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Jun 20, 2017 Letters
Dear Editor,
The loss of life is always sad. I had been listening to a radio discussion about the “tower block fire” in London. Then I read the recent very interesting letter about the “Enmore Martyrs”. I would like to give my personal experience of this ‘special day’, in June 1948, and hope this could be published, because it shows how others suffered as well at the time, going through psychological trauma, through no fault of their own.
I was then in my first job, as a pupil teacher at age 17, at the Government primary school, awaiting my Cambridge School Certificate exam results, starting in April 1948, travelling by train every day to and from Enmore, having just left high school. Every day another female teacher and I travelled from Georgetown to schools along the East Coast, including Enmore. I was one of the Enmore group. From the start of the strike, there was general tension throughout the community, including the children at school. Men lined the railway line where we walked to get to the school building and the only bridge leading to the school, from early morning. The line gradually lengthened. Throughout this ordeal I had to walk that short bridge from road to school, where men sat on the rail at either side, muttering. I walked fast, and turned cold when one remarked that “no matter how fast she walk, if I want to catch she, I can catch she”.
After a while, some of their women, probably realising the danger I and perhaps other teachers were in, joined the men on the line and some sat near the bridge. The men then armed themselves with sticks and tools of their trade and betook themselves to the “backdam”. After threats from the strikers, the teachers were advised to “let the children be”. The children became ‘cheeky”, chattering and doing as they pleased. A van of policemen was sent to patrol the road.
Then the “martyrdom” happened. We saw crowds running to and fro along the road. The hospital staff who looked after the casualties told us what happened next. A crowd of cane field workers, armed with the tools of their trade, attacked the policemen, hanging over the back of the truck, armed with firepower. The outnumbered police used their weapons. The rest is history, henceforth described as ‘martyrdom’.
I can only speak of my terror walking to the school building every morning for the duration of ‘hostilities’. And there was no one to talk to about it. The other older female teacher who used to travel from town with me made arrangements to stay with a local family. I was a minor with no such contacts and could not. My parents never knew of my misery.
Perhaps I speak subjectively – but I have – and will always have – a different perspective. And it is not racial – whatever I am today, my Indian father is entirely responsible for – the sacrifices he made for me, buying every book on the school’s list, eventually selling his bicycle and walking to work, to see me through high school, etc., never complaining, always encouraging, with “you must study hard”, filling our lamp with “kero” twice a week. My duty was to wash the lamp’s chimney every Saturday. Fortunately, I was an avid reader, with a retentive memory. I truly burnt the midnight oil. When I ended my working days, in my prized job with the telephone giant in the UK, I hoped he was happy wherever.
Geralda Dennison
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