The Elections of 1962

by Arnold Betram.

“The Resurrection of Bustamante”

As the PNP began its second term, Norman Manley would have been acutely aware of the fact that he was now without two of his most important collaborators. First, the extremely resourceful and pro-active Hugh Foot, whose term as Governor came to an end in 1957 and more importantly, Noel Nethersole, whose death in 1959 deprived him of his most trusted and valuable colleague.

1. He was left virtually alone to contend with the potentially explosive issue of the West Indies Federation, which was hardly going well. The Constitutional conference, held in September 1959, for the West Indian territories to discuss and settle outstanding issues for the Federation ended in acrimony.

“Each leader came away expressing resentment against somebody or something. Those from the smaller units were alarmed by the truculence and un-readiness of Jamaica to concede a single point. The Jamaicans interpreted the furore over representation by population as a sign that their eastern colleagues were determined to deny Jamaica her simple rights”.

As a result, in reporting on the conference to the House of Representatives on November 3rd, Manley had to urge his colleagues to support the view that Jamaica should remain in the Federation and do everything possible to make it work. Manley’s insistence was based on his perception that Federation was an essential pre-condition for Jamaica’s independence. The alternative to a Federation of the British West Indies was in his view, permanent colonial status for Jamaica. Bustamante on the other hand returned to the view that political independence for Jamaica was not viable, neither on its own, nor in a Federation with the other West Indian territories. As far as he was concerned, the perpetuation of colonial rule was a far better prospect for Jamaica than to be yoked with “the pauperised territories of the Eastern Caribbean”. Accordingly, his position in the debate was that Jamaica should leave the Federation immediately. His young JLP colleague, D.C. Tavares, proposed a referendum.

The Resurgence of Black Nationalism

However, as the PNP prepared to deal with these challenges and to improve its enviable record of economic and social development, a new and more militant phase of Black Nationalism was about to emerge.

On the first day of 1959, Fidel Castro led the triumphant guerrilla movement and revolutionary forces into Havana, to mark the first successful socialist revolution in the Western Hemisphere. Its impact on the English speaking Caribbean was not immediately discernable.

However, in Jamaica members of the Rastafarian community, a religious organisation committed to repatriation to Africa took notice. Later that year a group of Rastafarians circulated a twenty-one-point document entitled The Movement, which was in essence a militant assertion of rights and a call to action.

· Members of the Rastafarian movement are an inseparable part of the black people of Jamaica.

· As such, we cannot and do not proclaim any higher aims than the legitimate aims and aspirations of the black people of Jamaica

· Many deplore and accuse the black people of raising the colour question in this island. But white supremacy was the official policy of this island for hundreds of years and white supremacists never regarded black men as good as the dogs in their yards.

· To white supremacy has been added Brown-man supremacy and the mongrel children of the Black women came to think and behave contemptuously of black people.

· The Rastafarian Movement has as its chief aim the complete destruction of all vestiges of white supremacy in Jamaica, thereby putting an end to economic exploitation and the social degradation of the black people.

· Suffering black people of Jamaica let us unite and set up a righteous Government under the slogan of repatriation and power

About this time, a group of Black Nationalists and Rastafarians who shared the sentiments expressed in the document began meeting regularly at 21 Rosalie Avenue, the home of a fish vendor, Edna Fisher. They called themselves The African Reform Church and their leader, the Rev. Claudius Henry, took for himself the title Repairer of the Breach.

This church established contact with the “First African Corps” an armed militant black group in the USA with its Headquarters in the Bronx, whose membership included Reynold Henry, son of the Rev. Claudius Henry. In early April 1960, the advance group of the First Africa Corp arrived in Jamaica and joined the militants from the African Reform Church in a guerrilla training camp in Red Hills.

The police carried out a pre-emptive raid against Claudius Henry and arrested him along with members of his group on charges of treason felony. Among the documents found in Henry’s camp was a letter addressed to the Cuban revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro, which was

cited in the Daily Gleaner of October 13th 1960.

“We wish to draw your attention to the conditions which confronts us today as poor underprivileged people which were brought here from Africa by the British slave traders over 400 years ago to serve as slaves. We now desire to return home in peace...otherwise to a government like yours that give justice to the poor...we are getting ready for an invasion on the Jamaican government, therefore we need your help and personal service”.

Without doubt the Black Nationalists of the day saw the potential for an organic relationship with revolutionary socialism. On June 21, a combined police military operation found the guerrilla camp, and a week later the rebellion was effectively suppressed.

Millard Johnson and the People’s Political Party

Even as one group of black nationalists was preparing for guerrilla warfare, another group began to prepare for a constitutional political solution. In April 1960, Barrister at Law Millard Johnson launched the People’s Political Party, a name borrowed from Garvey’s organization of 1928. Johnson was a founding member of the Richard Hart’s Marxist Peoples Freedom Movement in 1954. Before launching the PPP he had been elected President of The Afro-West Indian Society while in the United States of America, and in August 1961, he strengthened his Garveyite credentials with his election as Caribbean Commissioner for the UNIA.

Immediately around him were Garveyites, A.Z. Chambers and J.G. Edwards of the People’s United Party. A young supporter of the PPP, who sometimes appeared on the platform was Walter Rodney, a Guyanese undergraduate of the University of the West Indies. His name would be on the lips of every Jamaican in October 1968.

The Division within the JLP

Before turning their energies to the PNP and Federation, the JLP had their fair share of internal problems to deal with. After losing the 1959 elections, the 75-year old Bustamante had taken an extended overseas holiday. Both Robert Lightbourne and D.C. Tavares now saw an opportunity to take over the party from the aging Bustamante and began their preparations.

The internal power struggle, which ensued, saw Rose Leon supporting Tavares’ bid. Matters came to a head at the JLP’s annual conference in November 1960, which in Bustamante’s absence elected Tavares over Lightbourne as 3rd Deputy Leader. Instead of attending the second day of the conference, Bustamante sent a letter accusing “one member of the top Executive and a small clique of engineering forces and hooliganism at the Saturday session of the party convention, so as the control and manipulate the party to suit their own ends and ambitions”. The chief was particularly hard on Tavares, whom he vowed to tolerate as Party Secretary no longer.

Bustamante then convened a new conference in January 1961, and secured an Executive slate more to his liking. Gone was Rose Leon, who after losing the contest for 2nd Deputy Leader, unsuccessfully challenged the honesty of the ballot, and then resigned in tears, denouncing Bustamante as a liar. In 1961 she regrouped her followers in a Christian Democratic Party, which soon became the Progressive Labour Movement. Then in October 1961, she merged with Millard Johnson and the PPP, before finally casting her lot with the PNP.

The Referendum on the Federation

Manley’s decision to hold a Referendum on the Federation was a direct response to a release published in The Daily Gleaner of May 31st 1960, in which Bustamante stated that the JLP “would offer no candidate for the Federal by-election in St. Thomas, and would oppose the Federation and to do everything within their power to secure Jamaica’s withdrawal”. Robert Lightbourne, the Federal Member of Parliament for St. Thomas, had resigned his seat in the Federal Parliament after being elected to the Jamaica House of Representatives. The JLP named former Minister of Education, Edwin Allen, to replace him, but found it extremely difficult to raise finances for the election campaign. It was this difficulty that prompted Bustmante’s opportunist response.

Within an hour of reading the JLP statement, Norman Manley unilaterally committed the PNP to holding a referendum to decide whether or not Jamaica would remain in the Federation. One had grown accustomed to such arbitrariness and egoism in political life from Bustamante. That Manley could take such a decision without consulting his Party, reveals the extent of the deterioration in the PNP’s internal democracy after the expulsion of the left in 1952. This consultation was all the more important, since there was a powerful group within the PNP led by the 1st Vice-President of the party, Wills O. Isaacs, which harboured grave doubts about the viability of a West Indies Federation.

The JLP Takes the Initiative

Bustamante and the JLP now accelerated their anti-Federation campaign, hammering home to the Jamaican people that the wide spread poverty in Jamaica would only get worse with the additional taxation that Federation would bring. As the campaign progressed, Edward Seaga emerged as a major political personality, confirming the inability of the Jamaican poor to subsidise their neighbours in the Eastern Caribbean with his celebrated “haves and have nots” speech, in which he alleged that as much as 93% of the population constituted the “have nots”.

Once the British announced that “with or without Federation, Jamaica would be given its independence before the end of 1962”, Bustamante became even more strident in his opposition to Federation. For him, not only was unilateral independence the lesser evil for Jamaica, it was by far the most attractive political platform for the JLP.

The final inter-governmental conference held in Trinidad in May 1961, was followed by discussions in London to confirm the local decisions and adopt a final Federal Constitution. These discussions took place in a conference at Lancaster House organized by the Secretary of State for the Colonies. Manley and his delegation returned from the Lancaster House Conference on the 17th of June to launch the PNP’s Referendum campaign, confident of his party’s capacity to repeat the victory of July 1959 and finish with Bustamante once and for all. Both the British and the Eastern Caribbean also shared Manley’s prognosis.

The Decisive Encounter

Once again, Manley underestimated Bustamante’s genius in the art of political manipulation. At a sitting of the House of Representatives in June 1961, Norman Manley made a motion, seeking acceptance of the Lancaster House White Paper, which would have moved Jamaica closer to a West Indies Federation. L.G. Newland, JLP member then moved an amendment to the motion introduced by Manley “rejecting the London report and requesting Her Majesty’s Government to take the necessary steps to introduce legislation to grant Jamaica Independence on the 23rd May 1962 and to seek admission for Jamaica in the British Commonwealth as a Dominion”.

This masterstroke of political opportunism by the JLP placed Manley and the PNP in the invidious position of voting against the first motion specifically seeking a date for Jamaica’s independence. By the time of the election campaign, to the chagrin of the PNP Bustamante was being projected as the “Father” of independence.

Having defeated the opposition amendment, Manley was now forced to set a date for the Referendum, which took place on September 19th 1961. Voters in the capital city supported the Federation, while rural Jamaica voted overwhelmingly against it. The turnout of voters was considerably less than in the 1959 General Elections, which led to the view that “Federation was killed not by hostility, but merely by indifference”.

Having won the Referendum, Bustamante now established that no discussions on independence could proceed without the participation of the JLP. In the third week of October 1961, a joint Committee of the House was appointed to prepare proposals for Jamaica’s Independence Constitution, which would then be taken to London for discussions and finalization.

Among the owners of capital there was serious concern that the man who replaced Nethersole as Minister of Finance was Vernon Arnett, the PNP’s General Secretary, who for two decades had earned the reputation of a man with impeccable socialist credentials. There was no doubt about the concern of the capitalist class about a Minister of Finance in independent Jamaica who had openly advocated nationalization, operating with Cuba 90 miles away and the USSR in an expansionist mode. Their concerns were well articulated by Leslie Ashenheim a member of the Constitution Committee. On the question of whether the Government should have the right to acquire property, Ashenheim stated frankly:

“I represent a number of foreign corporations who have invested largely in this country, and who contemplate considerable investments … how I am going to face them. That is my problem. They like to see it in Black and White”.

The Resurrection of Bustamante

With the announcement of general elections to be held on April 10th 1962, both Parties mounted their respective campaigns. In the third week of March, the JLP released its manifesto, which was obviously designed to target the farming community in particular and rural voters in general. The PNP followed with its “Plan for a bigger, better, independent Jamaica”, and a slogan with a picture of Manley captioned “Vote for the Man with the Plan”.

Up to 1960, emigration particularly to the U.K., where a total of 58,946 Jamaicans had migrated between 1955 and 1958, had been the major factor in keeping unemployment down. However, with 8 percent of all coloured migrants to Britain unemployed in 1958, coupled with the Notting Hill riots of that year in which some Jamaicans were brutally attacked by English youths, migration to Britain declined, and as a result unemployment climbed to 12 percent by 1960.

By 1962, the deep divisions in the Party over Federation, rising unemployment, and racial tensions had contributed to an increasingly disillusioned electorate. Simultaneously, the impact of international events as well as the rise of Black Nationalism had shaped a new consciousness in the psyche of the Jamaican people, which an aging and fractious PNP leadership seemed incapable of understanding. On the other hand, the JLP seemed energised. It’s list of candidates combined an experienced old guard with newcomers Seaga, Jones, Eldermire and Gyles joining Tavares and Lightbourne to bring to the campaign a level of energy and dynamism that was never matched by the aging PNP.

In the campaign, the PPP had presence and certainly showed purpose. Popular response to Millard Johnson’s militant ‘black nationalism’ reflected the level of racial oppression that existed, crying out for articulation and redress. Ironically, it was Manley’s impressive economic and social gains which raised hopes and increased the demand for redress at a broader level.

Some 580,517 Jamaicans cast their votes in the general elections of 1962, of which 50.04% voted for the JLP, 48.59% for the PNP 0.86 for the PPP and 0.51% for the independents. The JLP won 26 seats to the PNPs 19, to earn the right to lead Jamaica into independence. For Alexander Bustamante at 78 years of age, it was a political resurrection, which no one would have contemplated after his defeat in 1959. It is one of the ironies of history that it was the conservative, pro-British Bustamante and not the premier nationalist, Manley, who became the first Prime Minister in independent Jamaica.