Among the more fascinating images on Thursday’s nomination day were of Comrades and Labourites in colourful, friendly rivalry on Collie Smith Drive which runs through the heart of the south St Andrew community from Spanish Town Road to the top of Arnett Gardens.

The road is named for a legendary son of Trench Town, Mr OG “Collie” Smith, West Indies and Jamaica cricketer of the late 1950s, who died following a motor vehicle accident in England in September 1959.

So popular was Mr Smith — acclaimed by contemporaries as a wonderful human being and monumentally talented cricketer — that a crowd said to be close to 60,000 turned up at historic May Pen Cemetery on Spanish Town Road when his remains were laid to rest.

For outsiders visiting the Culture Yard museum on First Street in Trench Town, where the iconic Mr Robert Nesta Marley and others played early roles in the evolution of reggae, Collie Smith Drive is the easiest way to get there.

That road also takes visitors to the home of Boys’ Town, the famous youth and sports development centre founded in 1940 by nation-builder Reverend Father Hugh Sherlock.

Collie Smith Drive was intended as a major traffic link between the industrial belt on Spanish Town Road and mid-town Kingston, including Cross Roads, Rousseau Road, and Lyndhurst Road.

That progressive intent fell apart completely in the politically tribalist ‘war’ of the 1970s involving rival gangs loyal to the People’s National Party (PNP) and Jamaica Labour Party (JLP).

Contrary to popular opinion, political violence in Jamaica involving Labourites and Comrades did not begin in the 1970s or 1960s. It started in the 1940s, back when combatants mostly used bottles, stones, and hefty sticks as weapons.

It is to the eternal discredit of politicians in the 1960s and 70s that the gun became the weapon of choice for their ‘soldiers’ in the ‘politics war’ of that terrible time. That awful legacy haunts us to this day, though criminal gangs have long moved away from partisan politics as their reason for being.

Sections of Trench Town — including the fringes of Collie Smith Drive — burned during the height of Jamaica’s ‘politics war’. Some people lost their lives and many fled as rival gangs fought battles with guns and bottle bombs.

Halfway up Collie Smith Drive became a ‘no man’s land’ — even four-legged animals were said to be shooting targets. Relatives, friends couldn’t cross. They visited other areas of Kingston in order to meet.

Forty plus years later, physical evidence of that disastrous period remains in Trench Town. Sadly, to this day, only a few hardy motorists from outside the area use Collie Smith Drive.

Older residents of Trench Town, wider southern St Andrew, and West Kingston, readily recall that it was football which largely led to the easing and eventual elimination of political tensions.

It’s against that complex, multi-layered backdrop that those with long memories smiled at the images of friendly fun and frolic on Collie Smith Drive on nomination day, Thursday.

Thankfully, those images were largely typical of political activities across the nation. Our politicians
— incumbents, aspirants — and all Jamaicans should continue to do all in their power to keep it so.

A useful tool towards that end is to always remember the horrendous consequences of tribalist politics.