JNF-The-Working-Class-Struggle-of-Half-a-Century

France was disappearing from their authorship. This was not what I had wanted
to achieve. So I went back to the original and tried to present them as the
series had been printed in the Labour Spokesman giving rise to a number of
technical difficulties. Because the articles were interspersed over a period of
three years, there was quite a bit of repetition. In a book, this was going to be
both costly and tedious so some of these passages had to be cut. It was then
decided that the articles that ran off each other should be merged. These changes
may sound drastic but they do not effect the actual content and have been
merely designed to improve the flow of the book. Illustrations were used to
enhance the publication. I strongly feel that where history has a face it becomes
more meaningful and interesting to the reader.
There was one drastic cut that had to be made for legal reasons. Following a
description of events that celebrated the hundred years of Emancipation,
France decided to write on enslavement. These articles ended up being quotes
from several chapters in Elsa Goveia’s book Slave Society in the British Leeward
Islands at the end of the Eighteenth Century which had been published in
1965 only three years prior to the publication of the articles. His reproduction
of several pages of this book, with acknowledgements, shows that France
found it to be invaluable. It still is the most comprehensive study of enslavement
in the Leewards. However, the book is still in copyright and we do not
have permission to reproduce such large portions of it. A copy of it is in the
reference library at the National Archives.
The writing of contemporaries is rare in St. Kitts. J.N. France was an exception
in his desire to share with the upcoming generations, his thoughts, reading
and experiences. He used the newspaper as his medium because it was one
with which he was very familiar having worked first as printer of the Union
Messenger under the guidance of J. Matthew Sebastian. It was also one that
was readily available to him as General Secretary of the St. Kitts-Nevis trades
and Labour Union which owned the Spokesman. . I believe that the presentation
of his articles, in book format, will provide the readers of today with an
insider’s view of the mission and role of the Labour Movement in creating a
more equitable society in St. Kitts.
I am deeply grateful to Mavis Vaughan and Jermain Hendrickson, who prepared
the manuscript for editing.
Victoria Borg O’Flaherty
7 June 2007