There was one question the lady Regina raised which intrigued us immensely: how did it come about that the powerful ?African Redemption? Garveyite movement in British Honduras in the 1920?s became a Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) which fervently sang ?God Save The King? in the late 1940?s and early 1950?s. In other words, the seminal black revolutionary movement of the twentieth century in British Honduras ended up in the middle of the century as a group loyal to the British crown.

The question is an even more important one in the light of revelations that the British considered Uganda and British Honduras as possible homes for the Zionists who wanted to establish an Israeli state, before Albion made the decision to uproot three and a half million Palestinians in 1948 and allow Israel to create the cauldron that is now the Middle East.

At all times in this country, the majority black population were aware of the violence and uncertainty, the revolutions and wars around us in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras. The majority black population were also aware of the fact that the people beyond our northern, western and southern borders were of a different ethnicity and a different religion ? they were Roman Catholic ?Spanish.?

Even up to today, the 21stcentury, you still cannot drive to Guatemala and Honduras through the south. You have to travel through the bush or go by sea. In the west, there was no road to Cayo as late as 1928 when cyclists made the first, historic, Holy Saturday Crosscountry ride/trek, and as late as the 1950?s, it took five hours and more to drive to San Ignacio. Out there in the west towards Guatemala was jungle. And in the north, Mexico was still embroiled in revolution and civil war as late as the late 1920?s. Forty years and more before that, in the 1880?s, thousands of refugees from the Caste War of the Yucatan had streamed into the Corozal and Orange Walk Districts of British Honduras, seeking food, refuge and a new way of life. Compared to Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras out there in the bush way back when, British Honduras appeared to our people as a haven of peace, law, order and discipline.

There was a large element of our people who came to admire Great Britain intensely during and after World War II (1939?1945). World War I (1914?1918) had appeared much more vague and distant. There was no radio technology in World War I to tell exciting stories of Allied victories, as the BBC did in the Second World War. (But, Regina Neal wrote, even in 1919, after the First World War, ?Belize Town?s ? small but important number of educated black and ?coloured? people ? regarded themselves as loyal British subjects and as such defenders of the Empire and of its monarch.?) The vast majority of British Hondurans became loyal fans of Winston Churchill – the ?British bulldog?, and fierce enemies of Adolf Hitler – the German Nazi. British Hondurans even had a charismatic war hero to rally behind ? the young pilot, Dickie Fairweather, had been shot down and killed over Germany in the early years of the war. Belize appeared very much British at the victorious end of World War II.

Yet, less than five years later, a full-fledged anti-colonial, anti-British, nationalist uprising had begun ? sparked by the General Workers Union (GWU) and then politicized by the People?s United Party (PUP). There was a pro-British party, the Nationalist Party (NP), which joined with the Honduran Independence Party (HIP) to form the National Independence Party (NIP) between 1957 and 1958. (The NIP later joined with the PDM and the Liberal Party to form the United Democratic Party in 1973.)

The majority black population were divided by the nationalist party politics. From the early days, in the 1950?s, middle class, pro-British blacks were accusing pro-PUP blacks of being dupes and fools being used in a ?Latinization? process by the PUP. This is an important and complex side of Belizean nationalist politics which has never been properly analyzed. We believe we can say, in retrospect, that the one thing that stood out was that the masses of Belizean ?roots? blacks detested and mistrusted the British more than they were afraid of the ?Spanish? on their northern, western and southern borders. ?Latinization?, the bogeyman of the black middle class in British Honduras, did not really frighten the black working classes. They had travelled to Honduras in the 1930?s; they had travelled to Panama in the 1940?s; and they travelled to Guatemala in the 1950?s, which is also when we began to travel in numbers through Mexico to the United States.

History has shown that the working class blacks of Belize ?read? the British correctly, that the British were treacherous and untrustworthy. Middle class blacks here can no longer hold on to their Anglophilia, but they are too timid to become African. The British continue to ?play? Belize in a way which has become more and more troubling. The problem is that middle class blacks hate the PUP to such an extent they refuse to indict the British, or even to suspect them.

Belizean blacks, both classes, began emigrating to the United States in bulk a half century ago, and it may be that the popular Belizean mind set is that we have managed to ?hedge our bets? sufficiently where the Guatemalan claim is concerned. Most Belizean families have an ?option? in the United States of America.

The thing is that the minority African American population in the United States will always be just that ? a minority, and they will remain in a permanent state of anger and dissatisfaction. Belize, now that we know how wealthy the country is, would have been our ideal option, but Albion always intended to sell us out whenever such treachery suited their interests. That is why we are up the creek now without a paddle or a pole. And that is why these are times when we must absolutely sleep ?wid wi own eye.?

Amandala. Power to the people.