Excitement in Jamaica

On Aug. 1, 1838, young Queen Victoria, having ruled England for a year, stood on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with a proclamation. "Because the slaves of Jamaica are impatient for freedom," she read in a thin young voice, "we proclaim them free; and 100 years from this day the plantations of Jamaica shall be divided into small pieces, and each descendant of these freedmen shall be given a small piece." The crowd cheered; the more enthusiastic abolitionists threw their hats in the air.

So, at any rate, believe the plantation Negroes of Jamaica. British officials in Kingston last month had posters put up throughout the island saying that Queen Victoria never did anything of the kind, but the Negroes went on buying barbed wire to put round their little pieces of land. Last week the British colony, faced with the job of explaining that no plantations were going to be divided, were ready for trouble.

There have been nearly as many revolutions in Jamaica as there have been earthquakes. In 1831 the slaves revolted; in 1865, finding serfdom no better than slavery, they revolted again. Both revolts were put down, with hanging and shooting. Life has not improved much since 1865 for the 1,000.000 Jamaica Negroes. Lately they have not been able to get work in other islands of the West Indies. A good weekly wage for a field hand on a banana plantation is $3. Year ago there was a boatmen's strike in Montego Bay. Since then, Jamaica has been simmering like coffee in a percolator. Last winter cane-cutters on the sugar plantations at the east end of the island refused to work. The strike spread down the railroad to Kingston. Longshoremen, street cleaners, tobacco workers, bus drivers, lamp-lighters struck at once. Police were jittery, fired on crowds in the streets. The strikes were won, but some dozen Negroes were killed. For five months there were quick daily strikes on plantations.

One day last week the British cruiser Orion was anchored in Kingston Harbor; special police and militia were stationed at every street corner with riot guns and tear gas. At the end of the day 52 people had been killed, some 70 more badly injured--but not in fighting. The front engine of a five-car, two-engine train on the Jamaica Central Railway, packed with Kingston citizens going to the country for the Liberation Day weekend, left the rails going up a steep grade outside Balaclava. The rear engine kept going, pushed the front engine over an embankment, piled four of the five coaches up on each other in a splintered, twisted mass like a smashed accordion. The coaches lay crumpled for hours in a river bed till cranes could be got into the mountains. Most of the injured were expected to die. It was the deadliest train wreck in West Indies' history.

First thing that occurred to the British was sabotage. But the theory was too easy: no Negro was likely to kill a hundred other Negroes to get a train wrecked. At week's end, as investigations started, it appeared that the excitement about the wreck had at least had one result: Liberation Day passed peacefully, without a rising.

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