Arnold Bertram/ColumnistOut of many... On August 6, 1962, the British handed over the legal instruments of the constitutional framework for the sons and daughters of a most diverse collection of migrant races and social classes to be recognised as an independent nation.
These migrants included the Africans imported as slaves from diverse and warring tribes, Sephardim Jews fleeing from persecution in the new kingdom of Spain and Portugal, and the British whose ranks included not only priests, administrators and enterprising colonists, but also "loose, vagrant people, vicious and destitute of means ... who had misbehaved themselves by whoring, thieving and other debauchery..."
These were the elements from which the British established plantation slavery, which systematically created and legalised three separate castes differentiated by colour and economic status. This legal separation of white owners and managers from brown house slaves and black field slaves institutionalised the racism which has "left its terrible mark on the country and remains a chief feature of the heritage and a major obstacle to progress."
In the post-emancipation period, Chinese and Indian indentured labourers and Lebanese traders joined the other migrants. These were the forebears of the many out of which independent Jamaica sought to create 'one people'.
The Dream of Progress
For many Jamaicans, it was the emergence of a national movement in 1938 and the independence project that flowed from it, which has been the driving force behind our progress and development. For them, this progress and development is primarily reflected in the modernisation of our physical infrastructure, especially the highways, air and seaports, as well as in our First World health indicators, particularly life expectancy. When contrasted with three centuries of colonial rule during which the overwhelming majority of Jamaicans were denied access to education, health, housing and roads, independence was clearly the road to travel.
Since independence the growth of a Jamaican diaspora in Europe and North America has created another level of need for a homeland with which to identify. Within this context Jamaica's emergence as a super power in track and field athletics and the continuing vitality of Jamaican popular culture on the international stage provide the basis for this positive identity and confirmation that "Brand Jamaica is good to go." For the nationalists, the indicators for economic expansion are as real as the promise of our aspiring Olympic champions.
Within this same society others express the opposite view with equal conviction. Their assessment is that the independence project has failed, and indeed was misconceived from the very beginning. Jamaica, in their view, was better off under the British and the transfer of political power to the overwhelming African-Jamaican majority should never have taken place.
For them the formation of a nationalist party in 1938 and the granting of Universal Adult Suffrage in 1944 were not only mistakes, but also milestones on the road to anarchy. As far as they are concerned, the modern world provides an abundance of evidence that black people can neither rule themselves nor develop an independent state, so if Britain will accept us back, let us not waste any time. While these views have retained a certain currency, they are no longer publicly articulated in their entirety as a political platform.
Nationalism in Crisis?
With these two views of independence contending in the arena of public opinion, each new achievement or 'scandal' only serves to strengthen the polarised moods of triumphalism and despair within the national community.
The Stone poll published in The Observer of December 14, 2000, which placed the contribution of Norman Washington Manley dead last among our prime ministers, and the poll on the eve of the 2002 General Elections, in which a majority of those polled expressed the view that Jamaica should return to colonialism, are clear indicators that Jamaica's nationalism is in crisis.
Urban political warfare, bordering on civil war, in the 1967 and 1980 general elections pushed our parliamentary democracy to the edge. The collapse of the financial sector in 1998 and with it the failure of the project to create a black bourgeoisie undermined the confidence of a group who felt that they had never competed on a level playing field. There is also genuine concern that independent Jamaica has not adequately understood nor responded to the challenge of urbanisation. For whereas 40 per cent of Jamaicans lived in urban communities in 1962, today that figure is 64 per cent and growing. This unplanned urbanisation together with inadequate investments in national security, public order, and local services is creating zones of urban blight in close proximity to economic growth centres, and a virtual breeding ground for crime and violence.
Simultaneously, our weak performance in education and training, resulting from our failure to combine access with quality, is responsible for the lack of social cohesion as well as the low productivity of the labour force. After four decades of independence there is still no common cultural experience within the educational system that defines and enriches Jamaican citizenship. Even as we recognise the validity of these concerns, we must also recognise that the seeds of doubt and pessimism with regards to the viability of the national project have always been present.
The Early National Movement
For more than 150 years, the British monopoly of political power went virtually unchallenged. Then in March 1909, a brown lawyer, S.A.G. Cox, and Alexander Dixon, a black educator, both members of the Legislative Council, founded the National Club, the first political organisation to express nationalist aspirations. The next step was Marcus Garvey's pioneering work between 1928 and 1935, which sowed the seeds of 'black nationalism' in Jamaica and inspired the idea of national self-determination.
The first call for Jamaica's independence came from the Jamaica Progressive League, which was founded in New York on September 1, 1936 by Jamaican migrants, with W. Adolphe Roberts, Reverend Ethelred Brown, Jaime O'Meally and Wilfred Domingo as the leading voices. Ominously, when the founders of the Jamaica Progressive League convened
their first meeting on Jamaican soil on November 27, 1937, "a group of men and women started an uproar that they did not want self-government."
national spirit emerges
However, that same year the birth of the National Reform Association, the founding of the enlightened newspaper Public Opinion and the launching of Jamaica Welfare provided clear evidence that a national spirit was emerging within the middle class. Then came the 1938 rebellion, when during three weeks of militant action, the working people brought the colonial administration to its knees. From the standpoint of Jamaica's nationalism, the national labour movement led by Alexander Bustamante and the nationalist party, led by Norman Manley, were the most important institutions to emerge.
Manley's call for self-government, however, was supported by a small minority drawn from the progressive intelligentsia, and throughout this early period the opposition he encountered forced him to pose the question, "Why is the idea of a national Jamaica and the idea of self-government so abhorrent to so many Jamaicans?"
Foremost among those who opposed the idea of self-government was Alexander Bustamante, who cleverly exploited the cultural conservatism which characterised the Jamaican peasantry. This conservatism and lack of self-confidence have their roots in a "carefully nurtured sense of inferiority," as well in the mistaken belief that Queen Victoria had granted emancipation. Little did they know that when the act to abolish slavery was passed by the British Parliament in 1833, Victoria was then a girl of 14, not yet on the British throne and completely ignorant of the compromise which had ensured its passage.
Bustamante's conversion to the idea of self-government came as late as 1953, when he declared in the House of Representatives that one of the revised plans of the JLP "was to work toward self-government in Jamaica with a view to achieving federation in the British Caribbean area and dominion status within the framework of the British Commonwealth of nations."
Division and Mistrust
Few periods in Jamaica's history have been more fractious than the one immediately preceding independence. On the international scene, the victory of Fidel Castro's socialist revolution, the resurgence of Black Nationalism in North America led by the Nation of Islam, and the rise of the African political leader, Kwame Nkrumah, as a major international figure, influenced the Jamaican political landscape.
The first Federal Parliament was convened in 1958 and that same year the Reverend Claudius Henry established the African Reform Church in Kingston, which articulated an extreme black nationalism. In April 1960, Henry and several of his followers were arrested and charged with treason felony and breaches of the firearm laws. Simultaneously, Henry's son Reynold who was head of the First Africa Corps, a black revolutionary organisation based in New York, sent seven of his members armed with automatic weapons to launch a rebellion in Jamaica. Even as the country was under siege, power struggles within both the PNP and the JLP added to the political instability of the period.
It was in this context of division and mistrust that the motion for Jamaica's independence finally came at a sitting of the House in June 1961, as the JLP made clear its rejection of Jamaica's membership in any Federation of the West Indies. The PNP lost the Referendum in September of that year as well as the General Elections of 1962. Hence, it was the party with a history of cultural conservatism and not the nationalist party which formed the first government in independent Jamaica.
The Road ahead
Even with independence the political and social instability continued, as within the first five years Jamaica had three prime ministers Bustamante, Sangster and Shearer as well as Tavares who acted briefly in that position. The lack of social cohesion was evident in the anti-Chinese riot in 1965 followed by the declaration of a state of emergency in 1966, the Rodney rebellion of 1968, followed by another state of emergency.
The global triumph of capitalism has added to the challenges faced by small developing nation states like Jamaica. Globalisation is not only about "a system of international financial and currency markets ... (but also) about the establishment of a global, racial/cultural hierarchy which places Anglo-American culture at the apex and Sub-Saharan at the base."
Success will require "a rebirth of self-criticism and a ruthless and merciless condemnation of all that falls below the standards aimed at." Leadership is at the heart of the matter, and it is Learie Constantine, the first West Indian cricketer genius to emerge, who best articulates the complexity of this challenge. Constantine was writing about cricket, but such is the dialectic relationship between West Indian cricket and West Indian nationhood that his analysis can be readily transferred to politics.
"Of all Test-playing combinations, the West Indian team alone is composed of men of different races, and there lies a difficulty which I believe few ... realise. Test match cricket ... is a battle and to win you need not only the strenuous effort of individual players: the work of each player must be backed by a sense of solidarity of all the others ... and the lack of this is the chief weakness of the West Indies team..."
Constantine goes further by identifying the fact that the cricketers have not been able to get together in the sort of spirit which says "We are going out today against those fellows and it is war to the knife ... and until all members of a West Indies side realise that every consideration must give way before the necessity of uniting in spirit and in truth ... the West Indians will not play the cricket that I know they can play."
In politics as in cricket much depends on the players, much more depends on the leadership.
Arnold Bertram is a former member of Parliament. You can send your comments to infocus@gleanerjm.com
