Oh for the days of sticks and stones - and even urine!

Published in the Jamaica Gleaner: Friday | August 3, 2007

Hartley Neita, Gleaner Writer

Legends are usually told about people after they die. Not so with Alexander Bustamante. Indeed, he related some of them himself and it was difficult to know which were real and which were fiction.

One story often told was that while he was campaigning in the hills of St. Mary he came upon a heap of stones piled high on a road. The stones were placed there by the Public Works Department to repair the road. There was a group of young men standing nearby. He stopped and greeted them.

"I hear that my cousin Norman Manley will be holding a political meeting at the shop down the road tomorrow night."

"That's right, Chief," one of the young men replied.

"Well, this pile of stones is very dangerous to pedestrians, especially children," Busta said. "I'm coming back here two days from now and I do not want to see one of these stones here."

The stones were used by the young men in the district to pelt the crowd at Norman Manley's meeting, causing it to be aborted. When Bustamante returned the stones were scattered in the roadway and were no longer in a pile.

Favourite missiles

Then, of course, guns were not used by political supporters against their opponents. Favourite missiles were bottles and stones. There were also stick fights.

A new 'weapon of political mass destruction' was the slingshot, which first surfaced during the 1944 General Elections. It was the JAG Smith party which com-plained to the commissioner of police that teenage boys were lurking in the dark on the outskirts of their political meetings and hurling stones with slingshots, wounding several speakers and spectators.

The complaint prompted the commissioner to issue a warning that anyone found in the vicinity of political meetings with slingshots were liable to be prosecuted.

Urine was once thrown on speakers and spectators from the roof of a building in Spanish Town. The meeting ended abruptly.

And a Rastafarian was once arrested because he attended a political meeting with his staff, despite his protests that his mission in life was for peace and love.

Oh for the days of sticks and stones - and even urine.