The emergence of this system of universal, mass politics coincided with my own growing up. I had inside me the sensibilities of the colonial order of things. But for my generation, following 1938, in no way could the colonial system represent our future. We could only perceive it as an unwanted impediment. Thus the events of 1938 were formative for my future intellectual and personal life. Much of the rest of my life in Jamaica was about struggling to erase and overcome the gap between my early childhood within the enclave of my family and the tumultuous world of Jamaican society and politics outside, from which the former was designed to insulate me. If 1938 symbolized the creation of modern Jamaican politics, I was of the generation which was born to inherit the new world the rebellions had inaugurated. This new political world marshalled the historical conditions in which the very idea of politics could enter my life, and enabled me and my generation to imagine a sovereign future.

Although I was much too young at the time to understand what was happening, I can see that I was formed by 1938: I came to be of that political generation. Generation is more than chronology. It’s symbolic rather than literal, relating as much to a shared experience, a common vision, or thinking within the same ‘problem space’ as it does to a mere date of birth.