Dear Editor,

I was amazed at the Jamaica Observer’s June 24 editorial ‘Poor countries must stick together’.

I was astonished because I am in the process of conducting research on former Prime Minister Michael Manley to be used in projects aimed at the public education and celebration of the 100th anniversary of his birth (December 10, 2024), and the data is replete with the idea of poor nations coming together.

The idea of poor countries coming together was a central feature of his domestic and global policy initiatives during the 1970s. The mix of discussions in the editorial included matters concerning the history of immigration and major crisis in the health sector, particularly the shortage of specialist staff. I found the discussion interesting and instructive. The editorial reads, “In our view, the situation requires intense lobbying on the international stage. Jamaica and others in the same boat should proactively band together to make their voices heard.”

In his opening remarks to the United Nations General Assembly in 1972, Manley introduced himself as the leader of a small developing State and member of the Third World by circumstance. He told that global body that the struggles to improve the conditions in Jamaica were linked to a wider struggle for the changing of the harsh post-colonial conditions in the Third World and that there was the need to develop a common front to challenge the common problem. He called this common front the “trade union of the poor”.

He provides the rationale for this development in his book
The Politics of Change (1974), which details the history of the imbalance in trade relations between the metropolitan countries and the Third World. Against this background he argues that there will be no change in the world system unless members of the Third World unite to form a common front to challenge a common problem. He began this trade union of the poor idea in 1955 when he supported the idea of West Indies Federation.

In the opening year of the post-Independence decade he extended the idea of trade union of the poor beyond the boundaries of the region. In the article ‘Overcoming insularity in Jamaica’ (October, 1970), Manley writes: “…[T]he ability of the Caribbean to achieve progress goes beyond regionalism to the necessity of the developing countries as a whole to evolve a common strategy with regards to economics dealing with metropolitan nature. The imperative of the future must be in search for a common economic diplomacy.” In simple language, he is saying poor nations of the world unite.

This idea of “trade union of the poor” was manifested in the emergence of the New International Economic Order (NIEO), a route to liberating the people of the Caribbean and the Third World from “the shackles of domination” and oppression — the barriers to real growth and development. This theme was clearly expressed in his speech to the 1975 World Council of Churches fifth international assembly held in Nairobi, Kenya. At this conference, Manley, in justifying the NIEO, gave a comprehensive speech on the strategies in international relations that provided meaning and the basis for the development of the NIEO. According to him, this approach was aimed at ensuring economic development for stability and for the first time taking the living standards for the developing world to levels equivalent to the developed world.

This was not a pie in the sky project but an ambitious programme that became a modern revolt against the West. This challenge by the South, led by Manley, was recognised by former Prime Minister of England Margaret Thatcher in 1990. At a meeting with former US President George Bush in Aspen, Colorado, where both gave notice to the “new world order”, she gave a speech titled ‘European Magna Carta’, confirming the new dispensation in the global order. In this speech she admonished some Third World leaders who she described as confusing their economics with their politics and said that they were wrong in taking on nationalism, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), and the NIEO. These features were highlighted in her speech in angry tones because they presented a formidable revolt against the West during the 1970s. The Third World, she argued, should open up their countries for foreign direct investment. In this approach I see a new form of colonisation, and against this background small nations must go back to basics and unite to overcome their common problems.

I salute Manley’s 100th anniversary of birth with the concept that he was the only Jamaican politician who entered politics with a philosophy he was able to articulate clearly in the domestic and global sphere: Poor nations of the world, unite!

Dr Louis E A Moyston

thearchives01@yahoo.com