IN his last public address to an annual conference of the People’s National Party, the late National Hero Norman Washington Manley spoke these words: “I say that the mission of my generation was to win self-government for Jamaica. To win political power which is the final power for the black masses of my country from which I spring. I am proud to stand here today and say to you who fought that fight with me, say it with gladness and pride, mission accomplished for my generation. And what is the mission for this generation? It is reconstructing the social and economic society and life of Jamaica.”

That speech by the venerable PNP founder and leader is a useful signpost from which to measure the progress of the country under subsequent governments as we approach 50 years of independence. The problem in coming to a consensus as to where the country is in its development is that progress, like love, is in the eye of the beholder, and nothing blinds a person to what is really happening like politics does.

Dr Peter Phillips is the politician who has been least shy about saying politics has failed Jamaica. How bad he must feel having to present an austere no-growth budget that promises pain for everyone and gain for no one. Like a man caught in the act of infidelity for the 10th time, he is begging to be trusted one more time. In his maiden budget presentation as minister of finance he said, “The best gift that this Parliament can give Jamaica in the 50th year of Independence is a new and binding covenant with the people.”

In Jamaican politics, hardly anyone supportive of the party in power challenges the status quo publicly. But in private there is much murmuring. People instinctively understand that we have fallen into a pit out of which we seem unable to climb by our own strength or by using conventional means. It is a dangerous place for any country to find itself when trust and confidence in government have evaporated.

There was a time, a period of enlightenment, when people would release pent-up anguish by writing insightfully and feelingly about the role of government and its failure to meet the minimum expectations of those invested in the democratic process. Jonathan Swift, Thomas Paine and Henry Thoreau are three writers whose essays on the subject have become classics. At a time of national anguish and not having in Jamaica the political maturity to openly question these things without being accused of partisanship, it may be worthwhile recalling the thoughts of these brave souls from a different time and place.

Jonathan Swift in an essay entitled, A Modest Proposal, mocked the British Government’s imperialist treatment of Ireland and a prevailing impulse among politicians of his day toward simplistic weak-kneed solutions to complex social and economic problems. Using satire he suggested a policy of cannibalism to save adults from starvation while, at the same time, ridding the country of the unsightly spectre of suffering children. He wrote thus: “It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for alms. I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London that a young, healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or ragout.”

Thomas Paine, frustrated with the king’s preoccupation with creating loyalists out of his subjects and enemies of those who dared to hold views contrary to his own, wrote as follows: “Some writers have explained the English constitution thus; the king, say they, is one, the people another; the peers are a house in behalf of the king; the commons in behalf of the people; but this has all the distinctions of a house divided against itself; and though the expressions be pleasantly arranged, yet when examined they appear idle and ambiguous.”

Henry David Thoreau’s essay, Civil Disobedience, dutifully explains the contempt in which he held government. Here is a little piece from what he had to say: “I heartily accept the motto that government is best that governs least. Carried out systematically it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, that government is best that governs not at all, and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.”

The question remains. Has the generation since Norman Manley achieved social and economic justice? With every change of government we hope that deliverance will come. But political rhetoric continues to out-distance action towards halting the slide. We look to the international development agencies like the International Monetary Fund. The solutions they impose are often too prescriptive and lacking in understanding of local realities to be effective. Caught in a downward spiral of inappropriate economic models or worse, inaction, civil society is too fragmented and immobilised by fear of the consequences of criticising the powerful to press for change to the old order. In the absence of honest debate and challenge to the status quo, we continue to produce the results that we do not want.

But there is a wind of change blowing. We may not have great essayists like Swift, Paine and Thoreau, whose written words, in the case of Paine, were powerful enough to influence the American Revolution. We certainly do not have a William Wilberforce or Martin Luther King Jr. But increasingly I am finding people with the passion of revolutionaries at work in our communities; people who are filling a leadership void; who have learned to separate love for party from objective analysis of government policy. These people, I have noted, are building a following, sometimes a movement, in support of a cause. And that cause is to see social and economic justice come to Jamaica.

hmorgan@cwjamaica.com