D K Duncan, the People’s National Party (PNP) candidate in Hanover Eastern, has hailed his late former leader, Michael Manley, as the force that harnessed some of the best and brightest minds towards the political process which resulted in “an unparalleled level of social consciousness in the people of Jamaica that cannot be reversed”.

Duncan, in a lecture last Tuesday at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston marking the 10th anniversary of Manley’s death, described the late prime minister’s first term in office as “the most exciting period of Jamaica’s political history”.

He also categorised Manley as one of the greatest agents of social change in Jamaica, whose government enacted legislation that revolutionised the country’s psyche.

Manley rode a wave of popular support to a landslide victory over the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Government in 1972 and stayed in office until 1980 when he was voted out by an electorate angry with his socialist experiment and general decay of the economy.

His party was re-elected in 1989 and he served as prime minister until 1992 when he retired because of ill-health. He died on March 6, 1997.

However, during his first two terms in office, Manley’s government introduced a range of social legislation that some political analysts have praised for improving the lives of many poor Jamaicans.

On Tuesday, Duncan, a key member of Manley’s Cabinet in the 1970s, said it was very difficult to comment on the period because it was “so multi-dimensional”, embracing social, political and economic circumstances. But according to him, “the country produced the right man, for the right time, to do the right things, for the majority of Jamaican people”.

Said Duncan: “He did not do it alone. But he was undoubtedly the intellectual leader, the mass leader, the leader of the streets, the leader of the Cabinet, the leader internationally. Wherever he set foot in the world, he was the leader, even among other leaders.”

He dismissed as a myth, suggestions that Manley flew by the seat of his pants on important issues such as education, saying the basis for the Government’s declaration of free education was stated in Manley’s book, The Politics of Change, published in 1974.

Duncan directed the audience to chapter four of the book which begins with Manley’s statement that “Every developing society must aim at free, compulsory, universal education as its highest national priority.”

Manley announced in 1973 that secondary and university education would be free, triggering intense debate for and against the policy throughout the country.

Duncan said it was also propaganda to believe that Manley woke up overnight and declared his love for justice, and set about rewriting many social wrongs prevalent in the society at the time. According to Duncan, it was many of those myths which “caused people to run from Jamaica, and caused others to mash up Jamaica”, some fearing that the island was going communist.

The basis of Manley’s love for social justice, Duncan said, came from his own sense of right and wrong, and from 21 years working at the grassroots level with the National Workers Union – the PNP-affiliated trade union.

“It was this sense of justice,” according to Duncan, which saw the passage of myriad social legislation, a majority of which benefited women, and children.

However, opposing forces in the society made it hard for their easy passage into law, Duncan said.

Among the legislation he cited were the Status of Children’s Act, (Bastard Act) which gives all children equal rights to their father’s estate, and the Minimum Wage Act, which determines the lowest wages to be paid to domestic workers.

“Genuine leaders are people with a vision who not everybody will agree with at the moment, but who could summon individuals to share the vision,” said Duncan of Manley.

Pointing to the National Youth Service, a one-year period of voluntary service for secondary students who were not going to university, Duncan said Manley wanted people to have a better understanding of their situation.

The programme, he believed, presented such an opportunity, but it was rejected by the ruling class “who did not want their pretty little girls and boys to mix with the children of Trench Town”.

Duncan insisted that if that interaction had taken place, much of today’s misunderstanding between classes could have been prevented.

Duncan also commented on the current debate raging over the stadium built in Trelawny to host today’s opening ceremony of the ICC Cricket World Cup. A similar debate, he said, preoccupied Jamaicans when the National Stadium was built. According to Duncan, the National Stadium was the vision and dream of late National Hero Norman Manley (Michael Manley’s father).

Duncan recalled that even though it was Norman Manley’s vision and dream he “almost never got to go to the opening of the stadium”, because of the failure of West Indies Federation.

He said, however, that history will absolve former Prime Minister P J Patterson, whose dream it was for the building of the Trelawny Multi-purpose Stadium.

He said, too, that the PNP has been heavily criticised on various issues, including corruption, because the party has always been held to a higher standard than the JLP. But the PNP, he said, was still regarded as the party of ideas, and was always expected to set higher standards.

But even though Duncan showered praise on Michael Manley, he revealed that there were times when the relationship between himself and the party leader was tense.

He recalled that the then PNP Youth Organisation leadership would ask him to address their annual congress almost as a ritual, and “sometimes things were not as cozy as they should have been between myself and the party president. And sometimes if I were present, he would not turn up.”