Dear Editor,
The wish and urgency to better one’s position in life cut across all social lines. It is particularly strong among those who like me come from a working class family and realize acutely how much a formal education can help in reaching set goals.
My father John, a waterfront worker, knew Nathaniel Critchlow during the period he struggled for recognition of workers’ rights, rights which in turn benefited their families. This has become the heritage of working class children seeking to better their lives by attending the Critchlow Labour College, a non sectarian institution dedicated to their education. To see them having to publish an appeal for the approved government subvention to be released to the CLC makes for very strange reading.
A government that states its commitment to the welfare of all citizens would, in the light of this, seem to be working against its own declared principles.
The release of the subvention should not have any relationship whatever to issues which have arisen between the government and trade unions. That young citizens are being affected by this and stand to lose the benefit of an education would in the long run only be damaging to the future development of the nation, a future that belongs to them.
Recently I have had the privilege of addressing the Staff and Students of Critchlow Labour College on the substantial contribution that artists of a working class background have made to the cultural heritage of the nation.
Through their own efforts based on a sound education students themselves would be in a similar position to make contributions to the nation in many fields both practical and administrative.
I therefore urge President Jagdeo to facilitate the release of the subvention thereby allowing the College to carry out its mandate to educate the sons and daughters of the workers without whose support the entire nation suffers.
Yours faithfully,
Stanley Greaves
