24.5 C
Belize City
Friday, March 29, 2024

World Down Syndrome Day

Photo: Students and staff of Stella Maris...

BPD awards 3 officers with Women Police of the Year

Photo: (l-r) Myrna Pena, Carmella Cacho, and...

Suicide on the rise!

Photo: Iveth Quintanilla, Mental Health Coordinator by Charles...

From the Publisher

PublisherFrom the Publisher

Most of us adult Belizeans have spent varying amounts of time trying to figure out the contradictory psyche of Lord Michael Ashcroft. His business activities in Belize have enriched him massively and made us Belizeans very seriously indebted to him in several instances. But he has said, on more than one occasion, that he loves Belize.

Well, it is possible to love Belize, the country, and not have any real affection for the people, us human beings who call ourselves Belizeans. Lord Ashcroft does not love us Belizeans: he loves his own bank accounts.

Now the development philosophy of laissez-faire capitalism exalts the man who can rise to the top of the heap financially. In laissez-faire capitalism, anything goes, and by any means necessary. So insofar as Belize’s development philosophy is concerned, Lord Ashcroft is the ultimate superstar. He demands our respect because of his business accomplishments, which have enriched him and impoverished Belize.

Personally, I don’t dislike Lord Michael. But, I am certainly not his friend. I spend much time trying to understand him, because there is no way we Belizeans can survive this English predator without understanding what is driving him, apart from just pure money. 

So then, the thing that jumps out at us is the fact that he lived in British Honduras as a child for three years — from late 1953 to late 1956. His father had been a British soldier, and was posted here as a public officer in the colonial administration.

 The most important and sensational episode in the young Michael Ashcroft’s three years in the colony was the national election of April 1954, when the intensely anti-colonial People’s United Party (PUP) defeated the pro-British National Party (NP) by a huge margin. There were nine electoral constituencies here at the time, and the NP won only one — in Toledo, where the patriarchal Sam Vernon’s personal power propelled the NP candidate, Charles Westby, to victory in “The Forgotten District.”

 (There were four independent candidates in that election — Fred Westby in Belize West; John Smith in Belize North; Fred Hunter in Belize Rural; and William Gegg in Corozal.)

 The eight victorious PUP candidates were described as “PUP-GWU” candidates in Myrtle Palacio’s very valuable work, WHO AND WHAT IN BELIZEAN ELECTIONS 1954 to 1993. The PUP and the GWU (General Workers Union), in other words, were in a coalition in 1954. Their 1954 election victory was epic, and it was a victory for the roots people of Belize, the majority of whom were black in 1954, and it was a defeat for the imperial British, and for the Belize Estate and Produce Company (BEC), which had dominated the local economy from the nineteenth century.

The 1954 election was a very tense and emotional one in the capital city, where a third of the colony’s population lived at the time. Two of the PUP leaders and candidates, Leigh Richardson and Philip Goldson, had been jailed for sedition by the British and had served nine months in Her Majesty’s Prison in 1951. So the 1954 election was great vindication for Leigh and Philip.

 I was a child who turned seven on April 30 that year. It has always seemed to me that the most emotional contest in 1954 involved the fact that the very first PUP leader (the party was founded in 1950), Johnny Smith, had resigned from the PUP after Richardson and Goldson were jailed. The National Party did not offer a candidate in George Price’s Belize North division. Johnny Smith ran against him as an Independent candidate, clearly supported by the NP, and bitterly reviled as a “coward” and “traitor” by the PUP-GWU members and supporters whom he had deserted. (Incidentally, Mr. Price beat Smith very badly, 3 to 1, and Smith soon went into exile in the United States. In 1954, Belizeans were extremely passionate about their post-devaluation politics.)

A little English boy like Michael Ashcroft, who was attending St. Catherine Academy primary school section for privileged children, was an absolute nobody in Belize in 1954. I repeat, he was nobody, nothing. Belizeans were excited about the PUP, and about Ludwig Lightburn, who was fighting his way to fame in Mexico and the United States. Well, needless to say, nobody in 1954 has become somebody today.

In 1955, Bob Turton, Belize’s most powerful native businessman, who had first pushed his personal secretary, George Price, into Belize’s politics in 1944, died. Turton had been the most serious enemy of BEC and the British, so that when he died in 1955, it was the year immediately after his greatest victory over his hated rivals — BEC and the British. (Turton had major business connections in the United States, including the Wrigley chewing gum company in Chicago.)   

On my father’s side, I am descended from a Scotsman by the name of James Hyde way back in the late eighteenth century. Very few of us understand the complexities of what we know as the “United Kingdom” or as “Great Britain.” As I understand it, the monarchy today consists of four different peoples — English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish. (Ireland is an independent country, but Northern Ireland is a part of Great Britain.)

Lord Ashcroft is an Englishman, and the English people are the dominant force in the United Kingdom. It is a bit confusing to me, but there was a sensational episode in the history of the Scots and the English which you will find interesting. I ask your indulgence for this bit of historical aside.

In the sixteenth century, Scotland and England had two separate queens — Mary Queen of Scots had become Queen of Scotland in 1542, while her cousin, Elizabeth I, became Queen of England in 1558. The problem at that time of violent hatred between Protestant (Anglican) England and Roman Catholic Spain was that Mary Queen of Scots was a Roman Catholic. English Catholics, who were being persecuted, considered Mary the legitimate Queen of England. Protestant English were terrified that Protestant Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry VIII, might be assassinated by Spanish agents and that Mary Queen of Scots would become Queen of England, as well as Scotland. (Mary was Elizabeth’s cousin and heir to the English throne through her Tudor grandmother, Margaret, Henry VIII’s older sister. Elizabeth was the granddaughter of Henry VII, and Mary was his great-granddaughter.)

It happened that Mary became involved in a major sex scandal, which ended up with her legal husband being killed. She had to run south to Elizabeth for protection. Elizabeth held Mary in captivity for eighteen and a half years, and then Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded in 1587 with the silent consent of Elizabeth I. Beheaded, Jack. We are talking about serious people, rough people.

Check out our other content

World Down Syndrome Day

Suicide on the rise!

Check out other tags:

International