The 1949-1955 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: 121-169

The 1949–1955 Administration / 121

The 1949 Elections: Background and Results

Bustamante’s sweeping victory in the elections of 1944 reflected the

response of the masses to his deep understanding of their yearning for

immediate improvement in their material existence. The empathy of his

message from the platform made his appeal irresistible.

I have your understanding of poverty, I know your ardent and

pining desire for improved conditions. I have done something

for you and want to do more … to lessen your poverty, to get

you a little land, to put some money in your pockets, to provide

work for you … to lessen your sorrow on the whole.… When

you elect the candidate for the JLP you are giving me the tool to

do the job.1

Manley’s appeal, on the other hand, was to a nationalism that had

only just begun to emerge among the intelligentsia and which the masses

neither understood nor embraced. At the PNP conference held the year

after the elections, Manley counselled the party against blaming the

people for the defeat, and prepared the party for the long road of

organization: ‘Don’t blame the people. Those are our people. That is the

legacy of hundreds of years of colonial rule.’ 2

All the candidates of the JDP lost their deposits and virtually

disappeared as a political party thereafter. The final demise came in the

The 1949–1955 Administration

Chapter 4

122 / Pre-Independence Administrations

Local Government by-election in February 1946 when its candidate

Gerald Mair was defeated by the PNP’s H.O.A. Dayes for one of the

divisions in the parish of St. Andrew. The experience of competing under

Universal Adult Suffrage led the planter/merchant class to abandon their

own class vehicle in favour of exerting influence within the two major

political parties.

Of the 51 independent candidates in the election only five were

successful, while 34 lost their deposits. Only four of the 12 members of

the old Legislative Council who stood for election under Universal Adult

Suffrage won their seats. Among the losers was E.E.A. Campbell, the

chairman of the Federation of Citizens Association, who had refused

Manley’s invitation to join the PNP on the basis of his leadership

aspirations. Campbell only managed to poll 431 of the 13,319 votes on

the list.

The main feature of the post-war international political environment

was the emergence of communism as a major political force in Europe,

as the Soviet Union directly extended its ideological sphere of influence

by incorporating eleven states with some 700 million people into the

Soviet bloc. Simultaneously, in England, Clement Atlee led the British

Labour Party to a surprising electoral victory over war hero Winston

Churchill and the Conservatives, establishing the first clear mandate for

socialism in England. In Jamaica, the PNP celebrated that landmark

event with the conviction that it could only enhance their political

fortunes.

However, it was the United States of America which came out of

the war as the dominant international power. By the end of the war the

United States was the major international creditor with two-thirds of

the world’s industrial capacity. In the military sphere, US troops were

stationed in 46 countries and on every continent, and by 1949, exercised

a lien on some 400 naval air bases worldwide.

The struggle against colonialism received a new impetus as colonial

soldiers who had fought for democracy abroad returned home,

determined to fight as resolutely for their right to self-determination.

India was the first to make the breakthrough, when Mahatma Gandhi

The 1949–1955 Administration / 123

and the young Turks in the Congress Party won independence from

Britain in 1947. That same year, the leaders of the national movement in

the Gold Coast of Africa, sent for Kwame Nkrumah, who was then a

student in London, to come home and assist in the conduct of the struggle.

Two years later, in June 1949, Nkrumah launched the Convention

People’s Party at a rally of some 60,000 in Accra, under the banner ‘Self-

Government Now’.3

Here in Jamaica, the People’s National Party, undaunted by its loss

in the 1944 elections, was systematically expanding its organization

islandwide and preparing for a political confrontation with Bustamante

and the JLP. The PNP held out little hope that Bustamante could

successfully satisfy the expectations of labour and capital simultaneously:

Bustamante’s victory is a mandate from the people to secure for

them higher wages and increased social services. Bustamante

must get these for them or suffer a setback. And he can only get

them at the expense of Free Enterprise: by backing increased

taxation of those who can afford.4

At the start of the JLP’s first term of office, in response to persistent

questions as to his policy, Bustamante declared, ‘the policy of the Jamaica

Labour Party is to work honestly, faithfully and sincerely to bereft [sic]

ourselves of the bankruptcy we have taken over in the Jamaica

government so that we can get this country in a healthy financial

position.’5

There was no doubt as to the bankruptcy of the colonial legacy.

Unemployment and underemployment affected nearly half the labour

force, while the low productivity of the worker was a direct consequence

of malnutrition, malaria and other diseases linked to debility. In a

predominantly agricultural economy, 70 per cent of the farms were less

than five acres, whereas 12 acres was estimated as a minimum for

supporting a family. The inadequate size of the average farm was

compounded by the lack of infrastructure for, as Bustamante pointed

out, ‘land without roads, water and money … is tantamount to being a

mere mockery to underfed, destitute and penniless agricultural peasants.’6