Today marks 51 years since Martin Luther King Jr was gunned down in Memphis, Tennessee, USA. The year 1968 was International Human Rights Year. Ironically, it was also the year that Martin Luther King Jr and US Senator Robert Francis Kennedy were assassinated.

In his tribute to Martin Luther King Jr, the then Opposition Leader Norman Manley, after expressing how angry he was at his killing, said that he met King on his flight to Ghana in 1957 to attend the independence celebrations of that nation. Manley said that King struck him as being very intelligent.

In his book, Manley and the new Jamaica, the late Rex Nettleford spoke of the elder Manley’s frustration because Jamaica had universal adult suffrage from 1944, and Ghana from 1947, yet ironically Ghana achieved their political independence in 1957 while the West Indies Federation had not yet started. The original idea was to eventually have one politically independent West Indies Federation.

Just about every Jamaican who reads or listens to the media knows that today is also by-election day in Portland Eastern. Some people say that race and class issues were brought into the campaign. It is a coincidence rather than an irony that today is also the anniversary of the assassination of King.

International Human Rights Year 1968 was declared by the United Nations on the resolution of then minister without portfolio in the Ministry of External Affairs, Senator Hugh Shearer in 1963. By the way, senators in Jamaica could not hold portfolios until 1975.

Yet, ironically, by 1967 when he turned prime minister, having become an elected Member of Parliament, Shearer told the police not to preach beatitudes to criminals before shooting. By the way, Hugh Shearer’s father was a policeman.

Our local police force was set up after the Morant Bay Rebellion to ensure that the peasants in Jamaica would never again mount a revolt against the large landowners. It does not appear that new technology in the police force has brought with it a new psychology in the apprehension of wanted persons. There is a tendency of some members of the police force to create unnecessary fear among the majority of young Jamaicans who are very black-skinned, although ironically the police are mostly black-skinned themselves. And that is a throwback to the Morant Bay Rebellion.

In International Human Rights Year 1968, when Hugh Shearer was prime minister, protesting crowds at Sabina Park were tear-gassed by the riot squad. Some might say that the police had no choice. But had not persons in the upper classes been present in the pavilion, would the same action have been taken?

In the very International Human Rights Year 1968 Walter Rodney was expelled from Jamaica on charges that have never been made outside of Parliament, where legislators have parliamentary privilege. This means immunity from lawsuits relating to defamation of character.

The then Opposition Leader Norman Manley initially agreed with Shearer, recalling that he had to deal with an attempted insurrection in 1959. But front-line Opposition Member of Parliament David Coore later spoke and said there was not one shred of evidence that a certain pamphlet was printed at The University of the West Indies.

No part of Coore’s speech was published or broadcast by the mainline media of the day. It was, however, published in the weekly Public Opinion newspaper founded and edited by Osmond Fairclough — the real founder of the People’s National Party.

My recall of this has nothing to do with the by-election in Portland Eastern today. I did not choose the date of the by-election, which unfortunately coincides with the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. It is not my fault that the two events coincide. But anyone who observes my style in 31 years of writing columns knows that I pay attention to historical milestones.

But let the political fanatics rest assured that many who vote in Portland Eastern today will have done so before they read this. Further, as I have always argued, issues by themselves do not determine election winners. Rather it is about getting supporters who are electors to vote between 7:00 am and 5:00 pm.

Some readers complain that I regurgitate things many times. They do not know that the very articles they complain about are appreciated by others who wanted to know and might not have read the pieces in which I wrote about those topics before.

Speaking of elections in general, in the federal elections of 1958, the People’s National Party was affiliated to the West Indies Federal Labour Party, while the Jamaica Labour Party was affiliated to the Democratic Labour Party. In his book No trophies raise, the late Ashton Wright, a former permanent secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister, wrote that in Westmoreland, Dudley Thompson was the West Indies Federal Labour Party/People’s National Party candidate while Constantine Swaby was the Democratic Labour Party/Jamaica Labour Party candidate.

Swaby was a weak candidate set to lose, but the night before the election, at a time when campaigning was allowed the night before the election, the Jamaica Labour Party had a meeting, and Sir Alexander Bustamante spoke. He spoke of a statement Thompson had made about Westmoreland residents. Dudley Thompson never said any such thing, but he had no time to retract it. Swaby defeated Thompson by a fairly comfortable margin.

I am reminded of that story by the recent heated cross-talk between the People’s National Party and the Jamaica Labour Party about clashing meetings in Port Antonio. Fortunately, good sense prevailed and both parties cancelled their meetings as the media informed us this past Tuesday.

The Jamaica Labour Party’s Andrew Holness spoke about the possibility of violent clashes between supporters of both parties, as happened in the past, but not so much in the last 30 years. But the People’s National Party might have been worried that something might have been said that they would not have time to retract. It is a well-known political trick.

Michael Burke is a research consultant, historian and current affairs analyst. Send comments to the Observer or ekrubm765@yahoo.com.