No revelry for Emancipation!

Keep Crop-Over and its revelry away from the celebration of Emancipation Day!Head of the Clement Payne Movement, David Comissiong, made this appeal to the authorities yesterday as Barbados marked the anniversary of the 1937 riots.Earlier this year, Minister of Culture Steve Blackett reported that he was considering having a two-day jump-up to climax the annual Crop-Over Festival, with the revelry stretching to the Emancipation Day holiday.But Comissiong said he shuddered at the idea of Crop-Over revelry on Emancipation Day.“The spirit of Kadooment is not the spirit of Emancipation Day,” he complained. “It cannot be and (extending Crop-Over) shows a serious lack of vision; it shows a serious lack of commitment to the really sacred and important elements of our nationhood that we could treat a day like Emancipation Day so lightly and so flippantly that we decree it the second day of Kadooment.”He told the gathering that if Barbados was to be a “genuine nation”, Barbadians had to build a unique culture and make “a unique contribution to world civilisation”.“We can’t build a nation simply around the culture of Kadooment and frivolity and entertainment,” he added.“We have to root our young people in something deeper and more profound than that. So we are saying to the authorities – please rethink these decisions.”Comissiong was addressing an hour-long ceremony in Golden Square, Bridgetown, where wreaths were laid at the base of the structure holding the bust of National Hero Clement Payne and of the monument to the people who died in the riots.About 50 people attended the ceremony. They included representatives of the Cuban and Venezuelan governments, the Barbados Workers’ Union, the Israel Lovell Foundation, the Commission for Pan African Affairs, the YWCA and the People’s Empowerment Party.Both Comissiong and head of the Israel Lovell Foundation, Trevor Prescod, expressed dismay at the low turnout.Prescod said it was a clear signal that “the vast majority” of Barbadians did not understand July 26 was “a day of significance”.  Comissiong complained that local authorities were not attaching any significance to the day while the Cuban government was able to get hundreds of thousands of people to take part in similar celebrations in Havana the same day. (TY)