramaturgy. In a correspondence to the Jamaica Observer prolific letter writer and ardent contrarian Michael A Dingwall dismissed the trial as being organised by “hardened pan-Africanists, Rastafarians and anti-white racists (some posing as credible historians) who are mostly black,” adding, “Those who are planning this trial that will become a mockery should learn from the British and let those who died in those riots rest in peace.”
In spite of Dingwall’s contentions, the Jamaica-Gleaner hailed the production “a success,” with author Bert Samuels adding that the guilty verdict brings “closure” to the people of St Thomas. What might be closure for the people of St Thomas, may also represent an opening for Jamaica at large, after all it was Trinidad born activist Claudia Jones while articulating the theme of the first Carnival in the UK made the assertion, “A people’s art is the genesis of their freedom.”
So we ask the question,
Is art fuelling a resurgent revolutionary movement in Jamaica?
- What is the purpose of trying Governor Eyre 150 years after the event?
- Should those who died during the rebellions be left to “rest in peace”?
- How does this play assist the reparations cause?
- Will the guilty verdict really bring “closure”?
- Does the interim National Afrikan People’s Parliament plan to produce an dramaturgy?
Our special guests are:
Bro. Ldr. Mbandaka: Resident guest who is Spiritual Leader of the Alkebu-Lan Revivalist Movement and UNIA-ACL Ambassador for the UK. A veteran activist of over 30 years standing, a featured columnist in The Whirlwind newspaper and author of Mosiah Daily Affirmations and Education: An Africentric Guide To Excellence.
Bro. Bert Samuels: is a Pan-Africanist Attorney-at-Law and partner in Law firm Knight Junor and Samuels, where he is Head of litigation. He graduated from the University of the West Indies (Law) in 1977 and the Norman Manley Law School in 1979. Later that year he was admitted to practice law and has practicing at the bar for 36 years. The Dramaturgy The Trial of Governor Edward John Eyre is Bro. Bert’s first his first effort of which he says: “I played the role of 9 characters nonstop with 4 glasses of water and my daughter/attorney Safiya was my only “audience” and after 3½ hours it was all over without a break!”
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