So the electronic media got inside the last meeting of the National Executive Council of the People’s National Party (PNP) when Portia Simpson Miller announced her plans to step down from the PNP presidency. And excerpts of the barbs thrown at her by rivalling factions within the PNP were aired on TV.

To begin with, intra-party clashes are far more common than some might realise, and it is certainly nothing to be overly stressed about. Indeed, it is ironic that today, the date of the Roman Catholic Feast of the Immaculate Conception and the 51st anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council, that we should be discussing internal clashes. As the church hammered out doctrine at its councils in the early days, there were many physical fights. Bishop Nicholas of Asia minor (known today as the legendary Santa Claus) is alleged to have punched Arius at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD.

The clashes in the parties go back to 1938 when some in the PNP wanted the party to be called the ‘Jamaica National Party’. Norman Manley was hit with a stone as a result of that dispute. He fought off his attacker, beat him up, and carried the matter to court, where his assailant was found guilty and fined.

It was an intra-party clash between Norman Manley and his first cousin Alexander Bustamante that caused a split in the PNP, founded in 1938, which resulted in the formation of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in 1943. The JLP was merely the political arm of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union until 1951 when the JLP published a definitive constitution. In that context one can mention the clash between Bustamante and Saint William Grant.

In 1952, the so-called Four Hs (Ken Hill, Frank Hill, Richard Hart and Arthur Henry) were expelled from the PNP allegedly for being communists. The resulting divide was severe. Had it not been for the fact that the Farmer’s Party divided the people who voted JLP in 1944 and 1949, and also divided the JLP’s campaign effort, the PNP might not have won the 1955 General Election.

There was the internal clash at the JLP conference at Carib Theatre in 1960. It is alleged that two senior female JLP politicians who were very close to Bustamante had a tussle and one was boxed on the steps of the Carib Theatre. Indeed, were it not for Bustamante, who was the rallying point of the JLP and therefore could reunite the party quickly after the division in time for the referendum on the West Indies Federation, in which the PNP itself was divided, the JLP might not have won in 1962.

Then there was the Gleaner headline in mid-August 1971 that spoke to a split in the Cabinet with the subtitle ‘Lightbourne and Hill at odds with Seaga’. “Lightbourne” was the late Robert Lightbourne who, at the time, was minister of trade and industry and “Hill” was the late Wilton Hill, who was minister of public utilities and housing. And, of course, “Seaga” was Edward Seaga, then the minister of finance and planning who is still alive at 86 years of age.

On page 244 of his book Alexander Bustamante and Modern Jamaica, George Eaton wrote that Bustamante was very concerned that as soon as he left the political scene the JLP would be broken down into factions. The truth is that, as Bruce Golding would say nearly 40 years later, “the JLP tends to be leader-centric” because that is how it was established.

Initially the PNP was ideologically-centred having declared itself a socialist party in 1940 and all of their original internal disputes were on those grounds. In recent times, the PNP has shelved ideology for longer than it was ever shelved before, so the clashes are now around personalities.

Regarding the shelving of socialism, there are two distinct periods in the history of the PNP when this was done. The first was after the expulsion of the Four Hs in 1952, when the socialist rhetoric was downplayed although it was never abandoned. Michael Manley would write in his book Struggle in the Periphery that: “The PNP was always socialist in the sense that it was never said that it was not.”

There was an attempt by the Young Socialist League, an affiliate of the PNP to revisit socialism in 1964, but Wills Isaacs and Florizel Glasspole bonded together to ‘stamp it out’. Socialism in the PNP was not officially revisited until 1974 when Michael Manley, following the line the PNP after its defeat in 1944, declared the PNP to be democratic socialist.

Just as in the 1940s, the democratic socialism was dubbed as ‘Christianity in Action’. Socialism in the PNP was again shelved in the 1980s as the eastern bloc receded into capitalism. This had to do with the realities of trading negotiations. In the 1940s, when Norman Manley was called a communist by a Roman Catholic priest, he said: “I cannot understand why I am being criticised when all that I am doing is in keeping with the social teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.”

So much has been written in the past about the JLP clashes of the 1990s and the so-called Gang of Five, with the resulting offshoot that became the National Democratic Movement in October 1995.

Political clashes aside, though, it is a shame that so many do not have a sense of nationalism. Since Fidel Castro died he has been both praised and vilified. For those of us who commended the positive things Castro did, there was the rhetorical question akin to a tracing match: So why didn’t you go and live in Cuba then? Haven’t these people ever heard of nationalism and patriotism?

Since these people usually praise the USA, are we to understand that the only reason they do not all live there is that they were denied visas? Where is your Jamaican nationalism? When the late Wilmot “Motty” Perkins praised Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore, did anyone ask him why he did not live in Singapore?

I commend Dr Donald Rhodd on an informative letter to the editor published in the Jamaica Observer, ¡Hasta siempre, Comandante!, published on Thursday, December 1, 2016, about his stay in Cuba as a university student.

ekrubm765@yahoo.com