Paul Bogle still seen as murderer

LAST SUNDAY, at the invitation of Pastor Dukett Duncan, I gave a lecture at the Morant Bay Baptist Church, in which I refuted claims that Bogle and his followers had murderous intentions when they left Stony Gut to go to Morant Bay courthouse, the scene of the Vestry meeting for local governance.

However, at the end of my presentation the first questioner, an adult, accused me of sanitising Bogle and his followers. He believed they committed acts of violence on October 11, 1865.

There are seven National Heroes, namely, Nanny, Sam Sharpe, Paul Bogle, George William Gordon, Marcus Garvey, Alexander Bustamante and Norman Manley, and none has ever had their credentials questioned like Bogle, and none has been depicted as a murderer and violent man.

This adult questioner is following in the footsteps of the classic dominant position that Bogle had murderous intentions and was violent. The colonial-appointed commissioners said that the letter written by Bogle and 19 others was "a manifesto preparatory to and attempting to justify a recourse to violence". For the commissioners, "murder was distinctly contemplated". And many newspapers, leading clergymen, missionaries and historians followed in the footsteps of this commission of enquiry report.

Furthermore, the leading British people of letters, such as Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson and Thomas Carlyle, supported Governor Edward Eyre. And modern scholarship has followed this track. British Historian Gad Heuman stated that Bogle had murderous intentions. And Jamaican historians Douglas Hall and Bev Carey claimed that Bogle was violent. And the Jamaican govern-ment website is not much better when it speaks about violent confron-tations leading to the death of 500 persons. Martin Henry, Gleaner columnist, said, "... Negro women sat on the corpses and gashed them with broken glasses. The men opened the skulls, scooped out the brains into calabashes mixed them with rum and drank the mixture in the Baptist Chapel ..." And then Henry seemed to suggest there was some element of truth in the statement when he asked, "Exaggeration ... or some smattering of truth, at least?" (Gleaner, Oct 16, 2003.) Bogle and his followers were portrayed as having cannibalistic tendencies!

There is a credible body of literature from the 19th century that suggests that the deaths that occurred were not premeditated, such as written by Edward Underhill, secretary, Baptist Missionary Society, Henry Bleby, Presbyterian missionary who visited Sam Sharpe while Sharpe was imprisoned, and Thomas Harvey and William Brewin, who visited the sites in St Thomas.

40-mile trek

And in spite of the publication of my book, The Cross and the Machete, which argued that Bogle had no murderous intentions based on the 40-mile trek with resolutions to seek audience with Eyre in August; Bogle and his followers carrying no guns and arms and firing no gun, and the several witnesses, including Rev Stephen Cooke of the Anglican Church, testifying that when the protesters marched into Morant Bay it was accompanied by music, dancing, singing, merrymaking, playing of bugles, drums, "jesting, laughing and making fun". The nature of the celebration was not consistent with persons bent on causing murderous mayhem but was more consistent with a march for justice and celebration of victory.

The St Thomas Credit Union has asked me to deliver a lecture at the Anglican Church Hall next week Wednesday, on the role of the Maroons in the Morant Bay Uprising, and if Bogle had murderous intentions then the Maroons should be commended for capturing Bogle, but if Bogle and his followers were not violent then the Maroons have some explaining to do.

Devon Dick is pastor of the Boulevard Baptist Church inSt Andrew and author of 'The Crossand the Machete'. Comments to columns@gleanerjm.com