The Elections of 1944

Arnold Betram

by Arnold Betram.

“For Bustamante and Labour”

The outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 led to a postponement of the general elections due in Jamaica in January 1940, as well as the decision by the PNP to support the British war effort by suspending its agitation for constitutional change during the course of the war.

However, at its 2nd annual conference in 1940, the PNP declared itself socialist and unanimously passed a resolution to resume the campaign for self-government and Universal Adult Suffrage. Simultaneously, Bustamante’s leadership of the labour movement assumed an extremely militant stance.

Governor Richards, using the extensive emergency powers he had acquired as a result of the war, took immediate steps to protect the interests of Imperial Britain as he saw fit. Bustamante was the first to be detained on August 8th 1940. In March of the following year, detention orders were served on Samuel Marquis, the leading PNP propagandist and W.A. Williams the leader of the Dock Workers and a major figure in the BITU. Three months later in June, W.A. Domingo, a close confidant of Norman Manley and a leader of the PNP based in New York, visited the island and was also placed in detention.

As the PNP stepped up its demand for constitutional change and articulated its socialist orientation, Governor Richards began to perceive Bustamante as a lesser evil, and the PNP as the major threat to British Colonial policy in Jamaica. It was on the basis of this analysis that Richards planned and executed a political response that was a masterpiece of cunning and manipulation.

His first act was to release Bustamante from detention in February 1942, which confirmed Manley’s view that a deal had been struck with Bustamante, who they claimed had agreed to denounce the PNP and self-government in return for his freedom. Richards however was not about to depend on Bustamante to keep his side of any bargain and ensured that the detention order was merely suspended not revoked. The Governor very cleverly maintained the legal right to detain Bustamante summarily for any violation of the conditions of his release.

Divide and Rule

Within hours of his release Bustamante made it clear that he held no grudge against the colonial government, but immediately denounced Manley, as well as those members of the BITU’s managing executive committee whom he charged had conspired with, “an unholy combination of certain persons with political ambition whose objectives is that of destroying me and then to assume control of the union as a political machine and to serve their own big friends.”

The following month the PNPs monopoly on organised politics was broken by the formation of the Jamaica Democratic Party by T.H. Sharp a big landowner in Manchester and Clarendon. This was clearly the vehicle of the planter/merchant class with the self-imposed mission of combating the socialism of Manley and the PNP. The new party quickly incorporated into its leadership Robert Fletcher, Abe Issa, D.G. McMillan, Douglas Judah and Gerald Mair. From the standpoint of Governor Richards, these were all men of property who could be relied on to oppose the socialism of the PNP, and hopefully make common cause with Bustamante and the BITU.

In June, the PNP regained some ground when a young Doctor, Ivan Lloyd, became the first member of the Party to win a seat in the Legislative Council as the representative of St. Ann. Whatever gains Lloyd brought in terms of a PNP presence in the country side was negated in November when Governor Richards incarcerated the leaders of the left wing of the PNP, Ken Hill, Frank Hill, Richard Hart and Arthur Henry. All four were charged with having “political aims and ideals … so markedly anti-British and revolutionary in character that their dissemination in wartime must inevitably be prejudicial to public safety and defence.”

This was a major blow to the capacity of the PNP to carry on any systematic ideological orientation of the masses in general and organised labour in particular.

The Discovery of Bauxite in Jamaica

The strategic importance of Jamaica to the United States in particular and the imperial world in general, increased dramatically with the discovery of commercial quantities of bauxite in St. Ann in 1942. Walter Rice, the Vice-President of Reynolds Metals, emphasized in writing to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, the economic and strategic importance of Jamaican bauxite.

“The combination of these huge deposits with the low cost power and the billion-pound aluminium plant on the Sergeant River in Canada, would enable the British Empire to dominate the international aluminium markets for perhaps a hundred years…since we know of no ore discovery in recent years of comparable strategic importance, we believe the freedom to mine and ship bauxite from Jamaica to the United States is vitally important to the industrial future of our country and our national security.”

Enter Bustamante and the JLP

Governor Richards failed to take into account was Bustamante’s superb sense of political strategy and tactics. Rather than entering an alliance with the JDP as the Governor had no doubt anticipated, Bustamante took the decision to use the BITU as his political vehicle for the forthcoming elections. As early as December 1942 he expressed his views on self-government which separated him from the PNP. “I am the most staunch, the most vigorous, the most consistent and determined opponent to self-government”. In that same speech he announced, “I am now launching a Party, which is called the Jamaica Labour Party in which self-government is not included”.

On the 8th of July 1943, Bustamante lived up to his promise and launched the Jamaica Labour Party at the Ward Theatre “attired in brown shorts, a grey coat and a preacher’s white tie”. Around him were Linden Newland, Gladys Longbridge and Frank Pixley. Also on the platform were some elected members of the Legislative Council, a group of KSAC councillors and leaders of civil society. In his address to the founding Conference, the radical Bustamante had all but disappeared. It was a conservative labour leader who pledged that the JLP would, “keep within a moderate conservative policy in order not to destroy the wealth of the capitalists to any extreme that will eventually hurt their economical inferiors.”

The New Constitution

After some five years of agitation, discussions and negotiations the proposals for the new Constitution were finally agreed on and embodied in an Order in Council signed on October 27, 1944, and published in the Jamaica Gazette of November 17, 1944. It provided for a 32 Member House of Representatives to be elected by Universal Adult Suffrage. The introduction of the new Constitution was celebrated in a formal ceremony on November 20, on which occasion it was announced that the general elections would take place on December 14.

While Norman Manley and the PNP prided themselves on the achievement of Universal Adult Suffrage, the real beneficiary was Alexander Bustamante and the JLP. For whereas only 400 delegates were expected to attend the PNP’s Conference in August 1944 by then the BITU had some 37,000 union members. It was the Suffrage, which opened the door for the JLP’s overwhelming victory, which would come on Election Day.

The Election Campaign

As the election campaign gathered momentum, the declining economic situation was a major concern. On the eve of the elections some 139,000 were unemployed out of a labour force of 555,000. Worse, as the census of 1942 showed 52.1% of wage earners in Jamaica received less than 10 shillings per week, while a further 25.7% earned between 10 shillings and one Pound. Against this background, Bustamante’s promise of immediate material assistance must have been far more appealing than Manley’s articulation of socialist philosophy and constitutional de-colonization.

Throughout the campaign, Bustamante consistently warned the electorate that a vote for the PNP would be a mandate to restore ‘slavery’ under the rule of the brown man, reviving all the resentment of the ex-slaves against a stratum that had discriminated against them, even more so than white slave masters. Manley himself attested to the political effect of Bustamante’s tactics:

“With characteristic cunning, Bustamante at all meetings though not in written propaganda, attacked self-government and playing on historic, ancient fears, sought to persuade the masses that the self-government policy of the People’s National Party, was designated to create a ‘brown man’ dominance over the blacks. Self-government was vehemently denounced as the road back to slavery, and a certain means of leaving Jamaica bereft of British support and incapable of paying her own way.”

On November 30th the PNP published its Plan for National prosperity in the Daily Gleaner, which had been approved at its sixth annual conference. The plan defined the forthcoming elections as “the most momentous in the history of the country”, and outlined the achievements of the PNP, foremost among which was “the creation of the self government movement which won the progressive 1944 Constitution”. For the election campaign the PNP shelved its advocacy of state ownership and certainly retreated from its militant socialist rhetoric of the earlier period.

The Black Nationalist movement, which had gone into decline after Garvey’s departure from Jamaica in 1935, experienced a renewal with the return of his wife Amy Jacques to Jamaica after Garvey’s death in 1940. By then some of the most prominent Garveyites had gone over to the PNP, while others had thrown in their lot with Bustamante and the BITU. Three days before the elections, Amy Jacques Garvey came out publicly for the PNP, declaring that she would be untrue to the memory of Marcus Garvey if she “did not join with the nationalist movement at this time of political crisis”.

Bustamante cools the JDP

It was the JDP which made the early running once the campaign started. The support for big capital was reflected in the scope and content of its predictably anti-communist advertising campaign in the pages of the Daily Gleaner. Their campaign slogan: “Communism is anti-God – Vote for the JDP”, while not winning votes for them certainly deflected support from the PNP.

It was Bustamante in characteristic fashion that ‘cooled’ the JDP. Sir Hugh Foot, a former Colonial Secretary and Governor of Jamaica, relates a story told to him by a leading supporter of the JDP. That Party was staging its final campaign rally at the Ward Theatre filled to capacity, when,

“the speaker on the stage saw way up at the back of the dress circle an unmistakable figure. It was Bustamante, alone. Slowly he made his way down the aisle…and stood…. surveying the scene with his hands deep in his pockets in an attitude of contempt and defiance. The speaker on the stage stopped, an absolute hush of amazement, of outrage, descended on the crowded theatre…He said nothing, but stood his ground…And then slowly…walked up the steps of the dress circle – and out of the theatre. The meeting petered out. The restrained enthusiasm collapsed and could not be recaptured.”

The Verdict

These were the issues as the new electorate of 663,069 voters turned out on December 14th, to elect 32 members of the House of Representatives from 130 candidates, of which the JLP fielded 29, the PNP 19, the JDP 9, and the other parties 5. Surprisingly, despite the presence of political Parties and their affiliate trade unions, the remaining 68 were all independents.

The PNP did not enter a single candidate in the county of Cornwall and its nineteen candidates were all placed in constituencies where the Party had an organizational presence. In recognition of the high levels of illiteracy among the electorate, a familiar symbol was printed beside the name of each candidate. Despite this provision, 39,982 ballots or 10.3% of the votes cast were spoilt.

When the votes were counted, the JLP won 22 seats with 41.4% of the vote while the independent candidates won 5 seats with 30% of the vote and the PNP won 5 seats with 23.5% of the vote. The JDP ended with a mere 4.1% of the popular vote and all their candidates lost their deposits. Of the 51 independent candidates in the elections only 5 were successful, while 34 lost their deposits and only 4 of the 12 members of the old Legislative Council who stood for election under Universal Adult Suffrage won their seats.

Tragically for the PNP, Manley lost his seat and as a consequence it was Florizel Glasspole who emerged as Leader of the PNP Opposition in the House of Representatives.

Bustamante’s sweeping victory in the elections of 1944 reflected the response of the masses to his deep understanding of their yearning for an immediate improvement in their material existence. The empathy of his message from the platform made his appeal irresistible,

“I have your understanding of poverty. I know your ardent and pining desire for improved conditions. I have done something for you and want to do more…to lessen your poverty to get you a little land to put some money in your pockets, to provide work for you…”.

Manley’s appeal on the other hand was to a nationalism that had only just begun to emerge among the intelligentsia and which the masses neither understood nor embraced. Within a month of the elections Manley with characteristic honesty and clarity analysed the mass response to Bustamante and the Labour Party:

“in the last week the Labour vote, comprised of the uneducated and socially depressed mass, hardened and a sudden miracle of class conscious solidarity was wrought. ‘Vote Labour’ became a magic slogan. It ran like a fire through the island and cast a spell on all the poor – labourer and small farmer alike. The mass vote, unconscious of its own betrayal, was governed by a sagacity on the political plane that would be beyond praise but for its emotional origin, and its final dependence on a blind acceptance of the order of The Leader”