The 1972-1976 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: 371-420

The 1972–1976 Administration / 371

The 1972 Elections: Background and Results

The JLP administration formed after their victory at the polls in

1967 had barely settled down before Prime Minister Donald

Sangster died. His successor, Hugh Shearer, was elected after a close

contest with Housing Minister, Clem Tavares. However, the campaign

to elect him brought to the fore underlying divisions in the JLP

leadership, which persisted throughout the administration.

In the United States of America, Black Nationalism entered a new

phase, as popular feeling heightened against the United States’ role in

Vietnam, as well as the racist practices of apartheid in Southern Africa.

Predictably, the rise of Black Nationalism in North America fuelled a

new militancy among black nationalists in Jamaica. The Reverend

Claudius Henry, on his release from prison, organized his followers into

the New Creation Peacemakers Association (NCPA), with branches in

Kingston, Kemps Hill in Clarendon and Braes River in St. Elizabeth.

The State immediately took steps to deal with this new challenge by

conducting three raids on the NCPA within the first five months of its

existence.

This was followed by an extraordinary repressive measure on July

18, 1968 as Roy McNeil, Minister of Home Affairs, issued an order

banning ‘all the publications of which Stokely Carmichael is the author

or co-author; all the publications of which Malcolm X (otherwise called

Malcolm Little) is the author; all publications of which Elijah Muhammad

(otherwise called Elijah Poole) is the author’.1 On January 30, 1968 he

The 1972–1976 Administration

Chapter 9

372 / Post-Independence Administrations

had banned The Crusader, which was edited by the African-American

nationalist, Robert Williams. A year before, in May 1967, the Undesirable

Publications Law had been revised to include all English-language

publications coming from Moscow and the international organizations

financed by the USSR, Peking and Cuba.

It was at this point that Walter Rodney, a 27-year-old black Guyanese

lecturer in History, took up an appointment at the University of the

West Indies, and immediately placed himself at the centre of the

increasing racial consciousness of the intelligentsia and the masses. His

sincerity, status, articulation and commitment, created the possibility of

an organic link between the radical intelligentsia and other expressions

of resistance to the status quo represented by Rastafari and ‘Rude Boys’.

His presence on the University campus and his knowledge of Africa and

the African Liberation struggles, brought him into regular contact with

community leaders and students.

This contact with radical elements was what the administration feared

most, and this explained their decision to ban Rodney from re-entering

the island after attending a conference of black writers in Montreal in

October 1968. The University students took to the streets in a protest

demonstration, and the urban masses seized the opportunity to express

solidarity as well as their own feelings against racial and foreign

domination of the economy. In the rebellion that followed, extensive

damage was done to property owned by North American and British

interests, as well as by racial minorities. The JLP never recovered from

its isolation by the forces of that nationalism, and the hopelessness of

their political future was eloquently expressed in the hit song of the

Ethiopians, which dominated the charts, ‘Everything Crash’.

In the immediate post-Rodney era, a group spearheaded by George

Beckford and D.K. Duncan, and including Robert Hill, Arnold Bertram,

Trevor Munroe and Rupert Lewis, united around themes of anti-

imperialism and black solidarity, and began publication of a weekly

newspaper, the Abeng. Beckford was an original member of the New

World Group, which, since its origins in 1964, had become the most

influential force among progressive intellectuals in the Caribbean. Their

ideas,

The 1972–1976 Administration / 373

embodied primarily in a quarterly journal, occasional pamphlets

and public forums, had a deep influence on the thinking of the

students, university lecturers, high school teachers, journalists,

publishers, artists, lawyers and others who wanted to develop a

better understanding of West Indian society in order to contribute

to its progressive transformation.2

The debate within the radical intelligentsia reached a new dimension

with the formation of the Marxist-Leninist Socialism group in 1970,

under the leadership of Trevor Munroe and Don Robotham, both of

whom had served their apprenticeship in the Young Socialist League as

well as the Abeng Movement. The political orientation of the group was

Marxist–Leninist, and it quickly developed a base among university

students, elements of urban youth and the independent trade union

movement.

In December 1971, Munroe, by then Jamaica’s leading Marxist–

Leninist, delivered a polemic against what he called the ‘philosophical

idealism’ of the New World Group, in a paper presented to a seminar of

New World and ex-New World associates. By this time, the New World

Group had become irreconcilably divided between those demanding

greater political activism and those in favour of the group continuing to

remain aloof from established ideologies while working to create an

indigenous theoretical framework. A month before Munroe’s

presentation, the founder of the group, Lloyd Best, resigned, but not

before delivering a broadside against the political activists, which implied

that the increasing dependence on foreign ideologies, including Marxism,

placed a limitation on the emergence of independent Caribbean thought.

By the time the campaign for the 1972 elections got under way, the

Jamaican Left had splintered into the Marxist–Leninist Socialism group,

the Maoist Youth Forces for National Liberation, the Trotskyite

Revolutionary Marxist League, the Black Nationalist People’s Political

Party, and a host of one-man parties, which attempted to merge into a

National Political Unity Committee. The Socialism group was by far

the best organized but even then exerted only minimal influence on the

1972 election campaign.