The way in which the People’s National Party, through Dr Peter Phillips, revealed how Manatt, Phelps and Phillips were financed for the defence of Christopher Coke was most Norman Manley-like. The fact that further questions are being raised is indeed the way Norman Manley would have done it. In 1953 Norman Manley spoke in the House of Representatives to reveal that government secrets were being sold. His revelation resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of a Jamaica Labour Party Member of the House of Representatives.

Norman Manley at all times, even in Opposition, gave his advice to the government. It was Norman Manley who took former governor-general, Sir Clifford Campbell, out of the dilemma in deciding whom to appoint as prime minister when Sir Donald Sangster was on his deathbed. There was no clear successor. Manley, although opposition leader, suggested that the JLP MPs come together to vote among themselves. Bustamante had handpicked Sangster, who survived only 48 days as prime minister. He was succeeded by Hugh Shearer.

The recent no-confidence motion against the prime minister, although defeated, was also very Norman Manley-like. But was it Norman Manley-like for the PNP to boycott the opening of a Caricom summit because of a domestic issue with Bruce Golding? I do not think so. At the same time there are only four areas in which Caribbean regionalism is very strong. There is the University of the West Indies, the West Indies cricket team, a certain amount of trade and there are regional business corporations.

Not all of the members of the PNP were in favour of the West Indies Federation. But Norman Manley believed that it would have been better if we had become politically independent as a Caribbean nation. In a real way, Michael Manley, PJ Patterson and Portia Simpson Miller carried regionalisation to a higher level. The oil crisis of the 1970s brought the region even closer as the other territories now had to rely far more on Trinidad for the commodity.

The JLP was against federation but came to this position gradually. Bustamante was all for federation when there was a summit of regional political leaders in Montego Bay in 1947. But when the federation started in 1958, it did not take long for him to realise that he could never be the federal prime minister of the West Indies. Bustamante’s charisma was limited to the Jamaican culture. The platform antics that he performed could work with the Jamaican masses who were then uneducated. But those antics could not work in the Eastern Caribbean where in general the populace was educated.

So Bustamante decided not to run for federal office which forced Norman Manley also to decline to run for federal office. Manley feared that if he ran for federal office and became federal prime minister of the West Indies, he would be away from Jamaica too long. The elder Manley’s real fear was that Bustamante would use the opportunity to destroy his local political base.

In the federal elections of April 25, 1958, the West Indies Federal Labour Party, to which the PNP was affiliated, won although faring badly in Jamaica. The Democratic Labour Party to which the JLP was affiliated lost the election but won 12 of the 17 seats at stake in Jamaica. Had it been a local general election, the JLP would have won easily.

Shaken by the prospect of being a one-term government, Norman Manley hired the services of the 23-year-old PJ Patterson to be its organiser in western Jamaica. When Patterson reported to Norman Manley that the PNP was properly organised islandwide, the elder Manley called a snap election on July 28, 1959 and got his second term, as the PNP won by a landslide.

Bustamante had asked one of his federal MPs Robert Lightbourne to resign from the Federal House to contest the West St Thomas seat for the JLP in the 1959 general elections. Lightbourne won his seat although the JLP lost the election. The JLP then boycotted the federal by-election caused by Lightbourne’s resignation from the Federal Parliament on the grounds that they were not in favour of federation.

As the anti-federation momentum grew over the next two years, Norman Manley decided to settle the question once and for all by calling a referendum on September 19, 1961. The people voted with Bustamante to end the federation. And this euphoria carried over to the elections of April 10, 1962, which the JLP won. That JLP victory enabled Bustamante to become Jamaica’s first prime minister in independence.

But the PNP says it is still committed to Caribbean regionalism even if it has shelved the federation idea. The PNP operates on democratic lines, and need not slavishly follow Norman Manley. Still, they should ask if their plans are Norman Manley-like before they implement any of them. But to know what is Norman Manley-like and what is not, the PNP will need to restart the political education classes.

ekrubm765@yahoo.com