Louis Marriott, Contributor
This is the 25th in a series of articles reliving the years up to Independence by a journalist/broadcaster whose childhood and maturation coincided with Jamaica's.
MONDAY, September 18, 1944, was the sixth anniversary of the founding of the People's National Party (PNP). The party marked the occasion by presenting the 19 candidates who would be its standard-bearers in the forthcoming general election, the first under universal adult suffrage.
I pleaded with my parents to allow me to accompany Daddy to the rally at Edelweiss Park, just south of Cross Roads. They were reluctant, as it was during the school week. I believe that the great educator Edith Dalton James persuaded Daddy that an exception could be made as I was far advanced academically and the experience would be part of the rounded education she always advocated.
Mrs. James was one of the candidates, standing for Western St. Andrew. Other notable candidates included party President Norman Manley in Eastern St. Andrew; Vice- President Noel "Crab" Nethersole in Central St. Andrew; the incumbent Member of the Legislative Council for St. Ann, Dr. Ivan Lloyd; and, contesting Kingston constituencies, Florizel Glasspole, Wills Isaacs and Ken Hill.
Hill would challenge the immensely popular Alexander Bustamante, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) leader, in Western Kingston. At the Edelweiss Park rally all the candidates spoke briefly except Manley, who gave a presidential address with his customary great oratory. I thought he must have had Daddy in mind when he said, speaking of PNP workers: "There have been men many of whom have sacrificed easy jobs, the opportunity of making money, who have sacrificed the comfort of their ordinary lives for the cause of the people and the growth of our country."
There was a festive air about the rally. The crowd was estimated at more than 5,000. We were entertained by the Jamaica Military Band; the renowned tenor Granville Campbell, who co-wrote the party's anthem "Jamaica Arise" with Huntington Bakery's owner and PNP stalwart William Seivwright: and comedian Lee Gordon, who often appeared in tandem with Ranny Williams as the "Amos" half of "Amos & Andy".
ELECTION GEAR
After the rally, the party went into election gear. The JLP and the businessmen's organisation, the Jamaica Democratic Party (JDP), were also on the hustings. The PNP had spent the six years since its formation in intense structural development, setting up a network of groups in town and country, recruiting its membership through the groups, and propagating among the membership its messages of popular democracy, Jamaican nationhood, political sovereignty and egalitarian socialism. Its organisational skills were far superior to those of the JLP, founded only in July 1943; but that JLP's weakness was perhaps also its greatest strength as it relied wholly on the charisma of Bustamante, widely regarded as the champion of the working class. The JDP had no popular base but by its nature had relatively large funds and spent a great deal on newspaper advertisements denouncing the PNP.
The campaign was one of charges and countercharges, with the JLP and the JDP attacking the PNP's socialist philosophy and the PNP concentrating on Bustamante's leadership, citing dictatorial tendencies and questionable management of the funds of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU).
As King George VI gave the royal assent to the Jamaica constitution, issuing an Order in Council on October 27 to give effect to it, Governor Huggins on November 1 announced that the first election under universal adult suffrage would be held on December 14, 1944. Nomination Day would be Monday November 20, which would be celebrated as a public holiday, "Constitution Day", being the day on which the watershed new constitution would come into force.
The PNP put its initials in its manifesto, a "Plan for National Prosperity", reflecting its Fabian socialist ideals. Both the JDP and Bustamante attacked it as communist. The JDP ran an advertisement based on Manley's speech at the PNP's annual conference in 1940 when he advocated a socialist path for the party.
The JDP advertisement underlined a passage in which Manley stated: "Socialism is not a matter of higher wages or better living conditions for workers, though these things are incidental, but it involves the concept that all the means of production should in one form or the other come to be publicly owned and publicly controlled." It then placed a follow-up advertisement, headlined: "IF JAMAICA BECAME A SOCIALIST STATE WHAT WOULD YOUR LIFE BE LIKE?" It answered the question itself, asserting "You would be a servant of the state - to do as directed, until you die." It alleged that freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of worship would be curtailed.
The PNP was rattled by JLP propaganda that Manley was anti-worker. A full-page advertisement appeared in The Gleaner titled "THE TRUTH ABOUT MANLEY'S GREAT FIGHT FOR LABOUR IN MAY 1938". The ad featured 1938 Gleaner headlines that reflected Manley's intervention in the troubles on behalf of the workers. According to an insert in the artwork, "This advertisement was paid for with monies subscribed by individuals of all classes, who love the truth and admire Mr. Manley for his great and unselfish services for labour in particular, and his country as a whole." The JLP countered exactly two weeks later with an advertisement titled "THE WHOLE TRUTH", in which it declared, inter alia: "The real truth is that the longshoremen for good or evil rejected the leadership of Mr. Manley." Irked by PNP propaganda about mal-administration of BITU funds, Bustamante, in a Gleaner advertisement, challenged Manley to appear at a JLP mass meeting at Kingston Race Course with documentary evidence of his (Bustamante's) mismanagement of the funds.
"Mr. Manley," he said, "you have no alternative now than to accept this challenge or otherwise be condemned in the estimation of the public, rich and poor. I guarantee you protection." Manley did not appear at the JLP meeting, but a PNP advertisement appeared in the newspaper on the eve of the meeting, saying "DON'T DODGE, BUSTAMANTE THESE ARE THE QUESTIONS YOU MUST ANSWER TOMORROW NIGHT!" It listed a number of questions citing sums of money and implying mismanagement of the union's funds.
SOME SINISTER REASON
Ken Hill, Bustamante's opponent in the West Kingston constituency, could be an acerbic platform speaker and, having a nodding acquaintance with the law, knew how to skirt the boundaries of libel without overstepping. He was proving an irritant not only in his charges of dictatorship and mal-administration of funds but also in pouring scorn on Bustamante's romantic stories of his past growing up with aristocrats in Spain and being a senior police officer in Havana and a dietician in New York. Hill drew attention to Bustamante's name change from Clarke, which he was before leaving Jamaica in 1905, implying there was some sinister reason for the change. He constantly referred to Bustamante as "Alexander Clarke".
Bustamante bought advertising space in The Gleaner to proclaim: "I will beat my so-called opponent in the Western Constituency of Kingston from start to finish. I will sit in the Legislative Council (sic) to direct my party and the interest of this country, and improve to the fullest the economic and social conditions of all grades of labour. My residential qualification is in order. My name is Bustamante, and no propaganda can change that, and no slander, libel, vilification, or the plot to mischievously propagandise against me with a hope to upset my nerves and even sending me mad will be enough to have any effect.
"A war of nerves is being practised on me by political mischief-makers as Hitler and Mussolini did to the United Nations, but the war of nerves failed. The order that I have given to myself is to remain calm, smile, and whip every political opponent in every parish. Signed: Alexander Bustamante, Leader, Jamaica Labour Party".
The PNP could not match Bustamante's popularity nor the JDP's finances. Although it had a far superior organisation, it was obliged to field candidates in only 19 of the 32 constituencies. I was very definitely caught up in the campaign. Especially on weekends, I went to a number of meetings with Daddy, mostly on the campaign trail for Edith Dalton James in the hills of Western St. Andrew. I rode on the backs of trucks that took Kingston-based comrades to places like Stony Hill, Golden Spring, Temple Hall, Lawrence Tavern and my ancestral home, Essex Hall. I was often held up in the strong arms of some enthusiastic platform speaker and introduced in the glare of a tilley lamp as "the future of Jamaica" immediately preceding the singing of the PNP Anthem "Jamaica Arise" and a song that affirmed, "We are going to build a new Jamaica."
Louis Marriott is a journalist and broadcaster, a former BBC radio producer/presenter and Press Secretary to the Prime Minister of Jamaica
