What is Emancipation Day here? I have off today for this very reason. It is a Holiday.

EMANCIPATION DAY

It was on 1st August one hundred and seventy two years ago when freedom was won.

Emancipation Day is celebrated each year in all the former British colonies in the West Indies.

Set aside as an anniversary marking the birth of liberty from legalised control, violence and enforced labour, many West Indians and their extended families and friends will be coming together to remind each other of their long walk to freedom.

Although abolished some 26 years earlier in 1807, it was not until the 1st August of 1833 that the British MP and social reformer - Thomas Buxton, presented the Emancipation Bill before the British Parliament.

The ensuing Act then came into effect one year later on 1st August 1834. On that day it seemed as if history had been created for slaves throughout the West Indies.

At last, all peoples of the West Indian colonies would, through legal emancipation, be free to embrace their liberty.

However, and not for the last time, the history of Black people was to record that surviving truism - power is never freely given.

Amidst the joy and celebration, the small print emerged and a dulling realisation that full freedom would not be granted immediately.

After all, slavery had been a part of the British way of life, not only in England, but across the imperial kingdom. Lest we forget, many English merchants had become very wealthy by trading in slaves and they were not about to give any of that power away overnight.

Specifically, chattel slavery, had enforced the absolute legal ownership of a person or persons, and this had included the power to buy and sell a human being as we do products today.

In an attempt to preserve power, if not the status quo, it was further ordered that ‘ex-slaves’ would be apprenticed to their former master for a minimum offour years.

Thus a period of ‘apprenticeship’ was put in place to bridge the gap between slavery and complete freedom.

History now teaches us that the process of ‘apprenticeship’, most certainly born out of the prevailing slave owners culture of denial, did not achieve their own desired outcomes.

This was because the spirit of collusion and compromise, upon which the economic success of the previous system had depended, was now broken. Liberty, freedom and justice were now renewed goals.