In the interests of academic accuracy, I simply must point out to those of you who are serious readers that the section of Peter Ashdown’s article (“The problem of Creole historiography”) which was reproduced on pages 28 and 29 of last weekend’s issue of this newspaper is only that — a section. (The original article stretches from pages 142 to 152 of the Second Edition of READINGS IN BELIZEAN HISTORY, a May 1987 St. John’s College publication.)

    I chose not to reproduce the entire article, thus making it mandatory for serious readers to do their own research, because at one point Ashdown criticizes a prominent Belizean personality (now deceased), and I think that if this newspaper published the entire article, it would open an old UBAD wound.

    Now, of course, the younger Belizean generations have heard almost nothing about UBAD, and I’m not going to try to educate them in this column, for different reasons.

    I will say this, however, that after all these fifty years, I have come to the conclusion that when the UBAD riot of May 29, 1972, threatened to become an outright insurgency, as president of the organization I should have acted in a more proactive manner. I should have put down my foot, because my instincts told me at the time that it was time for us to disperse, to disappear. I had too much respect for the officer who had become inflamed, and chose to go about the business of taking some of the Miss Afro Honduras candidates to their homes in an automobile. In retrospect, I gave up my leadership that night, and, also in retrospect, that was the beginning of the end of UBAD.

    In February of 1970, a situation which was somewhat similar had developed with respect to UBAD Minister of War, Charles X “Justice” Eagan. He was twice my age, and much more experienced in the streets than I. The seditious arrests of myself and the late Ismail Shabazz had suggested to me that the ruling People’s United Party (PUP) had raised the stakes of the quarrel between us to a point where my book learning/training would become somewhat irrelevant. 

    Whatever, Justice became the de facto UBAD leader. Justice, myself, and Charles X Stamp ended up being tried in the Supreme Court in January of 1971. X Stamp and I were acquitted, but Justice went to jail.

    I want to end this short column by saying to the attorney Godfrey Smith, who is not and has never been my friend, that his research into the devastating tragedy which ended the people’s revolution in Grenada in 1983 is of massive importance. I give credit where credit is due.

    What happened in Grenada, a small Eastern Caribbean island and former British possession which was the site of the only successful black power rebellion in the 1970s (1979), is that the two major leaders, Maurice Bishop and Bernard Coard, ended up in a violent confrontation. Bishop was slaughtered by machine gun fire, the United States invaded, and Coard spent decades in jail.

    In 2022, as we Belizeans face the potential trauma of this International Court of Justice (ICJ) hearing in the months and years ahead, the pressure on our various leaders will be immense. This ICJ faceoff with Guatemala is serious business, and we can see now, 2022, that regional white power rules almost absolutely in these parts. Belizeans, we have a problem.