Since losing the St Andrew West Rural seat in the 2016 general election, the People’s National Party’s (PNP’s) Paul Buchanan has embarked on a series of very interesting and informative articles focused on essentially a political post-mortem of the election, citing reasons and circumstances for the party’s defeat, as well as much personal perception on other political and national issues.

Indeed, this is a commendable effort by Mr Buchanan, whose knowledge of the politics clearly goes back a far way, and it is something worth emulating by others who spent years in the political arena and have never bestowed to the public the experiences of their exposure to politics.

However, a major criterion relative to whatever is expounded regarding events, institutions, personalities, etc must be total accuracy of the facts as they relate to all subjects covered. And Mr Buchanan’s piece in the Sunday Observer of May 15, 2016, entitled: ‘The PNP’s renewal and Holness’s promised new world’ was marred by some rather unfortunate errors.

He referred to Mr Patterson as the PNP’s elder statesman who should be… “inspiring our members with pointers of (PNP) greatness…” and telling…“the young ones of men like the legendary Ken Hill who in 1936 at age 27 founded his own National Reform Party…”

Well, being the consummate political luminary, Mr Patterson would certainly not be articulating incorrect information to anyone.

In any case, there was no National Reform Party belonging to any one person, but there was the National Reform Association of Jamaica (NRA) which became the precursor to the PNP, and whose members met in the Collegiate Hall on Church Street in Kingston on May 20, 1937 and elected solicitor Noel N Nethersole as its founding president.

The constitution of the association was drafted by Nethersole who was assisted by insurance executive George Bowen. Members of the Provisional Council appointed by the Organising Committee and unanimously elected included: Claudius A Isaac-Henry, William Seivright, Douglas Judah, HP Jacobs, Cyril GX Henriques, Donald Fitz-Ritson, Audley L Evans, George R Bowen, Leslie E Cawley, Mary Morris-Knibb, Amy Bailey, CG Walker, E Erasmus A Campbell, Ken Hill, Dr Ivan ER Parris, and Hugh Buchanan.

The only party founded by Ken Hill was his National Labour Party (NLP) which was established shortly after his expulsion (with the other three Hs) from the PNP in March 1952, and under whose banner he contested and lost his Kingston Western seat to the JLP’s Hugh Shearer in 1955 when the PNP first gained power.

Left out in the political ‘cold’, Hill abandoned the NLP, was virtually rescued by Sir Alexander Bustamante, and on October 5, 1957 he formally joined the JLP, then went on to win the Surrey Electoral Area seat for the JLP in the March 1958 Federal Elections, trouncing the PNP’s Balfour Barnswell by over 10,000 votes.

In spite of his resignation from the JLP in July 1961 because of its official anti-Federation policy, Hill’s return to the PNP after the Federation crashed was not a reconciliation totally embraced by the PNP top brass and rewarded with any position of prominence, and at age 60 in the 1969 parish council elections he returned to the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC) where he had his first electoral win back in 1947, and where he was relegated to councillor status (for the Pembroke Hall Division) until his retirement in 1981.

Another blatant error in Mr Buchanan’s article was his stating that Noel Newton Nethersole was finance minister between 1955 and his death in 1957. However, by stating that, Mr Buchanan shortened Mr Nethersole’s life by two years, as he actually passed away in March 1959. It is rather incredible that Jamaica’s first three finance ministers died during their period of budget preparation – Sir Harold Allan (Ind) in 1953, Noel Nethersole (PNP) in 1959, and Sir Donald Sangster (JLP) in 1967.

Finally, Mr Buchanan stated: “Norman Washington Manley, the brilliant legal luminary and national hero who changed the course of our history…” Really, Paul? Which course of our history did Mr Manley change? Surely, you can’t mean the Federal folly into which he dragged us. When the opportunity was presented to drag us out he found himself on the wrong side of his own history, clinging on to the Federal failure and having to oppose in a referendum, the momentous occasion of our national euphoria when Jamaica sought to become an independent nation, which, ironically, he was one of the first to articulate prior to adult suffrage.

In fact, there are many Jamaicans who would say that back in 1961 Mr Manley was really trying to stop the progress, and they are very grateful that he did not succeed.

Norman Manley was a great man and an outstanding Jamaican who accomplished great things for Jamaica, but the constant attempts to exaggerate his role in the country’s history and development do far more harm than good to his memory and his legacy.

– trodencorp@gmail.com