The British aren’t coming!

Last week, the Privy Council ruled that, according to the laws of this country, anyone found guilty of murder must be sentenced to hang. Attorney General John Jeremie was very happy about this, saying that the Privy Council “has no licence to read its own moral values into the Trinidad and Tobago Constitution.” It’s easy to understand why Jeremie would not want our society to adopt British moral values. After all, if Jeremie were in Britain then he, and every other member of the government, would have already had to declare their assets, as stipulated by the Integrity in Public Life Act 2000. Failure to do so in a country like Britain would inevitably lead to resignations, excessive alcohol consumption, and spanking by women dressed in leather outfits. Obviously, these are not the kind of morals we want here, for how could our politicians make a decent living if they had to adhere to law or principle?

No, no, that kind of thing is for white people. Us here coloureds have a different kind of morality. That is why, as Jeremie says, we have a moral obligation to keep hanging people. Britain doesn’t have the death penalty, and look at their murder rate. It’s 0.6 per 100,000 persons! Whereas we in Trinidad and Tobago, being a very moral people, have a murder rate of 14.7 per 100,000 persons, and this figure is rising more rapidly than a PNM hack in a State enterprise. The British government abolished the death penalty because it is not a deterrent, it is not humane, it targets the poor, and it gives governments an excuse not to take effective crime-fighting measures. But all these reasons are empirical and ethical ones. In Trinidad and Tobago, however, we don’t need to base our public policies on evidence and ethics: we have morals. After all, nearly all our religious leaders support the death penalty, and those who don’t make sure to keep their mouths shut. Indeed, it’s our religious leaders who truly reflect the superiority of our moral values over Britain’s. Take the Bishop of Oxford who, when asked by British journalist Jeremy Paxman what you needed to believe in order to be a member of his church, replied, “The Church of England doesn’t believe in laying down rules. It prefers to give people space and freedom. It’s enough to make the effort to attend and take communion. That shows you believe.”

Now what kind of namby-pamby religion is that? Our religious leaders, by contrast, are very clear on what you need to believe in order to be a true believer. You must beat children, praise God for killing homosexuals, lead campaigns to deny women rights over their own bodies, and keep the law unchanged so 12 and 14-year-old girls can be married to old men. These are the kind of upstanding moral exemplars we have in Trinidad and Tobago, and we should sings their praises loudly unto the Lord (unless, of course, we have laryngitis or ethical codes). But it’s not just their refusal to hang people which reveals how Godless the Brits really are. No, there would be far worse consequences for our society were we ever to adopt British morals. For example, if we did follow the British example, Prime Minister Patrick Manning wouldn’t even be able to appoint his wife as chief breakfasses-maker in the school-feeding programme, let alone make her Education Minister. This just shows the contempt that the British have for the family which, as we all know, is the building-block of society. Doesn’t our Prime Minister have the moral right to use Hazel, his block head, to educate the nation’s children? The fact that the pass rate in CXC English dropped from 64 percent in 2002 to 56 percent in 2003 shows what a good job Hazel is doing in rejecting both the language and the morals of our erstwhile Mother Country.

But not only do the British reject the family, they don’t even place a high value on friendship. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is Tony Blair’s good pardner, but even so he would never let Blair appoint a man with no training in finance or economics or administration to the Exchequer’s board of trustees, if their laws banned it. However, Patrick can appoint literature professor Selwyn Cudjoe to the Central Bank board with nary a squeak from Governor Ewart Williams. But those damn British, who lack Patrick’s born-again vision and Williams’ love for his job, stick like sticklers to man-made laws when it comes to running their country. Indeed, the only reason Patrick wasn’t able to get Marlene Coudray moved was because of our inherited British Civil Service regulations, which just goes to show that Jeremie had better get cracking on repudiating those rules too. An even more disturbing possibility is this: under British morality, Manning would have to abandon his plans to move into the Red House. After all, in Britain, no Prime Minister could even contemplate building a new Parliament building without the approval of, well, Parliament. Any British Prime Minister who tried there what Manning is trying here would either have to resign or sing “Guantanamera” while wearing a Carmen Miranda costume, including false eyelashes.

Not only would he get pressure from citizens, the Public Service, social organisations, the media, the judiciary and so on, but even his own MPs would call for his head on a block (not Hazel). But, in our Trini moral system, Manning doesn’t have to resign nor does he have to don a head-wrap with fruits in order to look absurd. It is therefore quite clear that our political morality requires a more authoritarian system than the British have ever had. Paxman, in his book The English, writes, “One of the reasons the English have never been much interested in either fascism or communism is that they have a very sensible scepticism about what the State can achieve.” Whereas in Trinidad and Tobago we believe that CEPEP will make us a developed country by 2020. So we must follow Jeremie’s lead and resist at all costs the British penchant for imposing their moral standards on other peoples. Thank goodness we can now hang people without worrying about human rights, law reform, and other humbugs that prevent us from being a truly righteous nation!
E-mail: kbaldeosingh@hotmail.com
Website: www.caribscape.com/baldeosingh