On September 20, 2008, delegates of the People’s National Party (PNP) will vote to determine whether Portia Simpson Miller will continue as president or Peter Phillips will be the new president of the party. Thereafter, the most important task which will face the president will be the reunification of the party.

This will not be an easy undertaking, but the history of the party has shown that with the right attitude and approach it can be done. It is therefore important to understand how both Norman Manley and Michael Manley dealt with their own challenges of disunity which they faced in 1952 and 1980 respectively.

Expulsion of the ‘Four Hs’

On the 29th and 30th of March 1952, the PNP convened a special conference at the Ward Theatre in Kingston to consider the recommendation of a special tribunal that the ‘Four Hs’ – Ken Hill, Frank Hill, Richard Hart and Arthur Henry – be expelled from the party. Two hundred and six accredited party delegates were in attendance, but the interest in the issue was of such magnitude that over 1,300 other party supporters gathered in the theatre.

After a long debate, the delegates voted by a majority of 128 votes to 78 to remove the ‘Four Hs’ from the party. The four party members were not only some of the best organisers in the then Trade Union Congress and the PNP, but they were also extremely popular among the supporters of the party, especially Ken Hill, a party councillor who had risen to the position of mayor of Kingston in 1951.

After the announcement of the vote, the conference came to a premature end and several persons could be heard shouting their resignation from the PNP. It has been said by one Ken Campbell, a group member from Norman Manley’s East St Andrew constituency, and who was a delegate at the conference, that “those on the platform, including Norman Manley, were escorted from the building through the back door”. Many party groups also withdrew from the PNP. It is reported, for example, that of the 14 most active groups in the greater Kingston area of West St Andrew, 11 groups withdrew their support in protest at the decision.

Richard Hart, in his book Time for a Change (2004: pg 222), recalls that:

“For at least six weeks after the split the PNP leaders could not get a hearing on the streets in the city and suburbs except in Eastern St Andrew. They were howled down by the people. The masses were with the ‘Four Hs’ who had been expelled from the PNP.”

The 1955 Election

Despite the level of chaos and disunity which existed after 1952, the People’s National Party was able to recover to win the January 12, 1955 election, when it obtained 18 seats to the JLP’s 14. One of the effects of the split in the party, however, was the loss of the hitherto PNP-dominated constituency of Western Kingston. The JLP’s Hugh Shearer polled 6,383 votes to the PNP’s Iris King’s 5,246. Ken Hill, one of the persons expelled from the party and who was the PNP’s leading personality in that constituency, ran on his newly created National Labour Party ticket and got 3,262 votes, thus splitting the PNP vote. Today, West Kingston is the strongest JLP constituency.

Recovery of the PNP

The PNP was able to recover within three years of the expulsion of the ‘Four Hs’ to win the 1955 election because of the astute leadership provided by Norman Manley. He encouraged meaningful dialogue throughout the party and was able to get the PNP to unite around a set of common objectives.

According to Norman Manley, in the Rex Nettleford-edited book, Manley and The New Jamaica (1971: pg 92):

“There was absolute unanimity about the programme on which we fought that election. We set out to win on a policy designed to secure self-government and nationhood as the first objective, on a policy designated to create the institutions which a nation would require, on a policy which accepted the need for foreign aid, which believed in an industrial development programme, on a policy which indeed was the direct product of our own plans and our own thinking, on a policy intended to establish planning as a fundamental in government activity.”

Manley’s approach to facilitating dialogue in the party and his ability to forgive lured back to the party many of those who had resigned as a result of the expulsion of the ‘Four Hs’. By the end of 1953, the PNP was almost fully united. This led Norman Manley to observe that in regard to the 1955 election, “what we were to do we agreed on without a dissenting voice”. The essence of the PNP’s victory, therefore, rested in the central leadership given by Norman Manley, based on ideas which were developed to become the PNP’s programme of action for the country.

Michael Manley and the PNP

The second major crisis was that faced by the Michael Manley-led PNP in the late seventies and early eighties. The ideological fragmentation of the party deepened between 1977 and 1980. In 1980, the party lost the election by the largest margin ever. The JLP won 51 seats to the PNP’s 9.

As a result of the internal division and the massive electoral loss suffered by the party, Michael Manley on February 8, 1981 offered to resign. At a vote taken at the PNP’s National Executive Council, 83 members voted to reject the offer, four accepted and 25 abstained. Manley felt that this support was not sufficient and again threatened to leave office. On February 15, 1981 the National Executive Council passed a resolution expressing full confidence in Michael Manley as leader. This time just about three persons abstained.

Thereafter, the party embarked on a series of internal dialogue and discussions which frontally addressed the issue of disunity, among other things, within the PNP. The party also reinstituted its programme of political education. Manley declared that if the PNP was to be a party of transformation it needed to develop persons with a clear understanding of society. Writing in the Rising Sun of August 1982, Manley explained that unity within the party “could only proceed from a shared analysis of history and the present situation”.

PNP Recovers

By December 1982, the Carl Stone Polls showed that the PNP had 53 per cent support to the JLP’s 47 per cent. The party thereafter took the decision to boycott the 1983 elections because the JLP had failed to fulfil its promise to upgrade the voters’ list, thus disenfranchising over 180,000 persons who were qualified to vote.

During the period, Michael Manley sought not only to address the issue of disunity, but according to Darrell Levi, in his book, Michael Manley – The Making of a Leader (1989: pg 248):

“Manley’s thoughts had changed in many areas. Ideological pronouncements were replaced by a problem-oriented pragmatism. The emphasis in the ’70s on state ownership was replaced by a new accent on joint ventures between the state and the private sector. The private sector was given greater encouragement. There was more emphasis on producing wealth than redistributing it. The PNP retained its commitment to a non-aligned foreign policy, to co-operative and community based enterprises, economic planning, social services and participatory democracy.

In response to the electoral defeat of 1980 and the paradigmatic shift in global development, with market forces assuming a more dominant role, Manley shifted from an orientation that was statist to a more liberal outlook. For Michael Manley to have been able to get the party to unite around a radically different programme from that which he had earlier led, and which contributed to the division in the PNP in the late 1970s, reflected both his power of persuasion as well as his ability to rethink issues. Thereafter, the party went on to win the local government election in 1986 and the national election in 1989.

The PNP Today

The presidential election in February 2006, in which Portia Simpson Miller gained 47 per cent of the delegate votes and Peter Phillips gained 45 per cent, left the party split down the middle. Whatever attempts at reconciliation were made seemed to have failed. This division, among other things, contributed to the loss of the election in September 2007 where the party gained 28 seats to the JLP’s 32. The issue of disunity is confirmed by the PNP-commissioned review of the 2007 election report, also referred to as the Meeks Report, which pointed out that most of the party members interviewed after the 2007 election loss “felt that disunity played some role in the defeat”.

The report also pointed out that “there is a strong perception coming from within, that the PNP has lost or is losing its soul”. As a result of these and other observations, the Meeks Report stated that “the overarching question facing the PNP today is how to reunite the leaders, members and supporters around a common platform, based on a shared philosophy, common sense of direction and the role of the party in the future of the nation”.

The failure of the PNP to achieve the unity and to formulate a “common platform based on a shared philosophy”, as elaborated by the Meeks Report, has resulted in the PNP finding itself immersed once again in an election campaign to determine who should be the leader of the party.

Whoever wins on September 20, 2008 must be able to follow in the footsteps of both Norman Manley and Michael Manley, who were able to rally the PNP and the masses after facing serious division within the ranks of the party during their periods of leadership.

Delano Franklyn is an attorney-at-law and a member of the PNP