ORVILLE Taylor writes in The Gleaner that the People’s National Party (PNP) should go back to its roots. Louis Moyston writes in the Jamaica Observer that the PNP has lost its difference. But this did not start in 2015. In the 1980s, the PNP shelved socialism to adjust to new world realities caused by the social revolution in Russia which eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992. In shelving socialism, the PNP has attracted to itself people who have opposite views to the core reason for its existence.

But unfortunately, according to so-called best practices, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. The PNP has to either lose power or be of the opinion that a defeat is imminent to either analyse why they lost or come up with plan to stave off defeat before there is any change. In other words, if the present method is the winning formula, and indeed it seems to be, then there will be no return to Norman Manleyism unless the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) decides to go socialist while in Opposition as a strategy to defeat the PNP.

Indeed, this was the plan being considered by the JLP when they lost power to the Michael Manley-led PNP on leap year day, February 29 1972. In September 1972, the then weekly newspaper Public Opinion had a headline that read, ‘Will the JLP go left?’ The JLP revisited that strategy 30 years later for the 2002 election which they lost. Ten years ago, when Bruce Golding took over the JLP, one of my weekly columns in the Jamaica Observer was entitled, ‘The PNPisation of the JLP’.

The PNP never mentioned socialism in the campaign leading up to the 1972 election. But, by 1974, when the JLP decided tactically to call themselves Social Democrats, as reported in The Gleaner, the PNP forestalled that by revisiting in a loud and triumphant way its earlier ideology of Democratic Socialism as conceptualised by Norman Manley. Michael Manley would later write in his book Struggle in the Periphery, “The PNP has always been socialist in the sense that it has never said that it was not.”

Despite further ideological divisions within the PNP, such as that of the Young Socialist League in 1964 and later in the 1970s, the PNP continued to grow in its ability to organise. At present, the opinion polls give the Opposition JLP a slight edge, but the PNP looks set to win again. This is because, first, the JLP is too disorganised and fragmented to get enough of their supporters into the polling stations to win. Second, whether the PNP has been vocal or silent on socialism, it has improved on its organisational capability because ‘practice makes perfect’.

Winning an election requires getting party supporters on the voters’ list and getting the voters into the polling stations on Election Day. Funding to pay party workers comes from the business community, which is not likely to support a party that is divided straight down the middle as the JLP is today. This is why I have argued for years that elections are won on Election Day. Whether this is the way it should be is one thing, but this is definitely the way things are.

Between the 1940s and 1960s when political meetings were crucial to the victory of political parties, Norman Manley realised that he could never counter the charisma of his main rival and first cousin Alexander Bustamante. So he told his party to “organise, organise, organise” after the PNP was massively defeated in 1944, himself losing in St Andrew Eastern to Dr Edward Henry Fagan. By the 1949 election, the PNP lost again but gained 3,510 more votes than the JLP.

The PNP won in 1955, despite the internal ideological dispute of 1952 involving the so-called Four Hs (Ken Hill, Frank Hill Richard Hart and Arthur Henry). But the JLP was divided in 1955 by the Farmers Party, which divided its votes and its organisational effort.

By 1958 when the Federal elections were called, the PNP lost in Jamaica and was certainly heading to be a one-term Government. However, Norman Manley hired a 23-year-old young man by the name of Percival Patterson to do some thorough political organising. And when he reported back that the work was finished, Norman Manley called a snap election on July 28, 1959 and won by a landslide.

The PNP lost the referendum in 1961, which was called to determine whether Jamaica should get its Independence as part of the West Indies Federation or should secede from the federation and receive Independence as a separate nation. The PNP also lost the April 1962 election mainly because it was internally divided on the federation issue.

In response to a query in 1989, Michael Manley stated that socialism was dead, but in the very last interview he ever had before he died, which is on video, Michael Manley indicated that he would forever be a socialist. But in the post-Michael Manley era, the PNP has indeed lost its difference, as Louis Moyston wrote, and needs to get back to its roots as Orville Taylor wrote.

I hope you understand now what I mean when I say that, while I am ideologically a socialist, I am not really for either of the two major political parties. I hope you understand now what I mean when I have written for more than 15 years that the real difference between the PNP and the JLP is in the spelling. I hope you understand now what I mean when I say that I am a Norman Manleyist (that is ‘Daddy’ Manley).

Norman Manley was the ‘computer’ and his son Michael Manley, in the 1970s, was the ‘print-out’. As we are dealing with human beings, there were differences between both Manley the father and Manley the son. So, like Marxist-Leninism when Vladimir Lenin put into practice the theory of Karl Marx, what we had during the 1970s was Norman Manleyist-Michael Manleyism.

The roots of PNP ideology are really the concepts of Norman Washington Manley. I have indicated an intention to teach the philosophies and opinions of Norman Manley. The offer is still open, but I cannot afford to do it entirely for free.

ekrubm765@yahoo.com