The People’s National Party (PNP), led by Norman Washington Manley, won the third general election under universal adult suffrage in Jamaica on January 12, 1955. The tenure of Norman Manley as chief minister, and later premier, was really the expansion and fleshing out of the ‘Jamaica Welfare’ concept.

This Saturday, January 14, 2017, marks 110 years since the 1907 earthquake. At the time, Norman Manley was 13-plus years old and a student at Jamaica College. The 1907 earthquake shook the bell out of the tower of the Simms Building.

Incidentally, there was a mild earthquake on Election Day, January 12, 1955.

Ken Hill founded the National Reform Association in 1935. Norman Manley founded Jamaica Welfare in 1937, 80 years ago this year. The National Reform Association merged with a steering committee organised by Osmond Fairclough in 1938. Fairclough invited Norman Manley to join the effort as well as the leaders of the Jamaica Agricultural Society, the then Jamaica Teachers’ Union and the up-and-coming trade unions.

Norman Manley was elected the first president of what became known as the People’s National Party. Prior to that, the elder Manley was the attorney for the Jamaica Banana Producers Co-operative. In the 1930s, a disease decimated the entire banana crop in Jamaica. At the time, the economy of Jamaica rested on two pillars: sugar cane and bananas.

Cultivators left the rural areas in droves to seek work in Kingston. But there was a need to plant another type of banana immune to disease and there had to be something to attract people to return to banana farming.

Norman Manley wrote the United Fruit Company, which eventually set up an endowment fund called Jamaica Welfare of which Norman Manley was its first board chairman.

Jamaica Welfare created self-help housing, adult literacy, co-operatives, skills training, and education in health care and the development of local entertainment in the rural areas. A foreign university professor was hired by Jamaica Welfare to tape-record the traditional folklore. Harry Belafonte was employed to sing a few of the songs, such as Jamaica Farewell and the Banana Boat Song.

In the 1960s, Edward Seaga, as minister of development and welfare, hired the late Olive Lewin to do further research. She established the Jamaican Folk Singers.

During World War II, Jamaica Welfare became a commission of the colonial government (Jamaica Social Welfare Commission) to organise food for the British soldiers at war in Europe. In the 1960s, Jamaica Social Welfare Commission was renamed Social Development Commission when Edward Seaga was minister of development and welfare.

The PNP declared itself a socialist party in 1940. From that time onward there were several lively debates and a Roman Catholic priest opposed Norman Manley in a series of newspaper writings. In a speech to the PNP, Norman Manley said that he could not understand the priest’s opposition as everything he was doing was part of the social teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. There was much truth in Norman Manley’s response.

This year marks 500 years since the German monk Martin Luther pinned his 95 treatises on the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church in Germany in 1517. This was the start of Protestantism to which the dominant Protestant culture of Jamaica owes its genesis. But Norman Manley, who was nominally a Methodist, was well read. He had obviously read the encyclical

Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII in 1891, in which the pope called for a living wage for all workers.

Indeed, reading was an integral part of the Drumblair Circle, which was really a gathering of the elder Manley’s intellectual friends, was included the world-renowned Jamaican academic Monsignor Gladstone Wilson. In 1961, Pope John XXIII in his encyclical Mater et Magistra called for worker share-ownership.

And this year is 50 years since the encyclical Populorum Progressio by Pope Paul VI in 1967, who called for a world “where freedom is not an empty word, and where the poor man Lazarus can sit down at the same table with the rich man”.

The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) led by Sir Alexander Bustamante won the first two elections in 1944 and 1949. In 1944, Norman Manley did not even win a seat in the House. By 1949 the PNP lost, but got a majority of votes.

The internal division involving the Four Hs (Ken Hill, Frank Hill, Richard Hart and Arthur Henry) 65 years ago in 1952 could have derailed the PNP’s train to victory in 1955. But the Farmers’ Party divided the JLP votes and campaign effort and the PNP clinched the election. And having done so, Norman Manley expanded his ‘Jamaica Welfare’ concepts.

The first two youth camps to train youngsters in skills came into being during the Norman Manley regime. The youth camps were later renamed Youth Community Training Centres in the 1970s when Michael Manley was prime minister. In the 1980s the concept was expanded and renamed Human Employment And Resource Training (HEART) by then Prime Minister Edward Seaga.

Further, two more technical schools were built and the Common Entrance scholarships awarded places to poor children in schools previously reserved for the elite. Housing schemes like Mona Heights, Harbour View, and Duhaney Park were constructed. Local entertainment as a Jamaica Welfare concept was enfleshed with the establishment of the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation, which was Jamaica’s second radio station.

Of note, one of the first acts of the Norman Manley regime was to remove the bicycle tax. Another was the setting up of the Beach Control Authority to ensure that all Jamaicans had access to the beaches. This, unfortunately, came full circle since the days of Norman Manley and Jamaicans today complain that they do not have access to our best beaches.

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