Orville Taylor
"There is no 'I 'in team." This corny, overused cliché is true. However, if you eliminate two of the four letters and turn what is left backwards, you are left with an empty 'me.' For persons who are accustomed to utilising this hackneyed phrase, a better tagline could be, "Unity begins with U."
In the brief history of Jamaican politics, the challenge has always been to create a united set of people. Marcus Garvey founded the People's Political Party in the late 1920s and was beaten so badly in the municipal elections of 1929, that the West Indies cricket team looks like winners.
Garvey's message was about nation building and the upliftment of the race, and many of his manifesto elements would be relevant today. The problem was that he failed to understand that he was facing an electorate that was mostly middle- and upper-class browns, whites and deputy whites. Thus, his appeal had to have been more incorporative.
A decade later, a group of middle-class intellectuals, led by Norman Washington Manley, founded the People's National Party (PNP). Unlike his 'brother', Alexander Bustamante (né William Clarke), Manley chose not to put his name on the title of the first organisation that he established. He insisted on putting 'people' first and even literally knocked out grass-roots activist Stanley Vernon, who was lobbying to call the party the Jamaica National Party.
Birth fathers
Among the birth fathers of the party was M.G. Smith, the most well-known Jamaican anthropologist/sociologist who wrote a most skilful and insightful analysis of Jamaican society. Smith understood that Jamaica was (is) a society divided into three distinct segments, which were distinguished by colour and culture. With this obvious knowledge at his disposal, Manley recognised the need to create unity and insisted on bringing in the 'poor people's hero', Bustamante, on the platform as a founding member. After all, one can't fight or oppose something of which one is a part. Collective responsibility, it is called.
Even after Bustamante broke away from the PNP in 1943 and created the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), there were lines of decorum that were never crossed between the two as they each recognised that they were part of the same bloodline. On one occasion, then JLP parliamentarian, Madame Rose Leon, made derisive statements about the health of an ailing Manley. Busta responded quickly and decisively, eliminating her faster than the ministerial hopes of Dr Karl Blythe.
Two lessons are to be learnt here. First, in a society that is highly divided, one must find ways of bringing the potentially opposing factions into the fold. Second, one must be careful of what one does during intra-family conflicts, because the nails and thorns created in the battle will come back like a Spanish macca (thorn) and jook (prick) you all.
In 2006, as Portia Simpson Miller and Peter Phillips battled for ascendancy to the Norman Manley throne vacated by P. J. Patterson, they fought, and fought, creating a big stink. K.D. was no knight, as he dropped chivalry and placed a conical hat that resembles a wizard's headwear on her head. As it was in the 1930s, lines were drawn and it was "university vs uneversi."
The challenge developed into character warfare and as Maxine Henry-Wilson said her piece, it shaped up into a bad fight. And the JLP watched, avoiding the 'foul fight' as cockroaches in the woodwork or better still, like termites.
When the dust had settled, the PNP was once again faced with a leadership crisis: Unite the party fast! It had been there before. In 1949, it purged 'communist' elements Hart, Henry and the two Hills (No! not Carlos). Many worker/grass-roots persons were upset. Then Manley appeased the working class by creating the National Workers' Union, giving it a voting voice in its congress.
Two-man race
Later in 1969, it was a two-man race to succeed the retired Manley, and his son, Michael, trounced Vivian Blake 376 to 155 votes, to claim victory. Michael had charisma and perceived intellect and therefore, was able to reach all and sundry. A seven-eighths white man, embracing his blackness, speaking to the previously downtrodden Rastafari, hugging the poor, connecting with the working class that he served as a trade unionist. An awesome man, he spoke a language that made the intelligentsia listen, but which the uneducated understood clearly. Manley unified all elements of his party.
By the mid-1970s, he began a courtship with Fidel Castro and once more, the party was faced with the ghost of communism. Some of the far-right and far-white interests were marginalised. But tucked neatly in the background was Percival James Patterson, a slow-talking, pretty-shirt-wearing lawyer, who has never said an unkind word in public.
Awful things said
His time came in 1992. It was not a straight contest, as he whipped the pants off her, polling 2,322 votes to Portia's 756. Although there is the evasion of blame and denials, some awful things were said on the campaign trail. P.J., the great conciliator, recognising that she was an asset to the party, restored her ministerial portfolio, with even more responsibility.
Patterson's move was not genius, it was common sense. Anti-slavery Republican Abraham Lincoln had anti-black Andrew Johnson as his vice president up to his assassination in 1865. Edward Seaga installed the deposed Hugh Shearer as deputy prime minister up to 1989. This technique helped in defusing the 1985 national strike because Shearer could not disrupt 'his own policies'.
It is uncertain that Peter Phillips can coalesce the 'Portiapologists' behind him as she failed with the 'Solid Rockers'. However, if neither can unite the dissenting allies, none deserves to lead the party, much less the country.
Dr Orville Taylor is senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at UWI, Mona. Feedback may be sent to orville.taylor@uwimona.edu.jm or columns@gleanerjm.com.
