The 1944-1949 Administration

• Author: Trevor Munroe/Arnold Bertram
• Profession: Rhodes Scholar and Fulbright Fellow, political scientist, labour activist and politician, is Professor of Government and Politics at the University of the West Indies, Mona/Distinguished commentator on Jamaican Social History and Political Development is a former Legislator in both houses of the Jamaican Parliament and a former Minister of ...
• Pages: 75-120

The 1944–1949 Administration / 75

The 1944 Elections: Background and Results

The launch of the PNP was a clear triumph for the reform minded

middle class who now considered themselves leaders of the national

movement. The first challenge for this leadership was to convince the

Jamaican people of both the possibility and the desirability of self-

government. The idea that Jamaica should become an independent state,

ruled by a local elite to the exclusion of the British monarchy, was not yet

a part of the consciousness of the descendants of slaves. After all, based on

their understanding and ‘folk’ memory of the historical process, it was the

local elites, white, brown and black, who had wanted to maintain slavery

against the wishes of Queen Victoria, who set the slaves free in 1838.

The consciousness of the masses in 1938 hardly led them to associate

their lack of development with British colonial policy. As far as they

were concerned, their progress depended on the paternalism of the rulers

of the world’s largest empire. The British monarchy, in their minds, was

an asset, not a liability.

Of the leaders who emerged during the 1938 labour rebellion, it was

Bustamante that they most trusted, and he was not one of the leaders of

the PNP. Despite his presence on the platform, Bustamante, the

undisputed leader of the labour movement, was neither asked to address

the founding conference nor was he considered for a position of

leadership. The failure of the PNP to recognize him on this important

occasion was an extreme case of sectarianism, which could hardly have

helped their cause.

The 1944–1949 Administration

Chapter 3

76 / Pre-Independence Administrations

Despite the snub, Bustamante formally joined the PNP in 1939 and

both he and Manley developed a working relationship which they both

valued and recognized as crucial to Jamaica’s development. At a public

meeting in 1940, with leaders of the PNP on the platform, Bustamante

publicly declared:

I know this—that if Mr. Manley cooperates with me as I will

with him, we will do something for this country. I will say this

without any boast—there is no greater power in this country

than the combination of Manley and Bustamante. I intend to

cooperate with the Party for the benefit of the masses. Any

trouble that Manley and I may have in the future, we will fight it

out ourselves.1

From day one, a source of major concern to the British colonial office

was the extent to which Bustamante and Manley dominated the labour

movement and the political process. Every effort was therefore made not

only to break this monopoly, but to prevent, at all costs, any further

consolidation of politics and labour into one movement. The strategic line

of colonial policy was to ‘divide and rule’, and the governor of the day, Sir

Arthur Richards, implemented this policy with extraordinary skill.

In the aftermath of the 1938 rebellion, it was Bustamante’s extremism,

more than Manley’s socialist reputation, which caused the most anxiety

to the Governor. At a public meeting on September 7, 1940 the police

reported Bustamante as saying,

There will be bloodshed. I expect everyone in this country to

follow. We will … let those employers respect us. We will take

away their land and give them [sic] to the workers.… We want

our own government and it must be self-government too. The

niggers of this country shall rise. We do not want to go to war

like a timid dog. This will be war. We want revolution in this

country and before whites destroy us we will destroy them. I am

going to paralyse all industrial works of this country. There will

be shedding of blood.2

The 1944–1949 Administration / 77

Governor Richards promptly had him arrested under the defence

regulations and placed him under guard at Gibraltar Camp. One indicator

of the unity that still existed was the message sent from detention by

Bustamante, which was read at a joint public meeting of the PNP and

the BITU, calling on the workers to follow the advice of his cousin

(Norman Manley), and his solicitor, Ross Livingston. Manley and the

PNP gave more than advice, as Bustamante’s secretary, Gladys

Longbridge, recalled in her memoirs:

Norman Manley had offered his services to help keep the union

vibrant during Busta’s incarceration … and in his effort to assist,

Mr. Manley selected some of his most effective party organizers

and brought them into the BITU to work with us. 3

The PNP’s increasing influence in the running of the BITU was not

only of concern to Bustamante but also to Governor Richards, who

assessed the threat now posed by the PNP in a letter to the Secretary of

State to the colonies, written on September 28, 1940:‘The PNP’s alliance

with the Bustamante union would give it great strength in any universal

suffrage election.’4

To make matters worse for the colonial authorities, the Party now

moved decisively to the left as, at their second annual conference in

September 1940, Norman Manley declared the PNP ‘Socialist’. With

the PNP now clearly the major threat, Governor Richards’s response

was a masterpiece of cunning and manipulation.

First he released Bustamante from detention in February 1942.

Within hours of his release Bustamante made it clear that he held no

grudge against the colonial government, but immediately denounced

Manley, as well as those members of the BITU’s managing executive

committee who, he charged, had conspired with ‘an unholy combination

of certain persons with political ambition whose objective is that of

destroying me and then to assume control of the union as a political

machine and to serve their own big friends’.5 He fired them summarily.

The following month. the planter/merchant class led by T.H. Sharp,

a big landowner from Manchester, formed the Jamaica Democratic Party