The 1962-1967 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: 267-319

The 1962–1967 Administration / 267

The 1962–1967 Administration

Chapter 7

The 1962 Elections: Background and Results

Norman Manley’s victory in the elections of 1959 was a just reward

for the successes of his administration, which carried Jamaica to

the forefront of developing countries. In the parish of St. Elizabeth, the

PNP had assigned responsibilities for the campaign to a 24 year old

graduate of the University of the West Indies, Percival James

Patterson (P.J. Patterson), who after graduation had postponed law

studies to become an organizer for the PNP. In the election, the PNP

won three of the four seats in the parish and lost the fourth by a mere 15

votes.

However, while the PNP looked forward to improving its enviable

record of economic and social development, Garvey’s Black Nationalism

was once again on the move, only this time with far greater militancy.

In the year of Manley’s re-election, the Rastafarians in Jamaica

circulated a 21-point document entitled ‘The Movement’, from which

the following five points of their programmatic platform are excerpted:

• Members of the Rastafarian movement are an inseparable part of

the black people of Jamaica.

• As such, we cannot and do not proclaim any higher aims than the

legitimate aims and aspirations of the black people of Jamaica.

• Many deplore and accuse the black people of raising the colour

question in this island. But white supremacy was the official policy

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of this island for hundreds of years and white supremacists

never regarded black men as being as good as the dogs in

their yards.

• To white supremacy has been added brown-man supremacy, and

the mongrel children of the Black women came to think and

behave contemptuously toward black people.

• The Rastafarian Movement has as its chief aim the complete

destruction of all vestiges of white supremacy in Jamaica, thereby

putting an end to economic exploitation and the social degradation

of the black people.

• Suffering black people of Jamaica, let us unite and set up a

righteous Government under the slogan of REPATRIATION

AND POWER.1

Shortly after, at 21 Rosalie Avenue, the home of a fish vendor,

Edna Fisher, a group of Black Nationalists and Rastafarians who shared

the sentiments expressed in the document began meeting regularly.

Their leader was the Reverend Claudius Henry, who took for himself

the title Repairer of the Breach and named their organization The African

Reform Church. Within a short time, this church made contact with

the ‘First African Corps’ an armed militant black group in the USA

with its Headquarters in the Bronx. Among its members was Reynold

Henry, son of the Rev Claudius Henry. The resurgence of Black

Nationalism had begun, and was about to enter its most militant phase.

In early April 1960 the advance group of the First Africa Corps

arrived in Jamaica and joined the militants from the African Reform

Church in a guerrilla training camp in Red Hills. The police carried out

a pre-emptive raid against Claudius Henry and arrested him along with

members of his group on charges of treason felony. On June 21, a

combined police-military operation found the guerrilla camp, and a week

later the rebellion was effectively suppressed.

On the first day of 1959 the international balance of forces between

socialism and capitalism had changed radically, as Fidel Castro led the

triumphant guerrilla movement and revolutionary forces into Havana,

marking the first socialist revolution in the Western hemisphere. Among

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the documents found in Henry’s camp was a letter addressed to the Cuban

revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro, which was quoted in the Daily Gleaner

of October 13, 1960. The following excerpt from the letter is clear

evidence of the developing link between Black Nationalism and

revolutionary socialism.

We wish to draw your attention to the conditions which confronts

[sic] us today as poor underprivileged people which were brought

here from Africa by the British slave traders over 400 years ago

to serve as slaves. We now desire to return home in peace ...

otherwise to a government like yours that give [sic] justice to

the poor ... we are getting ready for an invasion on the Jamaican

government, therefore we need your help and personal service.2

Earlier, in April 1960, Barrister at Law Millard Johnson launched

the People’s Political Party, a name borrowed from Garvey’s organization

of 1928. Johnson was a founding member of the Richard Hart Marxist

People’s Freedom Movement in 1954. Before launching the PPP, he had

been elected President of The Afro West Indian Society while in the

United States of America, and in August 1961, he strengthened his

Garveyite credentials with his election as Caribbean Commissioner for

the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).

Immediately around him were Garveyites A.Z. Chambers and J.G.

Edwards of the People’s United Party. Conspicuous in the PPP crowds,

and sometimes on the platform, were two young University

undergraduates from Guyana, Colin Moore and Walter Rodney. The

first name need not detain us; the second would be on the lips of every

Jamaican by October 1968. On the political platform, Johnson was

repeatedly cheered by the black nationalists in the audience as he

thundered, ‘Manley says “come red”, comrade, but I say “come black”.’3

These two shades of Black Nationalism, one committed to the armed

struggle, the other to a constitutional solution, developed simultaneously

without any evidence of collaboration. The backdrop to both

developments was Manley’s determination to achieve independence for

Jamaica within a West Indian Federation. As far as he was concerned,