By Dr Frank McField

A Youth Wing of the United Democratic Party has recently been established. This means that young Caymanians finally have a standing political organisation to join while at UCCI, or after graduating from that institution or abroad.

Our now established political party system could possibly provide that nucleus for political activism which was previously lacking. The question is, however, whether or not the adult leadership of the UDP will allow its youth members to go beyond speaking from hymn books and to start learning from our socio-political history.

Everything on this island rises and shines because of money, so it is unlikely that the YUDP will become a voice free and clear. And what I have heard so far of the YUDP, leads me to suggest that they need to immediately find their own voice by moving a bit further from home. Perhaps it would not be so shameful and ridiculous if their first lesion of departure was to find out why many of the books read by the late Teacher McField, while at the University in Jamaica, were confiscated by the Government of the day and later named in a list of banned books.

Timothy Emanuel McField pursued a liberal arts degree at the University of the West Indies Jamaica campus, many years after he had qualified as a teacher. At Mona he came in contact with such notable Caribbean intellectuals as the now deceased Dr. Walter Rodney who I also knew. There Teacher McField discovered that his blackness was not a question of complexion, but most importantly a social and political status handed down through slavery and colonialism. By reading and listening to lectures by great Caribbean intellectuals, Teacher was inspired to think long and deep about the Cayman Islands where he had for several decades played a most important role in shaping the characters of many of our young people, including me.

At the time Teacher McField was a university student and perhaps even them, Caymanians regarded themselves as descendents of Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales. There was little if any mention or recognition of Africa, or the influence slavery had played in the creation of our social and economic institutions, customs and norms. Dr. Michael Craton, the man who penned our most recent and comprehensive history, says that his research supports the thesis that “…a precise recognition of the Cayman Islands as having had a Slave Society is essential for a full understanding of present day Caymanian class, race, interpersonal, inter-family and sub-regional relations and attitudes”.

Upon my return from university in 1977, many also complained of my interest in Caribbean social history and said I was too comfortable with my blackness. Some went as far as labeling me “an arrogant black power man” and saw me as a threat to their social and political harmony. Of course I had spent a great deal of time investigating Caribbean and American slavery and post-World War Two black political movements and struggles. My head was filled with the normal rhetoric of the day but not unlike Teacher, there was something that prevented me from establishing here in Cayman, a public platform or movement.

At first I wondered if my lack of public commitment had something to do with my individual characteristics, the way I had been raised and my character shaped by family and personal experiences. Perhaps I was a lost son of the soil who could not make a political commitment large enough or long enough to create a local political movement. But further analysis demonstrates that my lack of commitment to a political cause was not unique. There was Teacher, as well as several others who had returned home around the same time; well educated and exposed but had not started any social or political movement. Recently, the Speaker of our parliament reminded me that several of us had in fact returned to Cayman with a platform or cause. We had ideas and we had dreams too. We wanted to attack poverty and alienation and the potential for crime becoming chronic. We wanted to make learning a progressive concept that empowered all classes and colours in Cayman. We wanted to make the human services truly human and the judiciary a reflection of our customs as well as our laws.

Yet none of us started a Trade Union to advance and defend workers rights, although I did start NACE decades later. Nobody preached the virtues of “blackness” or the pitfalls of colonialism, although I am a Founding Member of the Inn Theatre Company, the forerunner of the Cayman National Cultural Foundation. In a period when the rest of the Caribbean was examining colonialism and the effects slavery had on the region, the Caymanian intellectual seemed trapped in a time warp far at the back of beyond. Looking back over the years I guess what happened was the economic progress some now term the Caymanian miracle. Cayman was regarded as the perfect place to be and the rest of the Caribbean where intellectuals spoke out against colonialism, prejudices, poverty and oppression seemed far removed from our experiences, and none had the hindsight or foresight to see into the past in order to know the point where we are at today.

Quite simply, people were just starting to live and although it might have been the perfect time to get the foundations right; most of us were too drawn in by the lifestyle. In addition some Caymanian intellectuals that spoke out faced ostracism, starvation, criminalization, exile and ridicule. Building a Trade Union or political party or movement meant you would be the sole member and if there were others then you would be the sole contributor of money and whatever else that was needed. There was in fact a socio-political vacuum that did not exist in the other parts of the Caribbean where a colonial administration and self-interest created a more stratified society. In those parts of the Caribbean education was not just a tool of economic mobility, it was also important as a social tool; and social engagement and leadership aspirations were acceptable persuits.

Caymanian intellectuals of the 70’s and 80’s were termed educated fools. They were mocked by the very people they contemplated uplifting. Why would we not want to sell our land to the foreigner and get money fast to buy our children cars? What damn fool would say that our relationship with England is not perfect; after all England is our mother and we come from there? Where those educated idiots think they going with their damn fool ideas anyway; we not letting them mash up our country.

Caymanians were no damn slaves and I don’t look like a damn black African monkey. No, we are not from Africa, we from Europe and we don’t need black power here either.

The only alternative thinking was the ganja smoking individuals under the grape trees; they actually found in their weed some connection between here, Jamaica and Africa. Ganja smoking also produced a few grass root intellectuals but they had not smoked enough weed to want to follow the afro hair hippie like young educated Caymanians; not even pot had changed Caymanian conservatism. Today at this crossroad we need not to lose our way; we need to become more tolerant of intellectual differences and finally embrace our young educated and politically concerned members. So it is my hope that the YUDP will not just sing from hymn books in order to gather youth votes for the next election, because it is their duty as leaders, to understand history and to make a difference by putting into practice the lesions we have all learnt.