“The Manley Memoirs” by Beverly Manley – Bev’s political awakening – published: May 6, 2008
However strange it is when I think of it now, politics and the Manleys were a presence in my life even then. As I grew up, my father would tell me about this great party, the PNP, and about its extraordinary leader and founder – Norman Washington Manley. He explained that Mr Manley could be anything he wanted to be and could live anywhere he wanted to, given his awesome talents, particularly as a lawyer, but that he had chosen to remain in Jamaica and enter politics. Then I heard about the stalwarts like Florizel Augustus Glasspole, known as the ‘Brown Bomber’, William ‘Commodore’ Seivright, Wills O. Issacs, and O.T. Fairclough, the first general secretary of the party.
These were names I got to know by heart. The left-wing group, my father told me, was led by Richard Hart, and included Ken Hill and Arthur Henry, and there seemed to be some big confusion between the two wings of the party. My father talked about the PNP a great deal, as it represented hard work, excellence and competence, virtues he wanted his children to possess.
In love with ideas
On the other hand, the JLP, founded by Alexander Bustamante, Norman Manley’s first cousin, was the opposite of the PNP in that Bustamante was not a ‘man of letters’, as my father put it. Though closely related, the two men had little to do with each other. Unlike Manley, a well-respected Rhodes Scholar and Oxford graduate, Bustamante’s dealings, I was constantly reminded, were suspect. My father told many unbelievable stories about Bustamante’s life – that he was a Spanish graduate and a moneylender. Daddy said he was not a man who discusses ideas. Like Manley, my father was in love with ideas.
These two parties divided Jamaica into members of the PNP called Comrades and members of the JLP called Labourites. Growing up, I always knew I had to be a Comrade. My father made it clear that educated people went into the PNP.
My indoctrination into politics began before I was 10 years old, when I attended public meetings with daddy just up the road from where we lived in east Kingston. There were famous public meeting spots all over Jamaica, and in the East Kingston constituency, one such spot was at the corner of Jackson Road – the road we lived on – and Giltress Street.
The excitement
The preparation for a public meeting began at least one week before the actual date, when cars with loudspeakers attached to the roof drove through the area where the meeting was to be held. My sisters and I would run to the gate to get a taste of all the excitement. The loudspeaker would bellow: ‘Tonight, tonight, come and hear the stalwarts of the People’s National Party – the Brown Bomber, Florizel Augustus Glasspole, Wills Ogilvie Isaacs, William Seivright, and the leader of the party, Norman Washington Manley. Don’t miss it!’ By the time I was 10, in 1951, the PNP had already lost the two elections since universal adult suffrage had been granted seven years earlier. Manley had even lost his seat in the 1944 elections, but great man that he was, my father told me, he remained as PNP leader, building the party.
Bustamante’s message of ‘a little more bread and a little more butter’ in the 1940s made far more sense to the majority of people than Manley’s vision of education for all and political independence. My father felt that this was only to be expected, as the majority of people could not read. I would often hear him from our rooms above the railway station as he had arguments at work throughout the day with travellers on the platform. He talked like the PNP leaders, sharing his ideas.
Political affiliation
Though sometimes confrontational cousins, Sir Alex and Norman Manley, fathers of the nation, show family love at the Terra Nova Hotel in St Andrew in this 1963 Gleaner file photograph
… Representational politics was for other people, not for him. In any case, his boss, the man who headed the railway, Mr Hamilton, was perceived to be a Labourite. In spite of his caution, my mother felt that my father was discriminated against for being a member of the PNP. This was evident from the inconsiderate way in which he was transferred from railway station to railway station across Jamaica, often with little notice. One of the things I learned early was that when your political affiliation was known, it was used against you.
Meeting night was one of the few evenings my father chose to come home instead of stopping at the bar. He would remind me that morning that he would be returning home to take me with him. We would arrive early, when music was playing; people were dancing and some of the lesser-knowns in the party would be at the mike making the earlier speeches. The big guns arrived later, Norman Manley arriving last. The atmosphere was festive, the crowds large. People pushed against each other jovially. It was like a gigantic family gathering -Comrades meeting and enjoying one another and showing off to the Labourites.
For me, it was like attending a concert. There was excitement in the air. Speaker after speaker denigrated the Jamaica Labour Party and Bustamante. When it was time for our member of parliament, Florizel Augustus Glasspole, to speak, the atmosphere rose to fever pitch.
Cool down
… The Brown Bomber ran to the microphone shadow-boxing, then stood still, listening to the cheers of the audience. Finally, raising both hands, he gestured to them to cool down. Then we heard his voice for the first time, as the crowd grew silent. As my mother would say, ‘If you dropped a pin, you would hear it.’ This was the moment. His voice boomed out over the microphone, “Comrade chairman … .” and the crowd went wild again. Speaker after speaker was announced in this way.
The final spot was left for Manley a handsome, copper-coloured man with aquiline features. That is how my father described him. He often wore three-piece suits with a rose bud in his lapel, but for public meetings he was casually dressed in a long-sleeved coloured shirt. A proper man, as daddy used to say; man to look up to. The announcement for him lasted longer than anyone else’s. He was the leader and founder of the party. He was the eminent lawyer who had won case after case. Stories about him in court were legendary. He was the man who would lead Jamaica into Independence. When he rose to speak, everyone in the audience went crazy.
Wide awake
My father, who worked long hours for the railway, was often exhausted, and sometimes slept through other speeches, but when Norman Manley spoke, he was wide awake. He didn’t want to miss a word coming out of the mouth of this great man.
Having been properly introduced, Manley rose and walked purposefully to the microphone, appearing confident, yet somewhat shy. He stood there with his arms clasped at his side, his stomach pushed slightly forward and a half-smile on his face. Clearly he was pleased with the crowd’s reaction – enthusiasm bordering on worship. That was the norm with this constituency of East Kingston, a solid PNP stronghold.
Powerful speaker
Even as a child, I was fascinated by the way Norman Manley spoke. His words were slightly, ever so slightly, muffled, uttered in a sing-song way and as if he had cotton in his mouth, and a whole generation of Jamaicans would try to talk just like him. We never quite accomplished it. His control of the English language was amazing and he used it to full effect. Though not given to drama, he was a powerful speaker and a man of enormous presence.
Such evenings were pure theatre. The backdrop, the stage, the props, the audience, and the speakers with their different roles to play. Each was at once reflective, serious and happy – keeping the audience engaged. I loved attending those meetings with my father. They were some of the few occasions when he chose to let me be with him and my mother approved. They were a highlight of my life.
A great tradition
The PNP talked a lot about Jamaicans governing themselves – a ‘modicum of self-government’ was the way they put it. My father tried to explain to me why the PNP was never called ‘Labour’, even though we were modelled after the Labour Party in England. I remember him saying that it had something to do with the fact that the PNP did not come out of a trade union movement – Bustamante had already taken control of that area. But, he said the fact that the PNP did not have the word ‘Labour’ in its name did not mean that it wasn’t for the masses who were labourers. I didn’t quite understand this then, but I knew that the PNP had a great tradition and that it was a party we could be proud of.
Daddy used to tell the story of how these two first cousins had started out together within the same movement and then something happened, he wasn’t quite sure what it was, that made Bustamante form his own party in 1943, just in time for the first general election under universal adult suffrage. What my father did know was that, whatever happened, it was Bustamante’s fault. He could not be trusted.
Demonstration
Election time was thrilling. The first election that I remember vividly was in 1955, the third election under adult suffrage. Both my parents voted. Here was an opportunity for the PNP to win for the first time with Norman Manley installed as premier. It would now be possible for the party to promote its ideas of independence. I remember well the slogan that caught the attention of the people was ‘Sweep them out’. At meetings, Comrades used brooms to demonstrate how the JLP would be swept out.
The PNP did indeed sweep those elections, and our member of parliament, the Brown Bomber, became the minister of education. East Kingston was proud, and daddy and I attended the thank-you meetings. Now that the party was in power, my father emphasised to us that we must never ask it for anything. We were there to serve the party, and it was there to serve the country overall, not individual Comrades.
For full Article See: http://old.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080506/news/news1.html
Throughout her 21-year union with Michael Manley, to some a beloved (to others a contentious divisive) Jamaican prime minister, Beverley Manley made headlines as an activist first lady. In a candid autobiography, “The Manley Memoirs” , she recounts her troubled childhood and tumultuous marriage.
