Submitted by Pachamama
Barbados is built on the notion of industry. It was, from the beginning, a highly questionable concept. At the atomic level there has been little to undergird it. Maybe it was merely aspirational but serious government could never afford such a luxury. It surely has never been associated with determined, national, long and medium term plans that would make flesh of this ‘industry’. We will look beyond the words to examine the underbelly. We will ask the questions, how could there be any real pride without industry? What is pride anyway?
There are several definitions. In common usage the dominant thinking includes the protection of adverse information Bajans would prefer no one else to discover. It is about showing a good face to the publics and masking reality. It is about maintaining ‘paling’ to hide certain activities. It is about pretending poverty not to exist. It is about assuming that we are smarter than anybody else. Or that our island is more beautiful than anywhere else. That we are highly educated and ours is the best school system in the Caribbean, at least. That racism does not exist. That politicians are elected to serve our interests. Its a false pride!
It is never to be connected to industry, in practical terms, for we would then have to deal with problems nobody wants to. The nexus of pride and industry means we will have to deal with land reform, for example, but pride alone says that one White man (COW Williams) could own 20% of the arable land. Thus, this national mindset which says that our relationship to land must be about house spots, cuts us off from the possibilities of real industrial expansion. There cannot be industrial expansion without a radical land reform. Consolidation stifles the creativity of the many and unduly elevates a perverse distortion in the distribution of wealth. Where is the pride in that?
Our pride serves to give longevity to a Westminster model which is decades behind Whitehall itself. That 48 years after political independence the landscape is still dotted with colonial impositions, avoid the best interpretations of either pride or industry. We still cling to names, in the Bank Hall for example, like Queen Mary Road, King Edward Road and so on. Elsewhere, Nelson will always remain on Broad Street and a road outside of Bridgetown will still be named after an American president. Two men, neither of whom ever came to Barbados nor had anything to do with Barbados. What pride!
National sloganeering about industry was always too thin to be futuristic. For industry requires a level of creativity, innovation which cannot be confined to static paradigms and ultra conservatism. For the pride that Bajans live is about Englishness. We are more English than the very English. And we want nothing else! The best of conservatism allows social space for ideas anathema to itself to enter and give longevity to established norms, morays, national consciousness. Radicalism has always served conservatism. Not so much in Barbados!
This country will prefer to die with its boots on than to let go of this false pride even when we have no industry. So when the present government continues to try to breathe life into a dead sugar industry it must be seen as having more to do with pride than production. More to do with maintaining certain social norms than earning foreign exchange. It is about a pride, a ‘powful’ foolishness, which stands in the face of other countries which are abandoning sugar to say to them that we can make a failed industry successful. We will never allow an industrial ethos of a bygone era to die. Not if we have any to say about it!
As with sugar, all other industrial pursuits since ‘independence’ continue to exist with governmental support. Where is the pride in that? What type of mendicancy will allow such a system to continue to exist? Why waste time with all the trappings of independence when what we really want is dependency? Dependency on international money barons to receive our surrender of sovereignty. Dependency on the local oligarchs, the politicians, the new and dying colonial power and worst of all, a dependency on the fiction that somehow we could continue like we are and somehow we could succeed.
Bajans will not accept this but something is lacking from the national mind. We travel to countries where high schools and colleges are not so interested in passing exams to get some job somewhere. Are not blinded by credentialism but instead concentrate on making things that could work, solve industrial problems and are thinking about survival in a changing world. The school system in Barbados is little different than it was 100 years ago. How can such a system do anything but reinforce certain social norms, continue to separate pride from industry, assign us to eternal dependency?
Even when a few former captains of industry are forced to conclude that we have systemic problems, old man river keeps rolling along, as if only a total collapse or the intervention of God himself could deter a misguided national determination. We have no means by which truths can be spoken in public and in a timely manner. We have no means by which to compel officials to act in our interests. We have no means by which to remove an elected dictatorship if we change our minds one year in, or at any other time. We have no means of bringing business elites to a bar of justice when we know they are constantly bribing politicians and senior civil servants. We have no means of making fundamental changes to an inherited system when we know it ain’t ‘wokking’, for the most, at least.
Where is our pride when we continue to believe that democracy is about voting from time to time? What has become of the truism that democracy is an economic system which has little to do with politics? How could it be that some could get to vote everyday, with their pocket books, and the most of us have to wait for some contrived festival once every five years or so? What is the nature of the political tribalism we have created which serves to artificially divide us but establishes a transcendent cadre which remains in power regardless to which party wins? Were is the pride in any of this? And how could anything other than false pride be produced by this system?
Even at the individual level we have, so-called artists for example, who are accepted as having some ability but are often merely copying other people’s work with pride. Yet these people are to be held up as having something unique to say. So even the ones we should expect to have iron clad self determination, to represent a robust expression of what it should mean to be Bajan, are looking elsewhere for inspiration, to copy somebody else, with pride and industry! They are no different to the businessmen who use to go Miami and drive around as they choose names for enterprises back home. Or even the lack of pride and industry which went into choosing anthem and flag.
We have always wondered why, when so many other countries were getting ‘independence’ around that time. And most countries were using earth colours (mainly red, black and green) Barbados went in a different direction and elected a broken trident at its centre. A broken trident has certain mystical connotations from the sea, not related to us directly. We would have supposed that our history could have conjured up more relevant depictions as rooted in our origins, existence. Depiction which went beyond notions of merely false pride and the lack of a serious industrial ethos.
Our national preoccupation with industry has stifled creativity and the pride from the 1960’s has, for too long, blinded us to the realities of our existence. Barbados cannot be recognized as an truly independent country. We have never celebrated independence, Christmas, birthdays or any other such occasions. In those circumstances the falsity of an independent Barbados means nothing to this writer! We will therefore refrain from the normal platitudes often conveyed at times like these, without apology!
Have you ever wondered why so many talented Barbadians choose to live abroad, contributing their skills to help develop other countries when Barbados in some cases could benefit greatly from their presence and expertise?
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