The Evolution of Political Violence in Jamaica 1940-1980
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The Evolution of Political Violence in Jamaica 1940-1980 Kareen Felicia Williams Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2011 Copyright 2011 Kareen Williams All rights reserved. ABSTRACT The Evolution of Political Violence in Jamaica 1940-1980 Kareen Williams By the 1960s violence became institutionalized in modern Jamaican politics. This endemic violence fostered an unstable political environment that developed out of a symbiotic relationship between Jamaican labor organizations and political violence. Consequently, the political process was destabilized by the corrosive influence of partisan politics, whereby party loyalists dependent on political patronage were encouraged by the parties to defend local constituencies and participate in political conflict. Within this system the Jamaican general election process became ominous and violent, exemplifying how limited political patronage was dispersed among loyal party supporters. This dissertation examines the role of the political parties and how they mobilized grassroots supporters through inspirational speeches, partisan ideology, complex political patronage networks, and historic party platform issues from 1940 through 1980. The dissertation argues that the development of Jamaican trade unionism and its corresponding leadership created the political framework out of which Jamaica’s two major political parties, the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) and People’s National Party (PNP) emerged. Within the evolution of their support base Jamaican politicians such as Alexander Bustamante utilized their influence over local constituencies to create a garrison form of mobilization that relied heavily upon violence. By investigating the social and political connection between local politicians and violence, this dissertation examines how events such as the Henry Rebellion in 1960, the 1978 Green Bay Massacre, and the public murder of the PNP candidate Roy McGann in 1980 demonstrate the failure of traditional Jamaican political patronage to control extremist violence among grassroots supporters, giving rise to a general public dissatisfaction with the established Jamaican leadership. This transformation of the political system resulted in the institutionalization of political violence by the late 1960s, and a pattern of general elections destabilized by vicious conflicts between JLP and PNP gangs. This political violence was reflected in the rise of gang dons such as Jim Brown and Wayne “Sandokhan” Smith who became independent of the patronage system through their exploitation of the drug trade. Consequently, modern Jamaican politics in the twenty–first century is fractured and local political leaders have lost control of the gangs. Table of Contents Introduction …………………………………………………………………………...1–44 Chapter 1: Busta Leader Fe` Life ……………………………………………………45–88 Chapter 2: Norman Manley: The Man and the Myth ……………………………...89–145 Chapter 3: The Changing Faces of Jamaican Politics …………………………….146–186 Chapter 4: Young Joshua comes to Power ……………………………………….187–244 Chapter 5: Seaga: Devil or Savior? ………………………………………………245–278 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………..279–284 Charts ……………………………………………………………………..285–286 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………287–296 i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The completion of the following dissertation was a collective undertaking, involving directly at least several people: family members, friends, colleagues, students, faculty, administrators, archivists, and librarians. I would like to thank everyone who helped me to document the story of Jamaica’s most diverse political leaders, who created the foundation for modern Jamaican politics. I would like to begin by thanking my parents, to whom this work is dedicated. Their love and support during the research and writing phase of this dissertation was deeply appreciated. Also, for their endless stories about politics and party leaders in the 1950s and 1960s that fascinated me and sometimes made me laugh. It was because of my parents and brothers that this study was completed. I thank many others: most importantly Dr. Elizabeth Blackmar and Dr. David Scott, whose encouragement, support, advice, and editing assistance made this dissertation possible. I thank Professor Pablo Picatto, Professor Eric Foner, and Professor Don Robotham who served on my dissertation committee at Columbia University and were extremely helpful with advice about how to improve this dissertation. I would like to thank Dr. Kimberly Welch for her support, friendship, and comments as well as suggestions on my earlier attempts at writing about the evolution of political violence in modern Jamaican politics. The reference librarians at Butler and Lehman Library, Columbia University, the Public Record Office in London, and at the National Library of Jamaica, who were very helpful in locating relevant government documents and personal papers of various party leaders. I would ii especially like to thank Dr. Anthony Harriot, Dr. Ivanhoe Crukshank, and Dr. Edwin Jones of the University of the West Indies of Jamaica, who were so generous with their time. Finally, I thank my friends and colleagues (Professor Frank Sorrentino, Professor Arthur Hughes, Brother Geoffrey Clement, Professor Arnold Sparr, and Sister Marianne Sennick) at St. Francis College, New York for their support and patients in suffering through endless edits on my behalf. I would also like to thank Claudia Barnes at the National Library for her assistance in collecting data and purchasing material for my study and to whom I am indebted. I thank Dr. Michael Bokor who helped me during the final stages of editing. Thank You. iii 1 INTRODUCTION The Problem of Violence in Modern Jamaican Politics The problem that this dissertation seeks to address is the relationship between the evolution of modern politics in Jamaica and politically related violence. The history of modern Jamaican politics has largely been told as the story of the growth of the two-party system and its relationship to labor unionization, the evolution of a political elite, the development of the mechanisms of grassroot mobilization, party campaigning processes, and the maturation of the Westminster model, namely a democratic parliamentary system of government that supports a prime minister, legislature, and cabinet. A significant amount of the scholarship on modern Jamaica is devoted to analysis of these relationships and institutional systems. However, what is often less adequately recognized or addressed in this scholarship is that this formal system of Jamaican politics is sustained by another world of organized activity, namely the political violence connected to party politics. This study will argue that politically motivated violence has not been incidental to Jamaican politics; rather, it has been endemic to the political system. This dissertation investigates how political violence evolved from 1938 through 1980. My inquiry focuses on how political parties and their leaders mobilized grassroots supporters through ideology, demagoguery, inter-party conflict, and political patronage, and utilized the rhetoric of political campaign speeches to incite acts of aggression in an effort to defeat their rivals. This study argues that the development of the union movement in the 1930s and 1940s created the framework and set the stage for political violence in modern Jamaica, particularly between the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) and People’s National Party (PNP). The Great Depression 2 of the 1930s had devastating consequences for the world, but especially for the Caribbean, where restrictive immigrant policies led to deportation and halted migration. Undoubtedly, though, migration had been the major employment opportunity and economic outlet for Jamaicans since the 1800s when the island ceased to be a leading sugar producer. Consequently, the depression created the desperation and poverty that empowered the development of the union movement, as laborers seeking employment and better wages, and hoping for lasting changes, joined the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU) because the union represented one of the few organized structures that could effectively take on the state. Although unionization itself did not lead to horrifying violence, laborers had to deal with the colonial structure of Jamaica and employers’ use of violence to maintain power and control. This is not to imply that prior to the emergence of the union movement, there were protests of various sorts and the colonial authority reacted cohesively as they would to the labor unrest of 1938. During the riots, the British colonial authority utilized a two-fold process to contain and manipulate the development of the union movement and the formation of the political parties. The first stage involved utilizing the judiciary and police force to detain popular leaders, such as Alexander Bustamante, in May 1938 and again in September 1940 for inflammatory rhetoric, followed by the detention of radical socialists for the People’s National Party (PNP)—Richard Hart, Arthur Henry, Frank Hill, and Ken Hill—because “the Governor considers it imperative to exercise control over these men before they have further opportunity to influence the ignorant masses who are unusually receptive to such propaganda.” 1 The second stage involved the 1 PRO: CO 968/68/7. Memorandum, December 1940. 1–2. 3 colonial authority’s exploitation of the existing tension between Bustamante and Norman