If not Victoria, then Wilberforce

Jun 09, 2018 Letters

Dear Editor,
I refer to a latter from T. Pemberton captioned “Was Burnham’s slate cleaner than Queen Victoria’s?” Actually I don’t quite understand a few things about this letter and indeed the one he refers to from Gerald A. Perreira captioned ‘Statue of Queen Victoria should be removed’.
Perreira’s letter was asking for the statue to be removed from the Law Courts.
It’s a difficult question and one which requires some thought. Or does it? Wasn’t the statue once removed and unceremoniously thrown behind the Botanical Gardens? And did we not bring it back? Can anyone answer the question why we brought it back?
Queen Victoria happened to be the queen of England on the date when slavery was actually abolished, but the British Parliament passed the Abolition Bill in 1833, Q. Victoria became queen of England in 1837 five years after the act was passed, but was indeed the Queen when the abolition came into effect in 1 August 1838. I am not for or against the removal of the Victoria statue, but if we decide as a nation to remove it, then it would be appropriate to put a statue of William Wilberforce there instead.
It is a historical fact that throughout the British empire it was Wilberforce who starting from 1770, fought ceaselessly to abolish slavery.
He managed to get the trade in slaves abolished in 1807 and then the actual condition of slavery abolished in 1833 when 768,000 slaves were freed throughout the British Empire. I extracted the below from the internet.
“The Abolition of Slavery had come as a result of a campaign that had begun in the 1770s and was supported by all classes but had been led by evangelicals who saw such a campaign as offering them salvation through the saving of others.
“The campaign was led by William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson and focused on the humanitarian aspects of the slave trade and the terrible conditions in which the slaves were transported across the Atlantic.
The campaigners believed that once freed the slaves could lead useful and prosperous lives.
Wilberforce and Clarkson joined the sponsors of an experimental colony – that of Sierra Leone founded in 1787- to introduce freed slaves to civilization.
“The experiment was deemed a success for in 1808 it became a crown colony.
The abolition of the slave trade in 1807 was the campaign’s first success but Parliament had passed the act not only for humanitarian concerns but because by 1807 the Atlantic economy was no longer a vital national interest for Britain.
Only 150 ships out of 1000 were in 1804 involved in the slave trade and the West Indies’ economy was experiencing a recession due to wartime losses, bad weather, rising slave prices and declining profits and increased indebtedness”.
So at the end of the day it was Christians who fought the hardest to abolish slavery and as such they should be honored by history for their efforts.
Sadly, history seems to have forgotten them Wilberforce and Clarkson. I wonder if we are a great enough people, to honor them here and now?
As far as Mr. Pemberton ’s letter is concerned, it is the considered opinion of one of Guyana’s most brilliant legal minds that making the Guyana Court of Appeal the final court for all Guyana legal matters, and not the Privy Council in the UK, contributed in no small way to the sad state of our legal system in Guyana today, probably the worst in the English-speaking Caribbean.
It is held that the standard of jurisprudence here would have been kept at a much higher level had we left our courts here open to criticisms of the Privy Council when ruling on the performance of the legal system here as the final arbiter in our legal matters, as we sometimes see the CCJ doing now .
One recent criticism from the CCJ was that Guyana’s legal matters are taking too long to be determined in our system.
The 1980 constitution was the instrument by which this came to pass, so this question from Mr. Pemberton ’s letter “ask the writer this very simple question. Did the late President L.F.S Burnham have a clean slate during his governance of Guyana?” He has a clear answer in so far as the rule of law is concerned.
Yours Faithfully
Tony Vieira.

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