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The Myth of Independence: Middle Class Politics and Non-Mobilization in Jamaica

A New Introduction by Louis Lindsay

With commentaries by Norman Girvan, Richard Hart, William Harris, Taitu Heron, Rupert Lewis, Vaughn Lewis, Herman McKenzie and Michael Witter

Louis Lindsay

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Copyright 1975 Louis Lindsay

Department of Government

First Published in 1975 as Working Paper No. 6, Reprinted 1981, 1991, and 2005

Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) University of the West Indies Mona, Kingston 7, Jamaica

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Acknowledgements Error! Bookmark not defined.

List of Acronyms Error! Bookmark not defined.

List of Contributors Error! Bookmark not defined.

Reflections on the Myth of Independence Louis Lindsay Error! Bookmark not defined.

Caribbean Fanonism Revisited: A Note

Norman Girvan Error! Bookmark not defined.

Globalization and Mobilization: The Search for Independence

William Harris Error! Bookmark not defined.

A Brief Commentary on Louis Lindsay’s Myth of Independence

Richard Hart Error! Bookmark not defined.

A Lost Opportunity? A Commentary on the Jamaican Experience of Independence

Taitu Heron Error! Bookmark not defined.

Race, Identity and the Challenges of National Development: A Comment on Louis Lindsay’s

Myth Essays

Rupert Lewis Error! Bookmark not defined.

Retrospective on Louis Lindsay’s Myth of Independence: Middle Class Politics and Non-

mobilization in Jamaica

Vaughn Lewis Error! Bookmark not defined.

The Way We Were? Comments on Louis Lindsay’s Myth of Independence

Herman McKenzie Error! Bookmark not defined.

On Debunking Political Myths

Michael Witter Error! Bookmark not defined.

The Myth of Independence: Middle Class Politics and Non-Mobilization in Jamaica

Louis Lindsay 94

I: The Devaluation of the Concept of Independence 94

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II: Fanon and the Notion of Pseudo-Independence 95

III: Middle Class Anglophilism and Colonial Status Quo Politics 99

IV: The Absence of National Self-Confidence and the Failure of the Left 103

V. The Materialist Fallacy and the New Mother Country Complex 109

VI: Conceptualising the Quest for Self Government - Problems of Language and Problems of

Thought 111

Conclusion 115

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The Myth of Independence: Middle Class Politics and Non-Mobilization in Jamaica Louis Lindsay

I: The Devaluation of the Concept of Independence

Up to about the first half of the present century, it was customary to think of political independence as representing a truly momentous event in the history of a country. The term itself traditionally connoted liberation from the yoke of foreign oppression and the freedom of a community to pursue policies and purposes which reflected its own interests and values. From this perspective, political independence was seen as a phenomenon which generally uplifted the collective integrity of a social group. Its attainment was thought to imply the liberation of the spirit and creative energies of individuals from the whims and fancies of external and previously uncontrollable forces. Through its impact it was believed that whole communities of subjects could be transformed into free communities of citizens. 1

But if this is what independence meant in the past, the same is not generally true of the present. For, with the rapid dissolution of European colonial empires which followed World War II, independence is now more or less taken for granted. The concept has lost much of the drama, excitement and powerful normative vibrations which it usually conveyed. As the leaders of more and more formerly colonized territories in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, took their seats in the United Nations, the meaning of independence underwent a rapid process of devaluation. And this process has virtually emptied what was once a rich and exciting ideal of much of its ethical significance and moral thrust [Cobban, 17, esp. pp. 101-116 and pp. 271-278].

It is not easy to escape the conclusion that there is a clear connection between the devaluation which has occurred with regard to the meaning of independence, and the formal granting of the right of self-determination to traditionally devalued peoples of the Afro-Asian and Caribbean world. As native leaders in colonial territories asserted their right to independence, metropolitan governments were increasingly compelled to make concessions to their demands. But the concessions which were made appear to have been more symbolic than real. No sooner was the right to independence conceded in form, than it was withdrawn in substance. If native leaders demanded independence, they were given independence. But by removing from the offer of supposed national autonomy the key operational component of self-determination, European imperial powers pacified and placated colonial discontent by offering the myth while withholding the reality of national political sovereignty.

The core of the myth of independence centres on the substitution of procedural and legalistic criteria for functional and substantive ones. The myth gains power and credibility through its ratification by constitutional instruments legitimized by metropolitan governments, and accepted by indigenous political leaders as bestowing upon their countries the supposed privileges and prerogative of national political sovereignty.

The advent of the document prescribing independence is generally welcomed with solemn ceremonies and spectacular displays. A national flag is designed and unfurled. So too is a national anthem, and perhaps a national dish, a national tree, a national bird and so on. 2 But for the great majority of citizens in the alleged newly independent state, life continues in much the way that it did before what was heralded as independence was achieved. For a small minority of privileged individuals, however, the

1 For excellent discussions of the concept of independence as a liberating ideal with deep and profoundly important political and

moral significance, see especially: Wiltman [102], Chapter 1; Palmer [82], pp. 213-263; Moore Jnr. [73], pp. 370-385; Levin [60], pp. 496-513; Sagera [91], pp. 95-126 and Bendix [11] pp. 1-27.

2 All of these symbols have been used as indices of independence in Jamaica.

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formal declaration of independence means new and rewarding ambassadorial and consular positions abroad, grand and luxuriously appointed official residential mansions, and greater access to and positioning for the corruptive uses of funds which are now more easily obtainable from both foreign and local sources.

To both the ostensibly withdrawing metropolitan power and those who inherit the formal political offices of state, symbolic political independence is critical as a strategic manipulative device. By gracefully appearing to concede the right of national sovereignty the metropolitan government finds it easier to preserve the notion of a beneficent and non-exploitative mother country who has carefully and with much self-sacrifice prepared her colonial `children‟ for ultimate independence and self-determination. Given, however, that the character of the `documentary independence‟ which is given does not and cannot by itself qualitatively change the traditional pattern of relationships between metropolitan power and hinterland colony, 3 with the granting of independence, the metropolitan country often manages to extract additional increments of prestige and moral comfort, while at the same time it preserves (perhaps even increases) the concrete benefits which it traditionally obtained from its mother-country role. In this way, local forces of actual or potential political radicalism may be lulled into passivity and quiescence by the receipt of a document which offers symbolic reassurance as a mask for continued exploitation.

As a mechanism for symbolic manipulation, legal or documentary independence facilitates the process by which established native political elites can bolster their images as successful leaders by claiming, legitimizing and imposing titles such as `Father of the Nation‟, `National Hero‟ and so on.4 This kind of claim strengthens the prestige of incumbent post-independence leaders vis-à-vis those who seek to challenge their authority, and increases the capacity of these leaders to maintain a status quo in which they inherit not simply the titles, but also a good deal of the benefits and rewards formerly enjoyed by metropolitan overlords under the ancien regime.

As one of the new states which emerged from the post-war period of European political decolonization, Jamaica can be used as a case study for illustrating how myths and symbols associated with independence have been manipulated to generate political quietism and frustrate possibilities for meaningful change in Third World countries. 5 Essentially, this is what our discussion in the following pages is about. Our focus, however, will be on the one small aspect of the much larger problem. Specifically, we will be concerned with the myth of mobilization for self-government and independence.

II: Fanon and the Notion of Pseudo-Independence

A good place to begin our discussion of the myth of mobilization for independence is with the brilliant collection of essays on the subject written by the late Martiniquan sociologist and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon [37, 36, 34, and 35]. Beginning with a theory of the role of sacrificial effort in the attainment of valuable and valued social objectives, Fanon has shown how the notion of independence as a gift bestowed by generous metropolitan governments on grateful natives has served to warp the collective psyche of both masses and elites, and perpetuate the reality (if not the formal legality) of continued colonization and foreign control.

3 The absence of these changes, in spite of the ostensible fact of political independence, is often described with the term `neo-

colonialism'. On the nature and importance of this concept for understanding the actual character of political life in many of the new states, see Nkrumah [78], especially Introduction and Conclusion; Beckford [10], pp. 183-229; Charle [16], pp. 329-337 and Mandle [65].

4 In Jamaica, the designation of certain individuals as National Heroes was formally decreed by an Act of Parliament in 1969. Of the five individuals so far declared worthy of this status two - Alexander Bustamante and Norman Manley - were respectively the leaders of the governing party and the loyal opposition in 1962, the year when constitutional independence was proclaimed. On the general subject of the manipulative uses of titles and awards as devices for the co-optation of dissent, see: Bagehot [9], pp. 82-149; Lipset [64], pp. 17-52; Levine [61], pp. 250-256 and Duncan [22], pp. 265-284.

5 Over the period 1947-73, Jamaica has been one of a total of some 49 former colonial territories which have claimed to be or been declared legally independent States.

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According to Fanon, nothing which is really worthwhile is ever attained without struggle: that which has been given as the gift of independence is not independence at all, but a subtle process of manipulation which allows native-receivers to enjoy the illusions of freedom while simultaneously permitting metropolitan-givers to maximize their ability to increase the scale of their exploitation.6 In this way, a metropolitan power can continue to derive concrete and tangible benefits at minimum costs even after independence has been declared. Real independence, Fanon insists, [37, p. 100] is always a „demand‟, never a „prayer‟.

For Fanon, the promise of independence was lost when European colonizers began to establish timetables for their withdrawal from the Third World.7 These timetables „hoodwinked‟ native political leaders into complacency by making it appear that little or no purposive political mobilization was necessary to secure or recapture the benefits of freedom and national sovereignty [37, p. 172].

The absence of purposive anti-colonial mobilization has meant the persistence of colonialist attitudes and values into the era of supposed independence. It has produced not redemption for which the natives longed, but a „falsified historical time‟ [37, p. 18].

Genuine political mobilization in a colonial setting is never a one-dimensional affair. It will always operate simultaneously in two separate but closely interrelated directions. Firstly, Fanon maintains, real mobilization speaks to the colonial power in voices and with actions which it understands and is unlikely to forget. And, secondly, real mobilization is also the process by which the native rids himself of the accumulated myths into which he has been socialized by colonial authorities. Socialization into mythical conceptions by both the self and the colonial environment were imposed upon the native in order to guarantee the servitude and deference which external oppression requires for its successful functioning [34, esp. pp. 35-64].

The central thrust of Fanon‟s thesis, then, is that where there has been no genuine mobilization for self-determination, the colonial situation will continue and it will do so virtually unaffected by declarations of legal or „pseudo-independence‟ [37, p. 155]. And for Fanon, there can be authentic anti-colonial mobilization without the deliberate use of violence:

The naked truth of decolonization evokes for us the searing bullets and blood stained knives which emanate from it. For if the last shall be the first, this will only come to pass after a murderous and decisive struggle between the two protagonists. That affirmed intention to place the last at the head of things, and to make them climb at a pace (too quickly, some say) the well known steps which characterize an organized society, can only triumph if we use all means to turn the scale, including, of course, that of violence. [36, p. 37].

It is only through mobilized violence, Fanon claims, that both the oppressor and those whom he has subdued into servitude can begin the `purgative‟ task of self-cleansing which real self-determination and development required.8 To assume that anything else can be the case is to naively postulate “a sudden humanity on the part of the colonialist” - a humanity which both history and current practices show to be entirely without foundation. Fanon sees it as an inexorable law of the process of oppression that “no

6 This position also constitutes an increasingly widely accepted premise of most organizational theories. The point of emphasis is simply this: the more sacrifices an individual is called upon to make for a group to which he belongs or with which he is associated, the greater will be his loyalty and commitment to that group. For a clear exposition and review of some of the literature bearing on this point, see Lewin [62], especially pp. 161-163.

7 "Without any period of transition [to independence], there is a total, complete and absolute substitution" - Fanon [36], p. 39. Political diarchy and so-called training for independence is, for Fanon, simply a thinly veiled mask which the metropolitan colonizer sometimes successfully used to disguise his real intentions and purposes. The period of alleged apprenticeship for independence, Fanon persuasively argues, provided a critical time lag which allowed reactionary elements, both within and outside of the colonial setting, to mobilize the considerable resources at their disposal in opposition to genuine change. 8 "At the level of individuals, violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect", [Fanon 36], p. 94.

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colonialist nation is willing to withdraw without exhausting all possibilities for maintaining itself” [37, pp. 154-155].9

Whether or not the native uses violence against his oppressor, violence will be used against the native by those who benefit from his oppression. According to Fanon [37, esp. p. 155] it is only when the native indicates by resort to armed struggle that he too is willing to use violence as an antidote to violence that the colonizer will seriously begin to count the costs of his actions. And it is only after this kind of calculation is made, that the possibilities for real self-determination are placed on the agenda for the first time.

If Fanon is insistent on violence as a necessary condition for colonial redemption, it is largely because he holds a perspective on independence which is close to the traditional view which we have previously discussed. For him:

…true independence “is not a seeking for reforms but the grandiose effort of a people, which had been mummified to rediscover its own genius: to reassume its history, to assert its sovereignty” [37, pp. 83-84].

If liberation of this type is to be achieved, (and for the colonized, anything less is less than liberation), the “inferiorized man” must bring “all his resources into play, all his acquisitions, the old and the new, his own and those of the occupant” [37, p. 43].

To accept the necessity for the use of violent means as the weapon to secure independence represents for Fanon the ultimate commitment to change. When the native arms himself and strikes the death blow at his oppressors he burns his bridges behind him. He cannot look back. He must forge ahead on his own momentum. In this way (and only in this way) will he be able to debunk once and for all the myths of his own worthlessness and incompetence - myths foisted upon him by his colonial oppressors. For in the violent struggle for freedom, a marked alienation occurs from the illusions which had previously dominated the life of the colonized:

The native‟s back is to the wall, the knife is at his throat (or, more precisely the electrode at his genitals): he will have no more call for his fancies. After centuries of unreality, after having wallowed in the most outlandish phantoms, at long last the native, gun in hand, stands face to face with the only forces which contend for his life - the forces of colonialism... The native discovers reality and transforms it into the pattern of his customs, into the practice of violence and into his plan for freedom [36, p. 58].

Once the native commits himself to violence as the means of his liberation, the mother country towards which he had always been told to look for comfort and sustenance will no longer be available for this purpose. There is no escaping from this fact, given that it will be against the mother country that his violence will be principally directed. The native who is mobilized for violent struggle will automatically find that survival depends exclusively on his own skills and energies. He will be forced to find new allies and make new friends. His choices might not always be the most correct or most appropriate ones. But whatever he does, he will do for himself; his new friends will more likely than not be chosen on the basis of interests and values which are compatible with his own, and will not typify the alliances of contradictory forces which colonialist oppression had forced upon him.

For Fanon, Algeria was the illustration par excellence of mobilization for national liberation. Through violent struggle, the Algerian people had brought the French Republic to the verge of total chaos and destruction. The metropolitan country was made to face pressures which it could indefinitely withstand. Fanon was convinced that in achieving independence in the way that they did, the Algerian people had challenged and severely weakened many of the myths which had kept them in bondage for almost one and a half centuries to an external and oppressive imperial force.10

9 We do not expect ... colonialism to commit suicide. It is altogether logical for it to defend itself fanatically. But it is, on the other hand, its awareness that it cannot survive which will determine its liquidation as a style of contact with other peoples", Fanon [37], p. 105.

10 Fanon's most sustained discussion of this theme is contained in his A Dying Colonialism [34]. This book is essentially a collection of essays on the dynamics of the Algerian revolution against colonial rule. Indeed, the study was originally published in France as L'

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Fanon consistently insisted that genuine struggle for independence was not in Algeria (nor can it be elsewhere) simply anarchic expressions of accumulated anger. If the commitment to change and collective redemption is a serious one, the process of becoming liberated will itself help to create (in fact will be essential in creating) the dynamic “of building, or organizing, of inventing the new society that must come into being” [37, p. 104].

Fanon saw revealed in the unfolding consciousness of the new Algerian citizen, the essential confirmation of his thesis that violent mobilization is the antidote to colonial sterility:

All the degrading and infantilizing structures that habitually infest relations between the colonized and the colonizer were suddenly liquidated. Whereas the colonized usually has only a choice between a retraction of his being and a frenzied attempt at identification with the colonizer, the Algerian has brought into existence a new positive, efficient personality, whose richness is provided less by the trial of strength that he engaged in, than by his certainty that he embodies a decisive moment of the national consciousness [37, pp. 102-103].

Fanon‟s thesis on anti-colonial mobilization for independence must be seen as constituting a model of what is theoretically possible, and not as an empirical description of what has actually occurred in the majority of newly independent states. Fanon‟s model is not, however, an all or nothing one.11 He recognizes that there are some former colonial territories in which the process of decolonization has been more effective than in others.12 But for him, Algeria represented the pragmatic illustration of what it is possible to achieve, where mobilization against colonial rule assumes the form of violent struggles for national liberation.13

If Fanon saw Algeria as the positive model of the liberated African state, he saw the Ivory Coast as the negative illustration of persistent colonialism. To him, the Ivory Coast brought into stark relief the full consequences of the decadence which follows when political leaders believe that there is, and opt for, a `prayerful‟ route to independence. If as a result of purposive and determined struggle, the great potential of the Algerian people had blossomed and grown, the situation in the Ivory Coast was seen, in contrast, as representing a waste of human resources and a massive tragedy of unfulfilled greatness [37, esp. pp. 117-119].

In the same way as there are lessons to be learned from the Algerian experience, so too according to Fanon, there are lessons to be learned from the Ivory Coast. For under the regime of Houphouet Boigny, what masquerades as the achievement of independence is in reality hardly more than a continuation of the colonialist era.14 For how, he asks, can the Ivory Coast be called independent, when President Boigny continues to serve as “a straw man for French colonialism” and his minister‟s daily “hob-nob with an economy dominated by a colonial pact” [37, p. 117]:

Mr. Houphouet Boigny has become the travelling salesman of French colonialism and he has not feared to appear before the United Nations to defend the French thesis... The future will have no pity for those men who, possessing the

An Cinq de la Revolution Algerienne. It is interesting to speculate on how Fanon would have reacted to the twists and turns which events have subsequently taken following on the revolution which he celebrated without living to witness what some have called its „consumation‟ and others its „degeneration‟ and „bankruptcy‟ [See Footnote 13].

11 The notion that it is only in the actual process of mobilizing for national liberation that one clearly begins to see the basic outlines and forms which the new society will take is also excellently argued by Guevarra [42, especially pp. 71-73]; Castro [15, especially pp. 150-152]; Mao Zedong [39, pp. 197-264]; Ho Chi Minh [51, pp. 129-156].

12 By Fanon's criteria, countries such as Cuba and China would rank among those which have engaged in effective anti-imperialist mobilization.

13 For views similar to Fanon's conclusions regarding the liberating achievements of the Algerian revolution, see Hanissart [46]; Ottaway [81]; Soustelle [94]. And for perspectives which contrast, often in diametrically opposed ways to those of Fanon's, see Aron [3 and 4]; Savary [92]; and Tillion [98]. 14 There are many who, unlike Fanon, see the Ivory Coast as a good or reasonably good illustration of orderly change and relatively stable development. See especially, Zolberg [103] and Virginia Thompson [97].

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exceptional privilege of being able to speak words of truth to their oppressors, have taken refuge in an attitude of passivity, of mute indifference and some times of cold complicity [37, p. 117].

III: Middle Class Anglophilism and Colonial Status Quo Politics

Jamaica fits easily into the category of those new states in which formal independence was granted without the initiation of any kind of serious struggle against colonial rule. Indeed, Norman Manley, the widely acknowledged `founding father‟ of the modern Jamaican state, consistently emphasized that because of his own skill and the good sense of his people, Jamaica managed to secure its constitutional advance to self-government without having `to fight for it‟ [Hansard, 54, p. 636].15

Norman Manley recognized from very early in the game which he played with the Jamaican people, that a struggle against British colonialism could not be successfully undertaken without simultaneously challenging the whole complex of values and assumptions which characterized the British approach to politics. And to question or challenge the ethos of Westminster politics was an activity which Manley‟s pronounced Anglophilism led him to believe would have nothing but very undesirable consequences for the island.

Just five months before Jamaica was declared a legally independent state, Premier Manley declared that the “British constitution is the best in the world ... the only good system of government” [Hansard, 55, pp. 719-720]. Holding this belief, Mr. Manley expressed pleasure and satisfaction that Jamaican leaders had done nothing which would have jeopardized the country‟s chances to receive use the institutions of Westminster government [Ibid. esp. pp. 720-721]. In a nostalgic review of the years which he had spent as leader of the PNP, Mr. Manley firmly asserted:

I make no apology for the fact that we did not attempt to embark upon any original or novel exercise in constitutional building.... Let us not make the mistake of describing as colonial, institutions which are part and parcel of the heritage of this country. If we have any confidence in our own individuality and our own personality, we would absorb these things and incorporate them into our own use as part of the heritage we are not ashamed of. I am not ashamed of any institution which exists in this country merely because it derives from England [Ibid. p. 719 and 751].

It is clear that independence did not carry for Manley the connotation of a new beginning. Throughout his political life, the PNP leader remained deeply convinced that the transfer and receipt of Westminster institutions was identical with independence, self-determination and nationhood. If it was necessary to mobilize the Jamaican people at all, this mobilization could only be for the right to receive the heritage of Westminster government. For it was altogether inconceivable that the people of Jamaica should (or could) be mobilized in antipathy to the people and government of Great Britain. What would be the point of engaging in or encouraging militant anti-colonial activities? Had not Britain after all committed itself to the idea of a West Indian federation and promised that this federation would enjoy all the institutions and privileges of a dominion within the British Commonwealth of Nations?16

The logic of Mr. Manley‟s position appears, on the surface at least, to have been simple and straightforward. Briefly, it ran something like this: if the objectives which one seeks to obtain can be secured without a struggle, then there is clearly nothing to be gained, and possibly much to be lost, by adopting belligerent attitudes and postures [See esp. Hansard, 54, pp. 635-636].

But the point which is in contention here is not the internal consistency of Manley‟s arguments. What is of interest to us is the character and status of the assumption which he shared with other dominant leaders of his party, that Great Britain as the colonial power shared in, sympathized with, and itself possessed interests and objectives which were close to or identical to the legitimate aspirations and desires of the colonized Jamaican people.

15 According to Manley, if Jamaica did not have to fight for self-government this was basically because the British colonial government `shared our aspirations'. [See Hansard, 54, p. 636].

16 These views were elaborated on many occasions by Manley and several of his top aides. For an especially vigorous defense of their aptness and propriety, see [Hansard, 53, especially pp. 291-293] and [Ministry Paper, 72].

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Over the entire 25-year history of its existence, the PNP has expressed in its rhetoric and actions such a depth of admiration for the British, that one is left initially perplexed at the extent to which many students of Jamaican politics have gone in attempts to establish credentials for the party as a great nationalist organisation.17

From the very day of its official launching in September 1938, all the signs of what the party was about and what it was likely to become, were clearly observable. To understand the strength of the party‟s attachment to the symbols of Britain and the British Empire, one need only recall here the pronounced hostility from both the platform and the floor which greeted Sir Stafford Cripps‟ keynote address at the founding conference of the PNP. Party leaders and members were angry because Cripps in his speech had been severely critical of British colonial government and its oppressive and exploitative practices towards colonies such as Jamaica.18 In this connection, we should also recall Manley‟s consistent refusal to tolerate even relatively mild criticism of his friend and confidant Governor Denham,19 or the enthusiastic way in which PNP leaders lustily led their audience in the Conference-closing rendition of „God Save the King‟ the British national anthem [See 86, October 1, 1938 and Elite Interview, 25].

The extent to which PNP leaders tried to impress their Anglophile orientation on the Jamaican people has not generally been recorded by scholars who have dealt with the subject of the party‟s early development and growth. But PNP Anglophilism was perceived by some of those whom the party tried to enlist as members. For example, Mr. Arnold Lecesne, representing himself as a genuine struggler against imperialism, felt it necessary both in his own behalf and also in the interests of the small group of fellow-travellers for whom he was the mouthpiece, to circulate a document [95] in which he told PNP leaders:

You can count me out of any national or political school that seeks to discipline us for a bigger place in the empire. I regard it [PNP] as only a glorified Citizens (British Subjects) Association whose aim and object is to confirm British rule over us.20

While Mr. Lecesne might have exaggerated the pro-empire leanings and ambitions of the PNP, he certainly raised an issue which is of critical importance for explaining the absence of serious anti-colonial mobilization in Jamaica. For the deep veneration of PNP middle class leaders for things and ways British was sufficient in and of itself to counter the possibility of any serious party-inspired anti-colonial thrust in the island.

17 The most obvious example of the uncritical acceptance of the PNP as a genuine nationalist and anti-colonial organisation is Nettleford's [16] semi-official political biography on Manley. For other examples, see Ayearst [7]; Moskos [74] and Proctor [84]. The whole question of this bias in Jamaican and West Indian social science scholarship towards PNP leaders and PNP politics is discussed at length under the heading PNP Intelligentsia and PNP Scholarship in Chapter 3 of the larger study from which this paper has been abstracted.

18 Numerous members and associates of the PNP were confused, amazed and shocked by the forthrightness of Cripps' denunciation of British colonialism. Indeed, so strong was the general feeling of disgust that a St. Mary lawyer and planter, Ken Robinson, in moving the vote of thanks, seized the opportunity (with much support from the floor) to ungraciously rebuke the key-note speaker Cripps for what was described as the anti-imperialist and anti-mother country tenor of his speech. On this, see especially "The PNP Comes of Age", [38]. Additional information on the character of the proceedings of the inaugural party conference was supplied in personal interviews with former party secretary Vernon Arnett [25] and party foundation member Ken Hill [29].

After the conference H.P. Jacobs, in his official edition of the party's publication of the proceedings [See introduction to Cripps, 18], felt compelled to apologize for Cripps' supposed attack on the mother country. Jacobs was particularly worried that the implication would be drawn from Cripps' speech that the PNP entertained attitudes hostile to Britain and British interests. But in striving to make his critique of Cripps in as diplomatic a manner as possible while nevertheless trying to divorce his party from being identified with what was perhaps the major thrust of the key-note address, much of Jacobs' `clarifications' and `explanations' sufficed primarily to further confuse what was already a very confusing situation.

19 On Manley's refusal to support criticism directed against Governor Denham, see [89, especially pp. 25-27]; on the closeness and cordiality of the relationship which existed between Manley and the colonial governor - even in periods of severe political crises and disturbances, see "Extracts from Manley's Personal Diary" as cited in Nettleford [76, pp. x1ii-x1iii].

20 Lecesne wrote frequent documents of a similar tone, many of which were published as Letters to the Editor in the Public Opinion newspapers. See especially [86 and 87].

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To a PNP leader such as Florizel Glasspole, Great Britain offered a living model of political values which were deeply cherished and firmly held. To ask a man such as Glasspole to raise an angry voice against the mother of „good government‟ and „democracy‟ would be to ask him to take a stand which would not only run contrary to his cherished political ideals but, equally important, would threaten his own prestige and authority in the local society.21 For the appeal of the PNP was structured around the extent to which Glasspole, Manley and other stalwarts could use their Afro-Saxon command over the symbols and substance of British culture to mystify and mesmerize ordinary Jamaican citizens into accepting the party‟s competence to govern.

As an organisation, the PNP was almost completely dominated by Afro-Saxon men, deeply steeped in Anglo-Saxon opinions and values. Whatever designs these men had for their country, there was nothing in their programme or their activities which intimates that any serious consideration was ever given by the official wing of the party to the need for a break with these values and the initiation of new beginnings. Indeed, quite to the contrary, the PNP‟s attempt to legitimize itself was to a large extent predicated around the efforts of its top leaders to persuade the Jamaican masses and the metropolitan government that the party had successfully mastered the techniques and alleged subtleties of Westminster policies. This point is very important. For it means that the party could not engage in effective anti-colonial mobilization since to do so would have been to suicidally undermine the whole basis of the kind of legitimacy which the party‟s leaders were striving to obtain.22

PNP middle class veneration for Britain reached a peak of intensity at and during the outbreak of World War II. In their speeches and actions, Manley and other party leaders used the organisation as a platform for rallying support and loyalty to mother England. The general tendency was to equate all serious attempts to criticize imperial policies with disloyalty to the mother country and to regard these as indications of treasonable disrespect for the ostensibly great humanitarian causes which Britannia with many sacrifices was supposedly fighting to protect and defend. For colonized subjects this was a remarkably benign view of British motivations and wartime ambitions. Yet this notion of philanthropic greatness of Great Britain was held with patriotic fervour by most members of the upper and middle classes and perhaps, too, by most people of all classes in Jamaican society.23

21 Glasspole is singled out for special attention because his Afro-Saxon commitments were expressed with such great frequency and with such deep convictions. In a personal interview [26], virtually no attempt was made by him to disguise the strength of these Afro-Saxon values. Glasspole's Anglophile dispositions were also emphasized in elite interviews with some of his old comrades such as Arnett [25]; Hill [29]; and Gordon [27].

22 Frank Hill, one of the early leaders of the PNP, and perhaps the most influential „inside' interpreter of the party's history, has on occasions spoken bluntly and critically on this aspect of the PNP's early political style and appeal [See especially 47]. Yet Hill has himself frequently exhibited a strong personal commitment and support for this kind of intellectual and cultural elitism. [See, in particular, 48, especially pp. 135-138].

23 That ordinary Jamaican citizens were deeply committed in their loyalty to the British government and the British crown was an

opinion which was jointly shared by both native middle class leaders and metropolitan colonial officials. Lord Olivier [80, p. 237],

for example, referred frequently to the supposedly `Anglolatrous' orientations of the Jamaican people. And this sentiment has been

echoed time and time again in the speeches and reports of other colonial officials.

Yet the question of the attitudes which the Jamaican masses held towards Great Britain is a complex one - and one which more

likely than not, has been greatly over-simplified by both local and colonial observers. For on this, as with most central political

issues, the attitudes of ordinary Jamaican citizens were not straightforward, but highly uncertain and ambiguous. Indeed, one

reason for Alexander Bustamante's tremendous successes as a Jamaican politician is perhaps to be found in the fact that he was one

of the few political leaders who grasped and politically exploited the ambivalences which underpinned this question. It was, for

instance, common practice for Bustamante to express, almost in the same breath, simultaneous love and great revulsion for the

British crown and all things British. A good illustration of the flexibility of Bustamante's approach to this matter is revealed in a

speech which he gave to a group of supporters following the return of a `not guilty' verdict by the jury immediately after his trial for

manslaughter in 1946. "Long live British justice!" he shouted, "Long Live the British Empire! And long live me". In response, the

crowd shouted - "We are going to crown Bustamante King" [See 77 and 20].

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A careful examination of the deliberations and resolutions of the 1939, 1940 and 1941 PNP conferences leaves little doubt of the extent to which the party‟s top leadership accepted and endorsed the view of a philanthropic and virtually flawless mother country. To show its commitment to Britain in that country‟s `hour of need‟, the party encouraged young Jamaicans to volunteer for recruitment to fight and, if necessary, to die for England. In regard to local political activism, the party executive released a special statement in which it vowed:

to abstain from agitation for constitutional reforms in the confident belief that when we have emerged from the present difficulties, the claims and rights of the island will receive the fullest attention and satisfaction [39, p. 6].

Essentially, this was a decision not to harass the mother country with local political problems while the war was in progress. Not to take this step, party leaders argued, would reflect ingratitude for all that Great Britain had done, and was doing, not only for Jamaica but for all humanity. In order to ensure loyalty to and support for the party‟s position, an absolute ban was placed on PNP sponsorship of all `open-aid‟ meetings, and the party ceased to legitimize public discussion of issues related to demands for constitutional reforms in the colony [Ibid. pp. 42-4].

While PNP leaders were restraining the public from pressing Great Britain for reforms in the Jamaican political system, the BITU leader, Alexander Bustamante, was engaged in a completely different course of action. Bustamante, it is true, had shown little interest in the self-government debate. But as a trade union leader he was interested in securing bread and butter reforms for his supporters, and this interest was not eased or relaxed during the war. Indeed, if anything, Bustamante tended to intensify the pressures which he placed on the colonial government. In numerous public meetings he stressed that he was unprepared to accept meekly the economic injustices suffered by the Jamaican labouring classes merely because Europeans had chosen to fight a war among themselves. There is no doubt that Bustamante severely infuriated the colonial bureaucracy when in September 1940 he told a group of striking waterfront workers - “I have stood for peace from the first day I have been in public life, but my patience is exhausted. This time, if need be, there will be blood from the rampage to the grave”.24

On the comparative level, it is of interest to note that while in Jamaica the outbreak of the war generated quietism and passivity on the part of so-called nationalist party leaders, in many Afro-Asian countries the war stimulated an almost exactly opposite response. Rather than eliciting as it did among Jamaican middle class political leaders, deep sentiments of imperial loyalty and support, Britain‟s war time mobilization prompted nationalist leaders in other parts of the empire to ask and demand answers to the following: Why should we help to liberate others while we ourselves remain the exploited servants of colonialist aggrandizement? Why should we shed our blood in the service of metropolitan interests when the evidence indicates that it is these same interests which keep us chained to the yoke of colonialist oppression and degradation?25

In an elite interview with Newland [30], the former BITU secretary and key Bustamante aide-de-camp emphasized the `Chief's' tactical ability to deliberately parody and manipulate the notion of British justice in ways designed to provide maximum personal political leverage.

24 Quoted in Eaton [23, p. 120]. Eaton claims, but with unimpressive substantiating evidence, that this speech provided the catalyst for Bustamante's eighteen-month wartime internment. It is Eaton's argument that this kind of speech gave the colonial governor justification for doubting Bustamante's „leadership capabilities in a war emergency situation‟. Although it is not clear exactly what Eaton expects us to understand or infer from this statement, it does seem that Eaton himself is trying to make a judgement as to what constituted good „leadership capabilities‟ for a local political leader while Britain was at war. And the thrust of his position seems to indicate that Manley possessed these capabilities while Bustamante did not. Here, then, we find a mixing of political and intellectual justifications for explaining Bustamante's detention while Manley remained consistently on the most cordial terms with Governor Richards.

25 On the posing of these questions among emergent nationalist forces in Afro-Asia, see especially Azikiwe [8, especially pp. 8-11]. The extreme cases were, of course, Burma and Indonesia where discussions over a similar set of questions led nationalist leaders to regard the enemies of their respective mother countries as their liberators, and as such proceeded to join arms with the Japanese (Burma) and the Italians (Indonesia) in fighting against the Western allies. On this, see especially Nu Thakin [79] and Kahin [57].

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Instead of using the war to place these kinds of questions on the agenda for public debate and discussion, the official PNP response was to seek to protect the mother country from the strains which attempts at answers to these questions would have surely produced. It is true that dissident elements resisted the efforts of leading members of the party executive to „curb our right to free speech‟.26 But generally these protests failed to affect the deeply rooted Anglophile orientations of the majority of PNP leaders and supporters. While even the government of the United States was expressing the view that Britain‟s use of its overseas territories to support its war efforts left the colonial power open to charges of exploitation and inhumanity [See Lee, 59, esp. p. 48], Manley and his key PNP executive associates were striving to deny or at least to underplay the fact and implications of this argument.

The group that eventually became known as the PNP‟s left wing began to secure its infamous label as a band of militantly irresponsible „Young Turks‟ because of the persistent efforts made by individuals such as Richard Hart and the Hill brothers to persuade the party executive to abandon its `no mother country harassment‟ policies and programmes.27 But the more insistent the requests for changes in party orientations, the stronger the conviction became those heretics within the PNP entertained notions which were hostile to the mother country and disrespectful of its supposedly great institutions and practices.

If established members of the upper and middle classes of Jamaican society harboured doubts and suspicions regarding Britain‟s intention towards the island, these suspicions turned mainly on the fear that if radical elements within the local society made too much of the self-government issue, Great Britain might well use the strains and demands of the pressures of war as justification for deserting its backward (and in the event of massive self-government pressures) wayward and ungrateful Jamaican colonial subjects. In fact, H.G. DeLisser [21], the literary laureate and „house‟ intellectual of the upper classes, wrote what was widely regarded as a `riotous comedy‟ in which he sketched a vivid picture of the „Haitian type‟ barbarity, and the absolutely `ludicrous‟ situation which would result if Great Britain‟s war policy compelled the metropolitan government to declare the island an independent Republic. DeLisser, it seems, had merely converted popular upper and middle class parlour room gossip into a highly successful dramatic presentation.28

IV: The Absence of National Self-Confidence and the Failure of the Left

As we suggested earlier, there appears to have been a direct and strong linkage between the almost paranoid suspicions and fears which several powerful members of the PNP executive developed towards a handful of individuals on the left of the party spectrum and the hostile attitudes towards the mother country which this so-called left wing group were believed to entertain. Certainly, when the deep Anglophile orientations of Manley, Nethersole, Glasspole, Fairclough, Bailey, Burke and others were counterpoised against the anti-imperialist postures of the Hill brothers, Richard Hart and Arthur Henry, one sees evidence of a fairly wide gap between these two poles of early PNP opinions and attitudes. This gap always carried the potential of splitting an open wedge into what was, at least on paper, a formally united party organisation. And it might well be that the eventual split between left and right wings

26 This was one of the primary grievances voiced by Richard Hart, Arthur Henry and Frank and Ken Hill at the 1940 Annual Party

Conference [See 89, pp. 39-40].

27 This point backed by convincing supporting evidence was first brought to my attention in an interview with Arnett [25]. Later,

other members of my panel of elite respondents (Ken Hill [29], and Frank Gordon [27] in particular) raised and elaborated the

argument.

28 For a discussion of the enthusiastic reception which DeLisser's scenario generated, see Jacobs [52, especially p. 45]. In fact, the themes raised by DeLisser seem to have been virtually identical to those debated at the 1939 PNP convention. On that occasion delegates gathered in St. George's Hall, decided after much debate to suspend agitations for constitutional reforms primarily out of the fear that these agitations might force the mother country under the building pressures of war to cut herself loose from her Jamaican connection.

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which occurred in 1952 simply represented the final culmination of a process which had begun during the inaugural months of the party‟s existence.29

The fact that the split occurred in 1952 and not before is probably explained by the following closely interrelated factors:

(a) Mr. Manley‟s upper middle class generated insecurities and doubts regarding his capacity and ability to successfully arouse the cooperation and support of the broad masses of the Jamaican people.30

(b) The dynamism and capacity for hard and skilful work in the fields of party and trade union mobilization shown by the left wing was much too impressive to allow even the group‟s most persistent detractors to risk an open challenge to the influence of the left wing within the party.31

(c) The feeling on the part of the left that progressive establishment upper middle class figures such as Manley and Nethersole were required to give status and prestige to any radical Jamaican organisation particularly during the embryonic stages of its development. Upper middle class individuals, it was believed, tended to foster and increase the chances that radical organisations would receive mass legitimacy. And they could also, it was felt, serve as a shield against reactionary challenges and threats emanating from the most privileged elements within the society.32

(d) The repugnance which nearly all members of the professional middle classes and nearly all leaders and prominent members of the PNP felt for Bustamante was sufficiently strong to temporarily cloak and subdue intra-party disagreements between competing factional groups.

This last point is of great importance not merely for grasping the specific contours of early PNP politics, but also for understanding a factor which has played a major role in structuring the style and character of two-party political competition in the island. It is therefore appropriate that we should linger here for a while before continuing our examination of dissident elements and their role within the PNP.

Early PNP leaders, it would seem, spent more of their time in attempts to belittle and humiliate Bustamante than on the projection of their own plans, policies and ambitions. Indeed, the general tendency among PNP leaders - not the least among them Manley himself - was to project an image of Bustamante as illiterate and semi-idiotic. The goal was to ridicule and denigrate the JLP leader to the point where merely by expressing support for him, an actual or aspiring middle class person would immediately run the risk of having his or her status credentials threatened or pretensions exposed. Now,

29 There is a genuine absence of scholarly analysis of the events which precipitated, and the consequences of the great split of 1952 which shattered and re-structured the post-war PNP organisation. In truth, perhaps, the only really worthwhile interpretative discussion of the subject is Jones' [56] informative piece on factionalism within the PNP.

30 For evidence of these self-doubts and deep fears on the possibility that his high class position and status connections might render him politically unacceptable to the Jamaican masses, see Manley's diary entries 23 May-30 May in Nettleford's [76, pp. xlii-xliv] and Manley [67, especially p. 2].

31 This interpretation sharply conflicts with that of Nettleford [76, especially pp. xiii-xv] who maintains that Manley was strong enough to jettison the `recalcitrant' left long before 1952. But the historical data offers little or no support for this conclusion. In fact, in my elite interview survey with some of the key PNP activists of the period - notably Arnett [25], Glasspole [26], Ken Hill [29 and Gordon [27] - all held the view that even if Manley had wanted to, he did not possess the power before at least 1950 to dismiss or even to meaningfully `discipline' the left-wing faction within the party. Richard Hart, who at the time was clearly the intellectual mentor of the left, has himself strongly maintained that such was in truth the case. [See 43, especially p. 15]. 32 On this, see especially Hart [43, pp. 16-18]. The acceptance of this point is one of the underlying premises of the eulogies to Manley written by Ken Hill [50] and Fairclough [32]. For a particular persuasive examination and support of this idea within the thinking of the PNP left, see, too, Frank Hill [48].

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given the status insecurities which have always been characteristic of the Jamaican middle class, this kind of threat was one which few upwardly mobile individuals could afford to completely ignore.33

But quite often belittling attacks on Bustamante were carried to extremes where they backfired on the PNP. This backfiring occurred where PNP middle class leaders and their sycophantic henchmen became so convinced of their class and political superiority that they tended to assume contemptuous and overbearing postures in their proselytizing appeals to lower class JLP-inclined supporters and adherents. Repeated warnings by some PNP leaders that „we are fighting Bustamante himself, not his followers‟, evaded rather than confronted the problem.

The arrogance of PNP leaders was noted by the masses and it generally served to stimulate and reinforce suspicions of a haughty and tyrannically inclined brown middle class, intent on exploiting the masses of Black Jamaican lower class people in the pursuit of their own selfish ambitions. Bustamante himself was extremely adept in harnessing and manipulating these suspicions. Thus, for example, he skilfully re-worked PNP rhetoric on the self-government issue, so as to popularize the impression of a last ditch effort on the part of a historically distrusted brown skinned group to become the new `slave managers‟ and „overseers‟ of what he liked to call the „little‟ Jamaican people.34

There were, it is true, some individuals within the PNP (such as Ken Hill and Vernon Arnett) who saw clearly the self-inflicted damage to the party‟s competitive position which was being perpetuated by this style of `class pompous‟ mobilization. Arnett [25 and 2, esp. p. 5] for one, regularly appealed to PNP leaders and sub-leaders to curb what he saw as their `apparently natural bent‟ to hurl insults at Bustamante‟s intelligence and life style. For how Bustamante thought and how he lived, Arnett maintained, approximated more closely to how the brown masses of Jamaicans thought and lived than did the thinking or the life styles of most middle class comrades. Thus, by insulting Bustamante, Arnett insisted, the PNP was also by direct implication insulting the very people whom it was the party‟s ostensible goal and purpose to win over to their side.

However, as Arnett [25] himself has admitted, his efforts and those of other like-minded individuals to stem the flow of PNP anti-Bustamante arrogance were largely unsuccessful. Very important here were the effects on the middle class psyche of the allegedly illiterate Bustamante serving the period 1945-1954 as governing party leader and Chief Minister. Altogether, Bustamante‟s stewardship in office served to reinforce contempt on the part of PNP middle class supporters for the kind of mass Jamaican mentality which could have supported and given high office to a man of the Chief Minister‟s ostensibly low moral and intellectual calibre and supposed political incompetence.

Perhaps more than anything else, PNP middle class repugnance for Bustamante set against the obvious charismatic enthusiasm for him on the part of the masses, stimulated profoundly pessimistic and defeatist attitudes on the part of PNP leaders on the question of what could or could not be done for the Jamaican people. And, if one thing is clear, it is that these pessimistic attitudes were manifestly incompatible with the kind of confidence in the potential and capabilities of one‟s people which effective mobilization for genuine independence demands as a necessary condition for its success.

Even the most radical members of the PNP left were not free of these negative fears concerning the potential for progress and collective upliftment of ordinary Jamaican peasants and working class people. And in entertaining these fears, the PNP left may have been severely under-estimating its own potential strength as an agent for radical mobilization and collective demystification. For there can be little doubt that the combination and variety of political talents shared by the Hill brothers, Richard Hart and Arthur

33 On the slanderous and defamatory notions about Bustamante which were circulated by PNP middle class leaders, see, for example, Manley's [68] Newsletters to Comrades. These Newsletters were published by the PNP at regular intervals, particularly over the period 1945-1947. Especially revealing here was the newsletter of 17 February, 1946.

34 Richard Hart [43, especially p. 13] provides a good description of the ways in which Bustamante profitably exploited this powerfully emotive theme.

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Henry were impressive and well above the skills possessed by any other group either within the PNP or among leaders of the rival Bustamante organisation.

Ken Hill clearly had charismatic appeal which he combined with what appears to have been a virtually limitless capacity for hard work. In fact, with the single exception of Bustamante, Hill comes through from the historical records as being the most dynamic trade union tactician and organizer to have ever appeared on the Jamaican scene. From the perspective of talent to engage in radical mobilization, Hill demonstrated skills and inclinations which Bustamante also possessed, but which the latter seemed only prepared to use for his own personal and often very narrow ends. I am thinking here specifically of the important skill of effectively combining bread and butter trade union activism with a form of trade union mobilization geared towards effecting fundamental structural changes in existing patterns of socio-economic and cultural relationships.

Ken Hill‟s brother, Frank, can hardly be described as having been a crowd pleaser, and his commitment to genuine social change appears to have been so weak that it is debatable whether he properly merited inclusion as one of the leading members of the PNP‟s left wing.35 Frank‟s skill lay in the production and dissemination of radical political propaganda. Whether or not he actually believed what he preached is an open question.36 But we should not allow concern for this question to prevent us from recognizing that as a writer of party pamphlets, articles and position papers, Frank Hill was perhaps the most accomplished technician operating among Jamaican middle class politicians.

Richard Hart was the acknowledged Marxist theoretician and overall intellectual leader of the left wing faction. He had delved extensively into most the primary source material on Communism written by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. Generally, Hart followed the line which came from the CPSU in Moscow, and for a time he could be regarded as holding Stalinist sympathies. Hart was not; however, a leader in the same sense as Ken Hill was a leader. Indeed, he was more oriented towards administration (in the bureaucratic sense of the term) than towards the kind of dynamic platform leadership generally associated with successful political figures. But the power of his intellect, and the craving of pseudo-educated Marxist proselytizers for „words of wisdom‟ elevated Hart into something of the stature of a leader of leaders.

Most individuals within the PNP who regarded themselves as „disciplined‟ socialists (or as being on the verge of becoming converted to that ideology) looked to Hart for theoretical advice and ideological sustenance.37 At all times, he seems to have given his knowledge freely and with such obvious enthusiasm and conviction that even if his listeners did not agree with what he was saying (or possibly did not even understand what he was about), somehow or the other, they would feel compelled to listen to his often long and tortuous speeches qua sermons. In a way, Hart was a „gentleman‟ communist who carried his ideology in the same package in which he carried the Victorian bearings which he had inherited as the scion of a white Jamaican upper class family. The fact that he managed to attract supporters around him was perhaps more a function of the deference which Jamaicans traditionally give to one from and in his status position than from simple and straightforward acceptance of the ideology which he preached.

35 For example, Frank Hill more than any other prominent member of the left fully accepted the argument that Jamaica was not ready even for semi-responsible government. See, for example, [88] and Hill's ingrained elitism and paternalistic attitudes towards the masses, see [48].

36 The authenticity of Hill's commitment to radical formulae for socio-economic change is still a subject for discussions among old PNP stalwarts. This point was brought home very forcefully in several of the elite interviews, [especially 25 and 29] conducted for the present study.

37 Key PNP activists of the immediate post-war years - men such as Arnett [25], Hill [29] and Gordon [27] still speak admiringly of the power of Hart's brain and the profundity of his intellectual influence in radical PNP circles. For some of Hart's written theoretical contributions see [44, especially pamphlet #5 "The Meaning of Public Ownership" and pamphlet #9 "Industrial Unionism"].

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Arthur Henry was a sincere and dedicated supporter of the Communist International. In fact, he probably understood the relevance of Marxism to the Jamaican situation much better than even Hart - the acknowledged dean of the local socialist elite. But Henry lacked the mark of what the Jamaican professional middle class - leftist or otherwise - regarded as proper breeding and good education. He had not, for example, attended one of the prestigious handful of local secondary schools, as his leftist colleagues, the Hills and Hart had done. And his language did not ring with the crispness and refinement of leading members of the PNP intelligentsia who had undergone the socialising experiences of British education transplanted into the West Indies. Henry was a home made intellectual, and in the Jamaican status ridden colonial society, home made intellectuals were ridiculed, not admired.

On top of all this, Henry faced an even more foreboding problem. His interest in Jamaican politics stemmed directly from an earlier conversion to the Garveyite thesis that the liberation of Jamaica could only be attained as part of the international process by which Black people everywhere would be liberated.38 All of Henry‟s political work reflected the full acceptance of this Garveyite maxim. He had in fact joined the PNP not as an isolated individual but as founder and President of the Negro Workers Educational Association - a group which he affiliated to the regular PNP organisation.

Henry‟s problem stemmed from the fact that the brown skinned middle class Jamaicans who constituted the top leadership cadres of the PNP were distinctively uncomfortable in the presence of lower class individuals who espoused an ideology of Black liberation. Indeed, for perfectly good reason, the notion of Black liberation carried markedly unpleasant connotations to `high-brown‟ and white upper or upper middle status individuals such as Hart, Manley and Nethersole. For from their perspective, Black liberation could only mean the destruction of Afro-Saxonism and all that this implied. Just as Garvey had earlier constituted a threat which Manley had felt compelled to attempt to destroy, so too Henry and his commitment to the cause of Black self-determination in Jamaica and elsewhere was considered more of an underlying threat than a potential virtue.

Henry‟s Garveyite ideology of Black liberation as a necessary (and perhaps even sufficient condition) for Jamaican development and progress could not find a comfortable place within either the Fabianist ideology of the PNP centre or the leftist Marxist materialism which Hart espoused to his supporters.39 In a sense, Henry was something of a chronic embarrassment to all groups within the party -- a strange and peculiar bedfellow whom men like Glasspole and Ivan Lloyd tolerated almost beyond the limits of their patience.

Compared to the regular diet of Fabian pamphlets which sustained the socialist rhetoric of the Hill brothers, Osmond Dyce and others, both Henry and Hart had advanced well beyond the stage by stage reformism of the Webbs, George Bernard Shaw and their brand of middle class Fabian paternalism. Henry, in particular, in his own relatively quiet and modest way, seems to have internalized a firm grasp of the techniques and style of communist trade union mobilization. Not surprisingly, he was often forced to express genuine disappointment over the fact that even the most radical of his PNP colleagues not only seemed to preach the `wrong things‟, but consistently tended as well, to preach even the `wrong things wrongly‟. [Elite Interview, 27].

This tandem of left wing PNP leaders with individuals such as Roger Mais, Claude McKay, Amy Jacques Garvey and others constituted what was undoubtedly a powerful and skilful team of campaigners. Certainly, the overall competence of this group was well above the lack-lustre mediocrity of PNP right wing stalwarts such as Ivan L. Lloyd, Florizel Glasspole and Victor Bailey. And in retrospect, the

38 On the Garveyite ideology of universal Black liberation with an African land-base as its point of departure, see Garvey [40, especially pp. 93-101].

39 That accepting the Garveyite ideology of Black liberation constituted a necessary condition and base for any serious radical political work in Jamaica was a point which Henry made forcefully and unapologetically at the 1940 PNP conference - much, it would seem, to the great discomfiture of Manley and other prominent middle class leaders seated on the conference platform. Much useful information on this matter was provided by Gordon [27] and Arnett [25]. See also [83].

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commitment and dedication to the politics of radical change shown by left wingers such as Hart and Henry brings into sharp relief the fence sitting postures of men like `Crab‟ Nethersole, Vernon Arnett and even Norman Manley himself.

But the problem with the left wing was the depth of its belief in the supposedly reactionary character of the Jamaican peasantry and working classes. This belief appears to have been entertained and carried to the point where its proponents became virtually paralyzed into a hopeless and crippling sense of their own incompetence to face on their own the problems and challenges which revolutionary change necessarily involved.

It is true that the 4 Hs (as Hart, the Hill brothers and Henry were called), strove diligently to build a new and better Jamaica. But in spite of hard work and apparent commitment to change, leftist group members did not seem to believe that they could do what needed to be done, and that they could achieve what they wanted to achieve, on the strength of their own native resources, and through the use of their own native political skills.

Left wing feelings of political self-inadequacy led to the conscious decision to nurture and project a super-heroic image of Norman Manley as the great upper status intellectual saviour who had descended from above to rescue and redeem the Jamaican masses from their supposed stupidity and foolhardiness.

Even Nettleford - with all of his contrived efforts to transform Manley into something which he was not - is forced to make the concession that Manley‟s “personal power was nurtured into messianic proportions by party believers after 1949 as a counterpoise to the challenge of his rival and cousin Alexander Bustamante, the shrewd and remarkably popular leader” [76, p. xv]. Yet even here Nettleford seems to have gotten his dates confused. Surely, the attempts to transform Manley into a popular leader were undertaken and even completed before 1949. Indeed, after 1949, Manley had developed his own autonomous popularity and needed little or no „transformation‟/ help from any one.

The decision to project a super-heroic image of Manley as an intellectual guru and as `Father of the Nation‟ appears to have been part of a cynically manipulative scheme concocted primarily by the Hill brothers and Richard Hart. These men, for the most part, seemed to accepted the view that Manley, the upper-upper middle class legal advocate, could be used to get their ideas across to the public in much the same way as a ventriloquist uses a rag puppet to project his own voice to his audience.40

But the plan backfired. And it backfired because it was premised on a grave misreading of Manley‟s political personality and his political competence.

The manipulative plan assumed a high level of political naiveté on the part of Manley and his centre stage and right wing associates. Yet Manley, far from being a naive politician, was as clever an operator as any single member of the leftist group. The manipulative plan suggests as well that while the Hills and their fellow-travellers lacked strong belief in their own externally aided competence and capacity to lead the Jamaican anti-colonial revolution, they nevertheless were over-confident in their ability to craftily use Manley and his fence-sitting associates to serve the ends of revolutionary change. The mistake that the left made is one which quite commonplace among rhetorical advocates of revolutionary change, particularly among those who desire and wish for revolution but are unwilling to face the costs which revolution demands. They attribute naiveté to others when it is in fact they who are naive. They are naive because in their compromising approaches they assume that those who sit on the fence are doing so temporarily and can be enticed to jump off on the revolutionary side of the road. In this way, it is felt that individuals who are believed to sit centre-stage on the political spectrum can be prevented

40 While this was never a formally prepared plan, there is no doubt that it figured prominently in the thinking of the Hill brothers and Hart. Ken Hill [29] virtually said as much when the subject was raised during an interview. Arnett [25] (from the perspective of hindsight, perhaps) indicates that he understood all along what was going on. Another thing which is also quite clear is that this manipulative scheme fitted nicely into the general notions held by the left in regard to the tactics and strategies which were most relevant to the successful pursuit of electoral mobilization and competitive politics. On this, see especially Hart [43 especially pp. 16-42]; Frank Hill [48] and Ken Hill [49, especially pp. 16-19].

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from challenging (or possibly even destroying) the revolutionary potential of those on the left. What these wishful thinking revolutionaries often tragically fail to recognize is that quite often the fence is not a temporary position, but a seat which many individuals find very comfortable and permanently satisfactory. This is particularly true in colonial societies where massive personality disorders resulting from artificial socializing experiences produce many middle class individuals who are unable to take positive positions on even the most trivial issues.41

Eventually, the PNP left wing would be called upon to pay a very high price for its misreading of Manley‟s skill as a political tactician and the extreme naiveté of its assumption that structural changes can be effected, so to speak, from behind the backs of artificially created figure-head leaders.

Left wing politics in Jamaica has never recovered from the gross mistakes of the „4Hs‟ during the 1940s. And there are signs which indicate that far from learning from the errors of the past, a new generation of self-proclaimed leftists is repeating in the contemporary era the same mistakes which crippled the revolutionary potential of an earlier generation of radical leaders. Instead of learning from history that there are no easy or painless formulae by which the new Jamaica can be established, the so-called Young Turks of today pursue the same manipulative strategies which characterized the politics of their middle class `fathers‟ who, like themselves, lacked the confidence in the masses which true revolutionary leadership demands.

V. The Materialist Fallacy and the New Mother Country Complex

If establishment-oriented right wing leaders in the early PNP felt that Jamaica could not make real progress without the guidance and help of an external benefactor, this view was shared with equal intensity by the radical left. The only difference was that in the case of the left there was a substitution of mother countries. The Soviet Union instead of Great Britain became the external force on which salvation was thought to depend. For Richard Hart and those who followed his advice and counsel, the Jamaican people would realize its full potential only if it could be made to immerse itself in the international brotherhood of communist societies.42

This view severely affected the style and competence of left wing attempts to mobilize ordinary Jamaican citizens for activist participation in a genuine independence movement. Particularly for Richard Hart, the thrust was towards converting Jamaicans to switch their allegiances from traditional attachments to the English Crown and towards the sickle and hammer emblem of Soviet communism.

Our contention here is that a group of genuine self-determination activists would have strived to convert colonial natives into becoming Jamaican citizens - not Afro-Saxon extensions of British society, or sterile imitators and sycophantic followers of what Soviet leaders dictated to be the correct path to development and progress. In truth, the communist left within the PNP did not seek so much to destroy the myths which colonialism has used to exploit and stifle the creative potential of the Jamaican people, as it sought to re-focus and re-direct traditional mythical conceptions along the route of what the Chinese now call Soviet `socialist imperialism‟.43

Our position is similar to that of Fanon who argued that a real self-government movement always aims “at the total destruction of the colonial system”, and the leaders of such a movement always understand

41 On the pathological psychiatric consequences of colonial socialization among middle class individuals, see Grier and Cobbs [41, pp. 109-151]; Fanon [35, especially pp. 83-108]; Mannoni [69, pp. 24-40] and Lindsay and Lindsay [63]. Certainly, one of the applied theoretical studies in the sociology of colonial socialization is A.W. Singham's [93] masterly analysis of neurosis and fatalism along the Black working class population of Detroit, U.S.A.

42 This position is one which Hart has continuously maintained - from his early days in PNP politics to his later escapist flight to take up permanent residence in England. See especially [45, pp. 9-10].

43 Mao Zedong's [70, especially pp. 418-420] rejection of continued Soviet tutelage was based on grounds which are basically similar to the argument which is being presented here.

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that the goal of national liberation “must be the work of the oppressed people. ... It is the colonial peoples who must liberate themselves from colonial domination”. [37, p. 105].

This means that no matter how sympathetic expatriate `friends‟ of the colonized may appear to be, and no matter whether these `friends‟ are categorized as Fabian socialists or Leninist revolutionaries, the `spiritual infirmity‟ produced by colonialist oppression can be effectively tackled only when the malady is diagnosed by the colonized himself, and prescriptions for its complete treatment and cure are also defined, discovered and administered by him. According to Fanon [37], the evocation that there is a more easily followed pathway to national liberation `is a lie and a ruse‟, which can only succeed in reinforcing oppression and leave the colonized in worse positions than they were before.

Fanon insisted on the need for colonized peoples to find their own ways to liberation. This insistence was necessary because the whole thrust of his thesis begins from the premise that the struggle against colonialism is at its core a struggle for human dignity [37, esp. 144]. And Fanon maintained that the indignity of prolonged oppression is remediable only when the native takes the future in his hands and determines for himself the means of his own liberation.44

Arguing directly against the kind of Soviet sycophancy typified in the political behaviour of Richard Hart, Fanon maintained [37, p. 144] that it is nonsense to assume that the colonized man cannot liberate himself outside of a certain specific kind of material environment. While it is quite true that there is an inescapable „historical necessity‟ surrounding the struggle for independence, it is even truer that this process is never fully automatic, but must at all times are activated by the native‟s consciousness of himself and his ambitions [37, p. 105]. As such, the colonized cannot „trust to the good faith‟ of external friends, but must arm himself with firmness and combativeness, “Africa will not be free through the mechanical development of material forces, but it is the hand of the African and his brain that will set into motion and implement the dialectics of the liberation of the continent” [Ibid.].

It is not unusual to find many individuals to claim to be followers of Marx denying the significance of Fanon‟s emphasis on the consciousness of the native as the catalyst for his liberation. To these individuals, Fanon moves away from the `correct‟ course by ostensibly failing to recognize and give proper and full attention to the materialist factor in the determination of revolutionary change. Fanon might well have departed from the `correct‟ course as Marx outlined it, but who is to say that within the specific contours of colonial societies, Fanon‟s thesis is not in fact the `correct‟ one? This question is as relevant as the corresponding one: Who is to say that within the specific context of industrialized societies, Marx‟s thesis is not in fact the correct one? Must the dynamics of the revolution of the colonized follow the same pattern as the dynamics of the struggle of the proletariat against the condition of his serfdom in industrialized societies?

Frankly, it is in no way critical or even particularly relevant to the position being argued here whether Fanon was pro-Marx, anti-Marx, or, even for that matter, altogether ignorant of what Marx had to say on these questions. Nor is it especially important to our general conclusions whether what Marx really had to say corresponds with what some contemporary exponents of Marxism interprets him to have said. For us quotations from Marx do not and cannot provide definitive answers to the substantive problems which native peoples in different areas of the world face and have had to face in their struggles to secure the dignity which comes when man liberates himself from the yoke of oppression?45

44 Arguing along lines similar to Fanon's, Grier and Cobbs [41, especially p. 176] conclude - "the amount of rage the oppressed turns on his tormentor is a direct function of his grief, and consider the intensity of Black man's grief".

45 There is even evidence which suggests that Marx himself was among those European scholars whose writings sometimes served

to reinforced myths regarding the inferiority and incompetence of Black people. What else can we make , for example, of the

following statement by Marx extracted from his comments on Henry Carey's book on the Atlantic slave trade and how it could be

abolished:

The only thing of positive interest in the book is the comparison between the former English negro slavery in Jamaica

etc., and Negro slavery of the United States. He shows that the main body of Negroes in Jamaica, etc., always consisted

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Those who believe that quotations from Marx can provide meaningful answers to the complex problems faced by historically devalued peoples in the Third World might profit from paying careful attention to the following excerpts from the later writings of Engel‟s:

Marx and I are ourselves to blame for the fact that the younger people sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasize the main principle vis-à-vis our adversaries, who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place or the opportunity to give their due to the other elements involved in the interaction. But when it comes to presenting a section of history, that is, to making a practical application, it was a different matter and there no error was permissible. Unfortunately, however, it happens only too often that people think they have fully understood a new theory and can apply it without more ado from the moment they have assimilated its main principles, and even these not too correctly. And I cannot exempt many of the recent `Marxists‟ from this reproach, for the most amazing rubbish has been produced in this quarter too. ... [71, p. 400].

VI: Conceptualising the Quest for Self Government - Problems of Language and Problems of Thought

We have already stated that from whatever angle one objectively approaches the subject, it is hard to find genuine evidence which would support the notion that a self-determination movement existed in Jamaica and provided what the present PNP Prime Minister [66, p. 21] calls “the momentous march to independence under [his father] Norman Manley”. Indeed, I think that it is quite easy to show that even within the limited perspective of the PNP‟s definition of what self-government means; very little work was done in activating the masses of the Jamaican people to question the nature and significance of the colonial political system in which they lived.

This conclusion flies directly in the face of assertions made by Nettleford (and many others) to the effect that Norman Manley gave powerful `ideals‟ to the Jamaican people and fashioned for the island its `destiny‟ and its `purpose‟ [75, p. xii and p. xiv]. Nettleford [75, p. xviii], in fact, goes as far as to credit the elder Manley with having managed “to get an entire society of succeeding generations to transform the conception of themselves as dependent second class citizens of the world to a new perception of themselves as resourceful creative agents of the new society”.

These are ostensibly great and grand achievements. And if Nettleford is to be believed, Norman Manley should truly be seen as the revolutionary and heroic father of the `new Jamaica‟. Yet even the present Prime Minister, Michael Manley, has been forced to deny (by implication) that his father had in truth achieved all of that which Nettleford has claimed for him. Indeed, the younger Manley‟s treatise on The Politics of Change [86] is a book designed to show how brilliantly the successor PNP understands the continuing problems of a still largely colonially oriented Jamaican people and how forcefully and courageously he is supposedly tackling these problems - problems, incidentally, which his father and all other Jamaican leaders had hitherto left untouched or had barely scratched the surface of. Thus, if The Politics of Change shows Michael Manley blowing his father‟s trumpet, it also shows him blowing his own trumpet so loudly that it frequently drowns out many of the good and noble things which his father

of newly imported barbarians as under English treatment the Negroes were not only unable to maintain their

population but always two-thirds of the number lost their lives; the present generation of Negroes in America, on the

other hand, is becoming a native product more or less Yankeefied and therefore fit for emancipation.

In a book which ran for several hundred pages, and which dealt in often great detail with the horrors and inhumanity of the

Atlantic slave trade, the only point on which Marx was in full agreement was that `barbarians' who came directly from Africa were

not as fit for emancipation as `barbarians' who over time became partially assimilated into `Yankee' culture. The quotation is from

Marx's letter to Engels of 14 June, 1853, in [6, p. 54].

The quotation was chosen for use here - over several others which demonstrate in even more convincing detail the racist premises on which many of Marx's theories were predicated - because it parallels the basic criterion which the British colonial power, for many decades, claimed that it used to determine fitness or unfitness for self-government and independence. In the same way that Marx believed that the termination of the slave trade would make Black people eventually fit for emancipation by increasing the chances that they would become Afro-Saxonized, so, too, did the British government equate Afro-Saxonization with fitness for self-government and independence. On Afro-Saxonization as the principal criterion for the peaceful transition to independence under British colonial rule, see Lee [59, especially pp. 195-232].

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supposedly achieved for the Jamaican people [See esp. Chap. IV on “Self Reliance and the Problem of Attitudes”].

When one reads the many and varied achievements which Nettleford attributes to Norman Manley, one sees in the starkest clarity how ideological agreement and personal friendship between intellectual and political elites has served in the Jamaican case as a mask which blindfolds political analysts into a reluctance to make simple but intelligent distinctions between what popular leaders say that they have done and are doing and what they have in truth done and are not doing. With very few exceptions, it is almost as if several leading Jamaican political commentators have resolved to watch only the words and not the deeds of local political leaders.

As we have seen, the outbreak of World War II did not offer in Jamaica the stimulation which it provided in other places for the emergence or acceleration of challenges to the values and practices of colonial government. In fact, the official PNP policy of hushing demands for constitutional reforms while the war was in progress was only relaxed in 1941 after it had become abundantly clear that the British government was largely indifferent to the self-imposed truce of silence which had been declared by the PNP and their allies in the local Anglophile community [See 90, esp. p. 7].

But even after 1941, when the PNP resumed public discussion of the question of self-government for Jamaica, the rhetoric of party leaders was timid, uncertain and generally confusing. Indeed, the quest for self-government was from time to time equated with the demands for constitutional reform which the party sought to obtain from Great Britain, and the impression seems to have been circulated that if these reforms were granted, Jamaica would become or would be well on its way to becoming a self-governing territory.46

As we have said, interpretations of the attitude of the PNP towards self-government must extend beyond simple regurgitations of selected aspects of the speeches and writings of party leaders. Later we will show how ambiguous some of these speeches were, and the manner in which attempts have been made to resolve these ambiguities by several political analysts.47 But we should mention here that one important element which helps to explain the confusion of PNP self-government politics was the general looseness which surrounded the concept of self-government itself.

Up to at least the early 1950s, when native political leaders or Whitehall bureaucrats used the term self-government, one could not always be certain as to exactly what they were referring [See Lee, 59, esp. 133-153]. For the notion of self-government was variously used to mean either self-determination as the term has traditionally been interpreted [See Cobban, 17, pp. 39-41], or merely as an intermediate stage of power devolution to colonial territories involving „representative‟ but not „responsible‟ government.48

Used in the latter sense, the concept of self-government was distinguishable from the related notions of „independence‟ and „dominion status‟. Here, independence meant the attainment of territorial political sovereignty under a Republican system of government such as the type which the United States of America had pioneered. Dominion status, on the other hand, connoted a complex picture of autonomous national sovereignty and continued mother country control and guidance [Wheare, 100]. In any event, dominion status implied the retention of the English monarch as head of state and the transfer and maintenance of the Westminster system of government. Dominion status meant, in effect, the maintenance of a kind of voluntary and non-coercive partnership or association with Great Britain. But this partnership was not one among equals. Great Britain was conceived as primus inter pares and senior

46 Certainly, this interpretation was frequently passed on to the Jamaican public by PNP leaders such as Manley, Glasspole and Nethersole at the giant `self-government' rallies held at Edelweiss Park and Race Course grounds especially in late 1941 and 1942.

47 As has already been pointed out, this subject is given extensive treatment in our discussion of PNP Intelligentsia and PNP Politics - a section which is not included in the present study.

48 On the distinction between `responsible' and `representative' government, see Birch [13].

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partner, with its commonwealth associates comparable to children who had attained the age of legal majority.49

In a very real sense the quest for dominion status constituted little more than a desire to remain colonized and subjugated to the cultural and economic interests of mother country Britain. Certainly, among many Jamaican politicians, the demand for self-government meant hardly more than a craving to be recognized as fully British. For example, E R D Evans, a middle class lawyer, destined to assume a key role in the first JLP adult suffrage government of 1944, justified his support for self-government – “in this way:

... In order that in verity Jamaica will in every respect be an integral portion of the Great Britain Commonwealth of Nations, and Jamaicans be de facto citizens of Empire - justifying the designation Civis Britannicus Sum (I am a British citizen). [Quoted in 31, p. 2].

Given that on matters such as the self-government question, E R D Evans was the kind of professional man from whom Bustamante sought opinions and definitions, it is hardly surprising that whenever the subject of self-government was raised with him, the JLP leader tended to adopt a posture of lukewarmness bordering on complete indifference and boredom.50 For Bustamante had no aspirations to become known as Civis Britannicus sum.51 Indeed, St. William Grant [28], a close personal aide of the BITU leader during the 1930s), insists that Bustamante enjoyed `shocking‟ middle class listeners by telling them `I am a Radical Republican and I care very little whether England is great or not‟.

When one examines carefully Bustamante‟s attitude towards self-government, it becomes reasonably clear that he was neither very keen nor very hostile to the idea. Beneath the manipulative rhetorical style which he adopted for purposes of partisan political competition, one finds that the attitude of the JLP leader to self-government was largely one of neutrality and unconcern.52

When, for example, Bustamante visited England in 1948, the purpose of his visit was ostensibly to discuss with Whitehall matters dealing with constitutional reforms for the island. But the nonchalance of his approach took almost everyone by surprise. Speaking frankly, he told the British government that he had not left Jamaica to beg anyone to give him self-government or dominion status, but that if that is what Whitehall wanted to offer him – „I will not turn it down, I will not refuse it‟ [Quoted in 20, July 29, 1948, p. 2].

It might even be true that during the 1940s, Bustamante, in spite of his apparent indifference, possessed a more mature approach to the whole question of dominion status for Jamaica than did Manley, Nethersole, Glasspole or most other key PNP stalwarts. For at least up until 1952, Manley was still insisting that Jamaica was ready for self-government but not dominion status, meaning by this that the majority of our people had not yet become sufficiently Afro-Saxonised to receive the ultimate approbationary gift of dominion status from the mother country [See 53, p. 293]. And here one should

49 Winston Churchill, who consistently viewed the notion of a British Commonwealth of Nations in largely strategic and manipulative ways, is said to have regarded dominion status as being hardly more than device which strengthened and perpetuated the bonds of empire and thereby reinforced the legitimacy of mother country Britain by fostering the illusion of independence in situations of continuing de facto colonial rule. On Churchill's manipulative conceptions of the Commonwealth, see Lee [59, p. 133] and Burns [14, pp. 21-23].

50 In elite interviews with individuals who frequently discussed this matter with Bustamante, all insist that such was the case. See especially Grant [28] and Newland [30].

51 One reason for the relatively low Afro-Saxon profile which Bustamante projected must certainly lie in the fact that so many of his formative years were spent outside of the island living and working in Cuba and the United States. See Eaton [23, especially Chapter 1].

52 In maintaining a position which closely approximates the argument being presented here, Richard Hart [43, p.13] maintains that at no time was the JLP leader ever genuinely opposed to the notion of self-government for Jamaica per se. What he was always opposed to was the PNP's definition of self-government which carried for him the suggestion of brown middle class political autonomy and control of and over the Jamaican masses. Hart was easily one of the most perceptive PNP observers of Bustamante's political style and Bustamanteeism in general.

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note Cobban‟s [17, pp. 154-161] very perceptive observation that in discussions of movements towards self-determination, loyalty to the British Commonwealth and a desire for fuller integration within it must be sharply distinguished from expressions of national consciousness and genuine aspirations and assertions towards national autonomy and independence.

For Manley, Glasspole, Nethersole and other PNP Anglophiles, the notion of self-government for Jamaica was incomprehensible outside of a context of deep and abiding association with Great Britain. The idea of England as mother country was never at any time questioned or challenged. Bustamante, on the other hand, looked to the kind of settled imitative cravings for the British political way of life which prompted these desires for acceptance as full-fledged and mature adult citizens of the Commonwealth - or in the words of Evans as Civis Britannicus sum.

Bustamante‟s basic conception of self-government was closer to the traditional Republican notion discussed earlier. And while he did not, either during the 1940s or at any time, believe that Jamaica was qualified (or perhaps, would ever be qualified) to assume the responsibilities which self-government of this type connotes, to Bustamante, the notion of fuller Anglo-Saxonism as the basic criterion for self-determination was a consideration which was seen as not only irrelevant, but as a contradiction in substance which he was quite unable to fathom.53

The confusions and vacillations in PNP thought on the meanings given to terms such as `self-government‟, `dominion status‟ and `independence‟ must be understood. For unless one appreciates the nature of the ambiguities and ambivalences which surrounded the use of these words, one will emerge from attempts to penetrate the dynamics of PNP middle class politics, before and during the post war era, as confused as many of the party leaders themselves appear to have been.

All of this carries us to the insistence that the profusion of terms which were associated with political sovereignty and national autonomy were of crucial importance in the whole process by which symbols were manipulated by ruling authorities in their quest to promote quiescence and passivity among the colonized. In order to placate and pacify popular yearnings and demands for sovereignty and independence, elements both within the Whitehall bureaucracy and Anglophile native organisations found it satisfying and conducive to their interests to encourage vagueness and imperspicuity in definitions of what constituted self-government, what constituted dominion status, and so on.

In this way confused language became a powerful device for social control. Individuals with vastly different social and political objectives found themselves caught in the net of using the same words to describe vastly dissimilar aspirations and objectives. In this situation, it was, not surprisingly, extremely difficult for ordinary citizens to distinguish between political leaders who espoused radical prescriptions for change and those who were merely passive servants of the status quo.54 Both colonial subject and metropolitan colonizer were pictured as saying the same things and seeking the same objectives. The net effect of all this was to encourage a process of circularity in both thought and action - a circularity which served to facilitate adaptation by the colonized to the environment in which they lived.

In a seminal comment on the power of language as a mechanism for socio-political control, Susanne Langer [50, esp. pp. 31-132] has shown that when terms are impregnated with ambiguities and false meanings, they generally serve `symbolist‟ rather than `signalist‟ functions. Instead of acting as `announcers‟ of things as they really are, words become `substitute signs‟ which are employed to mask

53 Bustamante consistently repeated his inability to comprehend the PNP approach to the question of self-government for Jamaica. [See especially 53 and 54].

54 One should note here that the call for `self-government' was not limited to the rhetoric of middle class PNP leaders. Certainly, the demand for self-determination issued by Marcus Garvey and his associates in the late 1920s was much more significant than talks on the subject made by PNP leaders during the 1940s and 50s. It should also be noted that Garvey's message (albeit in heavily distorted ways) strongly influenced the thinking of several individuals who were later to become key activists within the PNP. Arnett [25 and 55, p. 748] confesses that he became converted to the appeal of self-government (but not Garveyism) after listening to a speech given by Garvey at a meeting sponsored by the Universal Negro Improvement Association.

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and disfigure reality by encouraging the belief that things as they are, exist in truth as men would want them to be.55

When one controls for the rhetorical flourishes of Manley and other key PNP leaders, one finds that when they spoke of self-government, they meant scarcely more than the introduction of changes in the colonial constitution which would permit a greater measure of `home rule‟ to the middle class intelligentsia in the formulation and administration of public policies. Even dominion status was considered as being largely unachievable except within the context of a larger West Indian federation, and even here, as we saw in an earlier discussion, the picture was far from clear.56 Independence as meaning the severance of close socio-cultural and political linkages with the mother country, or even the thought of such action as a possible option, hardly ever entered into the frame of reference of PNP leaders. Whenever the subject was raised at all, discussion generally centred on its undesirability and irrelevance, and those who insisted that such was not the case ran the risk of being branded as irresponsible trouble-makers to be ostracised as dangerous enemies of the national welfare.

Conclusion

The main contention of our discussion in this essay is that the character of the independence which Jamaicans are now told that they enjoy is in many respects conditioned by the efforts which were expended to secure its achievement. One of the most striking things about these efforts is that they involved no direct struggle against imperialist control and colonial rule. The period of transition from colonial status to formal independence generated nothing which can properly be labelled as a nationalist movement. And the fact that constitutional independence could be achieved without the help of such a movement means that there was little need for middle class political leaders to involve the broad masses of the Jamaican people in a quest for real self-determination and political autonomy.

The glaring result of all this is that what has been secured and called political independence is more nearly the shadow rather than the substance of genuine self-rule and political sovereignty. For in spite of, and perhaps because of, formal constitutional changes, the content and spirit of Jamaican politics continue to reflect the major assumptions, values and practices which typified overtly direct metropolitan control and colonial rule. Many things have been changed on paper but in real life it appears that plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Like so many of the pronouncements made by local political leaders, the claim that there was an independence movement in Jamaica is but another illustration of the way in which politicians (and their intellectual allies) distort historical reality in order to project false images of themselves and their achievements. Fictitious stories about independence and mobilization for independence are parts of the large complex of myths and symbolic representations which underpin the much vaunted stability of the Jamaican political system. They serve as indispensable aids for generating in the minds of ordinary citizens loyalty to the status quo and thus act as a key device for evoking quiescence, and creating the illusion that political leaders have achieved much when, in reality, their achievements have left most of the serious work which real change demands still to be done.

The so called transitional phase in Jamaican politics produced events and actions which cemented rather than provided relief from the general flow and thrust of colonial politics.57 For at all stages in the history of the island‟s development, the play of political forces have always been designed to keep the public

55 On this, see, too, Berger and Luckmann [12, especially pp. 34-36]. According to Berger and Luckmann [p. 40] in situations such as those which we have been describing language "constructs immense edifices of symbolic representations that appear to tower over the reality of everyday life like gigantic presences from another world".

56 This topic is discussed in Chapter III of the larger study in a section which deals with "Perceptions of Peoplehood in the Rhetoric of Jamaican Political Leaders".

57 On the alleged transition to independence, see especially Ayearst [7]; Proctor [84] and Augier [5].

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outside of rather than involved in planning for change and development. This kind of elitist political orientation was critical for the maintenance of colonial domination. It meant that for ordinary citizens‟ politics was something to be seen but not touched. And as Edelman [24, p. 14] has pointed out, where the political system is made to stand over ands above the control of the bulk of individuals who formally share in its membership, politics usually functions to induce `helplessness, confusion, insecurity and greater susceptibility to manipulation by others‟.

Independence, of the type we have been describing, acts as a barrier to political development. For it serves to generate the myth that substantive changes have taken place, and that cherished goals and objectives have been achieved when in reality nothing of the kind have occurred. Political leaders in seeking to sustain these myths find it easier to maintain illusions of progress rather than take the hard steps and make the bold decisions which genuine modernization demands.

National symbols are substituted for attempts at national mobilization. Political leaders naively assume that when they have appeared all over the island in their fashionable karebas and have „chopped trees, cleared bush, gathered stone and forked land‟ they are teaching „the idea of social unity, community purpose and the dignity of labour‟.58 In assuming all these things, they merely perpetuate in more sophisticated form the traditional colonialist notion that when the royal governor mingles with his subjects, he teaches them that the great can also be humble and the powerful meek and lowly.

But mystification and mobilization are mutually opposite activities. While the people might gaze in wonder at the image of their Prime Minister clearing bush like themselves, this activity is not in itself a real input into the struggle to achieve development and change. Similarly, new styles in clothing might serve as appropriate symbols after the difficult decisions and priorities of nationhood have been determined. That is to say, after the people have already been substantially mobilized and traditional myths of personal incompetence severely assaulted and overridden. Until these steps have been taken, a kareba-dressed middle class politician, gathering stones in the bush, presents but a moment of comic relief in the life of a hardworking peasant.

The major implication of our arguments in this essay is this: In the context of „new‟ states such as Jamaica, genuine mobilization is usually more difficult to realize after, as against before the achievement of legal independence. For in the context of the direct colonial situation, the myths by which the native is kept in his place are clearer to perceive and easier to counteract. But with the formal declaration that independence has been achieved new variables enter into the picture. Local politicians occupy what appear to be the commanding roles in the political system. To challenge their supposed authority can mean and often is defined as the perpetuation of treasonable activities against the `people‟ and the `nation‟. In the colonial situation, however, it is not quite as easy to be convincing with this kind of argument. This makes it an altogether simpler task for mobilization to proceed against the „external‟ enemy, while simultaneously awakening the creative impulses of the colonized.

All this should not be taken to imply that genuine mobilization systems cannot develop during the post formal-independence stage of development. What we are talking about is not impossible but an infinitely more difficult task. The experience of states such as Cuba and Tanzania immediately makes this very clear. New states that were denied or „robbed‟ of their revolution during the colonial era might find it extremely difficult to stimulate the kinds of mobilization changes which are required as conditions for development. Certainly, a mobilization system setting out to work against a political regime which shrouds and cloaks itself with the prestige, loyalties and power which even pseudo-independence generates necessarily demands great sacrifices - sacrifices of a kind which many are willing to glibly advocate, but all too few are prepared to stand and make.

58 These are the kind of assumptions which are typical of Michael Manley's [66, especially p. 204] `testimony' on political change in Jamaican society.

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