HUGH Shearer, the politician and trade unionist who died yesterday, aged 81, had from early staked out a life in public service and served his apprenticeship to Jamaica’s most towering of political figures, Sir Alexander Bustamante, the founder of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU) and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), both of which Shearer came to lead.

But unlike Bustamante, outgoing, domineering and gregarious, Shearer brought to his politics a subtler, calming style as well as a personal charm that often masked a sharp intellect and a tough spirit.

Hugh Shearer, too, was the ultimate team player, as was to be attested to by Edward Seaga, the man who replaced him at the helm of the JLP and who, it is widely held, played no small role in prising Shearer out of the post of political leader of the JLP.

Not only did Shearer agree to serve as second fiddle to Seaga in the JLP Government of the 1980s, he did so with graciousness and integrity, those who were involved say. He never publicly said anything negative about Seaga.

Indeed, in 1993, after Shearer had lost his parliamentary seat for Clarendon South East and was retiring from active politics, Seaga heaped great credit on his former colleague for his own achievements.

“I would not have achieved what I have achieved without his very valuable assistance,” Seaga said.

But perhaps Seaga’s most poignant testament to Hugh Shearer came that same year in a speech at the JLP’s golden jubilee dinner. Said the opposition leader: “No political leader in this country has enjoyed more genuine affection and bi-partisan support in political life. He was the prototype of the elder statesman.”

Shearer was born in Martha Brae, just outside Falmouth in

Trelawny on May 18, 1923.

He received his early education at Falmouth Elementary School and in 1936, having won the Trelawny parish scholarship, moved to the now defunct St Simon’s College in Kingston.

In 1940, Shearer, then a tall, lanky lad of 17, joined the staff of the BITU to work as a trainee journalist on its newspaper, the Jamaica Worker – then edited by the future labour minister, L G Newland. Shearer himself was to later become the editor of the paper.

Shearer was also drawn to the wider activities of the BITU and into the labour and political activities of Bustamante. And neither did the efforts of this bright, enthusiastic young man escape Bustamante’s attention. Indeed, Bustamante was to eventually take Shearer under his wings.

In the 1944 elections, Jamaica’s first under universal adult suffrage, Shearer, then 21, campaigned on Bustamante’s behalf in West Kingston. Bustamante and the JLP won.

Shearer was soon becoming a familiar figure at Bustamante’s side, clearly the old man’s prodigy. In 1947, just three years after becoming a member of the organisation, and still in his early 20s, Shearer was appointed assistant general-secretary of the BITU. That same year, in his first outing on the political hustings, he won a seat in the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation, the capital’s local government, representing a division in Central St Andrew. He served as chairman of the KSAC’s Public Health Committee.

In 1948, he was awarded a Colonial Development and Welfare Trade Union Scholarship to study trade unionism, returning to Jamaica a year later in time to be a candidate in the 1949 general elections, running in the West Kingston seat that had been vacated by Bustamante.

Shearer was defeated by the People’s National Party’s (PNP’s) Ken Hill, but two years later was appointed to the Legislative Council, the precursor to the present Senate. At the same time, Shearer continued to make great strides in the BITU. In 1953, he was named island supervisor and vice-president to Bustamante in 1960. But he was now de facto boss of the union, with the aged Bustamante remaining its titular head.

In 1955, the PNP defeated the JLP in general elections but this time Shearer won his own seat in the House, further propelling him to the centre of Jamaican political life and the swirling events of the coming years.

For instance, he was to be an important figure in the West Indies Federation elections of 1958 in which the JLP won, and in the 1961 referendum in which Jamaicans, at the urging of the JLP, decided to pull out of the federation.

So, too, he played an important role in the 1962 general election that was won by the JLP, out of which Sir Alexander became the first prime minister of independent Jamaica.

Shearer was appointed to the Senate and named a minister without portfolio and the leader of government business in that chamber.

He was also named Jamaica’s deputy chief of mission to the United Nations, a position he held until 1967 and was the person who, in 1963 proposed that 1968 be designated International Human Rights Year.

In the general election of 1967, in which the JLP retained the government, Shearer was again into competitive politics, contesting the South Clarendon seat that had been held by Bustamante, who by now, had retired from public life, but as in the case of the BITU, remained the titular head of the JLP. Having won his seat, Shearer served in the Government now led by Sir Donald Sangster.

But he was soon to be rapidly propelled by events. JLP and union sources say that as the ultimate team man, Shearer had resisted efforts to push him into a contest with Sangster to lead the JLP’s parliamentary party and thus to become prime minister.

But after a mere three months in office Sangster, who had previously acted as prime minister, became ill and was taken to Canada for treatment. He died in a Montreal hospital in March 1967. Shearer, 44 at the time, had accompanied Sangster to Canada.

Shearer came back to wild speculation over who would become prime minister, and it is reported that he narrowly won among his parliamentary colleagues on the second ballot, and not without the influence of Bustamante being brought to bear on the final vote. On April 11, 1967 at King’s House, Shearer was sworn in by the then governor-general, the late Sir Clifford Campbell, as Jamaica’s third prime minister.

It was to be a turbulent tenure as Jamaica’s leader.

The country was enjoying a period of rapid economic growth, but was in a period of social ferment. The black power movement and other left-leaning ideologies were finding expression in Jamaica.

Shearer’s Government was soon on a collision course with these emerging social forces. In 1968, for instance, the Government prevented Guyana-born historian, Dr Walter Rodney, a lecturer at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI), from returning to Jamaica after a trip to Canada. This led to riots in Kingston. At the same time, left-wing and black power books were banned.

Shearer took most of the blame. He was also criticised for allegedly encouraging police brutality with strong law and order statements in an effort to tackle rising crime.

These events coincided with the emergence of Michael Manley, a suave, articulate firebrand as leader of the PNP. Like Shearer, Manley came through the trade union movement. He was a distant cousin of Shearer and both were fast friends.

But on the political field, Manley gave no quarter. Manley maintained devastating attacks on the Shearer Government, which he defeated in the general election of 1972.

Shearer was to serve two years as leader of the opposition, but there was constant sniping of his handling of the party and several indirect challenges to his leadership. Seaga, who had announced that he was giving up politics for a time to in order to write a book, was among those in the foray against Shearer.

The attacks clearly became too much, and on September 30, 1974, Shearer announced his intention to step down as the political leader of the JLP. He would not seek re-election at the party’s conference the following November.

According to Shearer, he made the decision because of the “increasing volume of work required in the new programme mapped out by the JLP’s national campaign” as well as his own work load in the BITU.

“It will not be physically possible for me to continue to carry the responsibilities of leadership involved for both organisations, to cope with the programmes which have been designed,” Shearer said. He made no mention of the attacks on his leadership.

Shearer continued to be among the leading lights in the trade union movement and in 1977, at the death of Bustamante, was elected president-general of the BITU and played a major role in bridging the old divide between Jamaican trade unions.

Indeed, perhaps more than anything else, Shearer was a trade unionist. His politics was substantially about advancing the interests of those who were served from his trade union base.

“We maintain that no development that is of total satisfaction can take place unless the development contemplates and takes into account and provides for working class interests,” he said in one of his speeches as prime minister.

The year 1980 also saw the return of Shearer to active politics, but now working under the leadership of Seaga.

With the JLP’s victory in the turbulent election of that year Shearer was appointed deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs. During the JLP’s nine years in office, his legendary negotiating skills were several times brought into play to help the Government out of sticky situations, not least of which was the general strike of 1985.

His skills were also highly regarded on the international scene, not least in the negotiations for the Lome accords between the African, Caribbean and Pacific group of countries and the European Union and at the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention, whose headquarters, the

International Seabed Authority, is in Jamaica.

In the political turmoil of the 1970s and 1980s, Shearer maintained a close relationship with Manley and was often said to be an important conduit through which information on sensitive issues could be channeled. Moreover, even when he maintained an active involvement he appeared to always be above the fray.

At that 1993 JLP jubilee dinner, Professor Rex Netteford, a trade union researcher and man of letters, described Shearer as “one of the primary shapers of our history, a political leader of the highest calibre and above all – a patriot”.

But others say that those attributes revolve around people’s trust for Shearer. It was bankable.

And that perhaps is what Shearer would want to be his epitaph. For it was the point he made in response to the praises heaped on him that night.

“If Shearer gives you his word, you can go to bed and sleep on it,” he said.