Eman­ci­pa­tion Day has paved the way for the fu­ture de­vel­op­ment of all the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. This is the view of Move­ment For So­cial Jus­tice who yes­ter­day sent greet­ings to the African com­mu­ni­ty in par­tic­u­lar and to all the peo­ple of T&T in gen­er­al on the oc­ca­sion of Eman­ci­pa­tion Day, cel­e­brat­ed to­day.

In a me­dia re­lease, the MSJ, head­ed by trade union­ist David Ab­dul­lah, said they see it as a vi­tal­ly-im­por­tant day in the his­to­ry of T&T, since Eman­ci­pa­tion was the first step up to free­dom. "The MSJ notes with great trep­i­da­tion the fact that such an im­por­tant date in our his­to­ry is mired in a de­bate about fund­ing. The im­por­tance of this wa­ter­shed date con­tin­ues to be over­shad­owed by the recog­ni­tion of a date rather than the ac­tions which made the date his­tor­i­cal," said the state­ment.

"The strug­gle against plan­ta­tion slav­ery in the Caribbean was long and fierce and pro­duced some of the most coura­geous in­di­vid­u­als in the coun­try, whose re­silience and de­sire to over­come the worst pos­si­ble odds are val­ues that need to be em­u­lat­ed to­day.

"Though slav­ery was fi­nal­ly abol­ished in 1838 in the for­mer British colonies, the strug­gle for re­al eman­ci­pa­tion has con­tin­ued apace even up un­til to­day, pass­ing through sev­er­al phas­es, the most no­table be­ing the labour re­bel­lions of the 1930's and the black pow­er re­bel­lion of 1970.

"In­sti­tu­tion­al slav­ery need­ed the plan­ta­tion; the plan­ta­tion did not need it.It is the view of the MSJ that the task of Eman­ci­pa­tion is on­go­ing and that our so­ci­ety has not as yet trans­formed it­self fun­da­men­tal­ly from the plan­ta­tion. The plan­ta­tion ex­ists in our econ­o­my; it ex­ists in our so­cial­i­sa­tion and it ex­ists in our pol­i­tics."

The MSJ said the high lev­el of crime in all quar­ters, the con­tin­u­ing ex­ploita­tion of work­ers in some quar­ters, the more than 27 per cent pover­ty lev­el in a coun­try of so much wealth, the de­struc­tion of our ur­ban youth, the present ram­pant cor­rup­tion and nepo­tism and the ex­treme in­di­vid­u­al­ism with­in the so­ci­ety, all speak to the need for an­oth­er lev­el of eman­ci­pa­tion in which so­cial jus­tice be­comes the or­der of the day.

"The MSJ con­grat­u­lates all those or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­clud­ing the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union, that fought to have Au­gust 1 recog­nised as Eman­ci­pa­tion Day and ex­press­es sup­port for the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee for the work it has car­ried out over the years in keep­ing this most crit­i­cal event in the eyes and minds of the na­tion, as there is so much to be learnt by the en­tire coun­try from the strug­gle for eman­ci­pa­tion from slav­ery and op­pres­sion on the part of the African com­mu­ni­ty.

"The com­mem­o­ra­tion of Eman­ci­pa­tion is in­deed the "restora­tion of re­mem­brance to its rights" and be­comes a ve­hi­cle for true and last­ing Lib­er­a­tion. We salute those who over the years have con­tributed to this process of restora­tion of the peo­ple's re­mem­brance of Eman­ci­pa­tion."