(This has nothing to do with green bananas!)
“We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender . . .”
When I asked some informed friends separately who was the author of the above, all save one (he blamed his apparent memory loss on a sudden attack of lethologica) answered with the same name, plus where and when the quoted fighting words were delivered: Kenny Anthony, in Vieux Fort, shortly after his party lost the 2016 general elections.
I invited a different group, among them a doctor and a geography teacher, to recall who had said: “You will never reach your destination if you stop to throw stones at every dog that barks.”
“That was Allen Chastanet,” they harmonized. Alas, they could not remember when the words were spoken. They knew for certain it was “some time before the 2021 elections,” at which Chastanet’s United Workers Party suffered a not altogether unexpected drubbing.
For those who may have, er, forgotten: The quoted lines at the start of this article are from Winston Churchill’s historic speech delivered in the House of Commons on 4 June 1940—not to be confused with sore loser Kenny Anthony’s post-election rabble-rouser that contained some egregiously rendered, bastardized lines from the original.
It was also Churchill who in 1941 advised students at Harrow School against permitting themselves to be sidetracked from their set goals by barking distractions. Chastanet had evidently taken to heart the British statesman’s admonition. Referencing public criticism by his party’s detractors he had said: “It’s not every dog that barks that I listen to.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when an opposition MP reacted before an accommodating audience. He said Chastanet had demonstrated “gross disrespect for Saint Lucians,” that he had “called them barking dogs.” When a reporter reminded him that in an earlier time one of his parliamentary colleagues had referred to a fellow MP as a poodle, he offered this defense: “Poodle is a common term used to highlight politicians who follow other politicians obediently and without question.”
When the late George Odlum was a leading member of an ostensibly apolitical group of eggheads known as the St. Lucia Forum, that is to say, in the mid-70s, he often warned that our people were fast transmogrifying into what he described as “a “mendicant society.” On countless occasions he repeated his observation, even as a member of parliament when he famously claimed local young women, in the name of survival, were selling their bodies “for chicken backs” while their male counterparts sold their votes for rum. There was little if any pushback.
Several years later, when Allen Chastanet used the same word—“mendicant”—to describe a situation similar to that first publicly addressed by Odlum, he barely escaped in one piece. Such was the fury of the community’s wolves—among them many who earlier had existed as sheep.
Two weeks ago, a pack leader had good reason to angrily criticize citizens who claimed they had voted for him at the most recent elections and now expected due rewards, including payment of long outstanding electricity, rent and Courts bills. He reminded them during a televised sermon that parliamentary representatives had signed on to improve whole communities, to provide jobs for all, and to better the lives of every citizen, regardless of how he or she had voted at election time.
Perhaps his most memorable lines on the occasion: “Some of the 2000 or so who voted for me seem to believe I have to grant them personal favors in return. That is impossible. And when a politician cannot deliver these personal favors demanded they are quickly reminded that ‘I voted for you!’ Our people need to be educated . . . Those persons do not realize personal favors are not catered for by any government policy. Our people must understand that representation is not about me and I voted for you, and I want this, and I want that . . .
“Whether you believe it or not, the very people who complain about corruption, corruption, corruption, by the unreasonableness of their demands, can force a politician to compromise himself or herself to deliver what they asked for.”
Richard Frederick never once used the word “mendicant.” But it seems to me that to say someone was observed running barefoot and shirtless around Derek Walcott Square, wearing not a stitch of clothing, is equal to saying a man was seen jogging in the park au naturel. Nude. Stark bollocks naked!
The dictionary definition of mendicant: “Beggar, sponger, moocher, scrounger, bum, parasite.” The referenced trio—George Odlum, Allen Chastanet and Richard Frederick—preached the same sermon. But while two had spoken the M-word, only one had chosen instead to define it, with examples.
I should also acknowledge that not everyone was happy to hear Frederick’s truth—which he had been careful enough to speak following his own election victory, not before. Chastanet, on the other hand, had been less cautious. (It occurs to me that even in polite company, and regardless of racial composition, “the N-word” is acceptable. But it would be tempting fate to say what the “N” in the “N-word” actually represents.)
What, then, to make of the above conundrum? Is it that residents of our fantasy island, including the occupiers of our highest offices, subscribe to the Humpty Dumpty doctrine—that words can mean whatever users want them to mean, neither more nor less?
Is it really not what you say that matters but how you say it? Why is it mere “political picong,” and therefore kosher, when some dismiss their House neighbor as a “poodle”—but “gross disrespect for the people” when someone else echoes a generally appreciated Churchillian line inclusive of the figure of speech “barking dogs?”
What’s left to say? I suspect the answer may be blowing in the wind of the moment!
