#BTColumn – Tell me: truth or fact?

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados Today.

by Dr. Derek Alleyne

Over the Independence weekend, two issues concerned my thought processes more than any other – the Mottley administration’s leadership and the ongoing debate on Horatio Nelson’s statue.

While trying to understand both issues and by that I mean searching for truth, it hit me that my views on these issues were rubbing some of my friends the wrong way.

Relating to the first matter and following an article I had penned, a friend and senior member of the Barbados Labour Party enquired, “What is your beef with Mottley”? My response was that the “beef” is not with Mottley but with the Prime Minister. Of course, he quizzed, what is the difference?

I responded that the difference is that most people know that Mottley is the Prime Minister, a fact, but what or who Mottley is or about has not been determined. I suggested to him that to accomplish that feat requires an enquiry that went beyond the mirage, and it was my responsibility to assist with the exploration.

The second issue relating to Horatio Nelson and the removal of the statue from formerly Trafalgar Square now Heroes’ Square was worrisome, since I was warned by a dear friend that my opposition to the removal would place me on the wrong side of history. Again, I was clear that my view represented only one of many and that others had a right to theirs and I to mine.

The nagging issues forced me to search for a distinction between fact and truth. I found one in a review of Julian Baggini’s new book, “A Short History of Truth”, and in it Lucian Freud is quoted as offering – “Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so.”

The reviewer Julian Baggini remarks, “Freud’s definitions may not match those of philosophers, but his point is clear enough. The kind of truth that concerns him is that which reveals the hidden meaning of things, not facts one could look up in a reference book”.

Baggini goes on, “Truth is rarely, if ever, a simple matter of getting the facts straight. History, for example, certainly demands factual accuracy, but that in itself is not enough.” There is also the question of which facts are made salient and how they are understood.

He draws reference to Australians’ division on the removal of Captain Hook’s statue and asserts that the difference concerns which features of that history are given centre stage and whether they are celebrated, lamented, or both. So when my friend Trevor Marshall takes Mackenzie to task for his version of history relating to Nelson, I believe that he is not claiming that Mackenzie’s version is [full of] brazen lies but rather that in that version some important truths are being ignored or overlooked.

So it is with my version of Ms Mottley and her administration of the affairs of this country. My version is created from my historical (warped as it might be) interpretation of the role of the political leader, political culture, political ethics and political norms.

I seek not to interpret for anyone but merely to present my interpretation of the facts. As another friend insists, “denying facts does not alter truth”.

It is a reminder to all Mottley sympathisers and to Marshall. Your version is an interpretation of the facts and those aspects you want to “celebrate, lament or both”, so go right ahead.

Dr. Derek Alleyne is a trade unionist, social commentator and member of the Democratic Labour Party.