The political history of North Trelawny

Troy Caine, Contributor

The story titled 'Four vying to replace PNP's Harris' in The Gleaner dated December 29, 2010 initially made very interesting reading, then ended up with some glaring errors which clearly exposed your political reporter's lack of proper research as well as a lack of general knowledge of the political history of North Trelawny.

Anyone who read that "North Trelawny has voted predominantly for the PNP" and that when the Jamaica Labour Party's (JLP) Keith Russell won in 1980, "it was the first time since 1962 that the JLP was winning North Trelawny", will now be quite shocked to learn that the PNP never won the seat for the first time until Desmond Leakey's first victory in 1972. The constituency has only voted predominantly for the PNP since 1989 and for the first 27 years and two months (December 1944-February 1972), it was all JLP. Indeed, in spite of the PNP's supremacy since 1989, the overall representation of the seat still shows that it has been JLP (with four representatives) for a total of 35¹/² years (53.8 per cent) and PNP for 30¹/² years (46.2 per cent) with three representatives.

One of the original 32 constituencies created in 1944, North Trelawny seems to have been consistently blessed with voters who truly love to exercise their franchise and, in the process, has established a tradition of high voter turnout over the years, usually far surpassing the national average. For example, the area had a 69 per cent turnout in 2007 when it was a 61.5 per cent national turnout; 68 per cent voted in 2002 when only 59.1 per cent turned out nationally; 92 per cent voted in 1980 when a national record of 86.9 per cent was established; 83 per cent voted in a by-election in 1967 four months after the general election which had an 82 per cent turnout; and 59.5 per cent voted in 1944 with the lowest turnout at 58.7 per cent.

North Trelawny, which has six of the eight largest towns in the parish, has produced a speaker of the House, one Cabinet minister and already more than a few elected members and political contestants who 'neva bawn deh'! One such person is the present MP, Dr Patrick Harris, who hails from next door in St James, while another was the first MHR, the JLP's Clement Aitcheson, who was actually a native of Lucea, Hanover. Between those two have been prominent losers like Westmorelander Cedric Titus and A.U. Belinfanti, a Manchesterian who left a more memorable political legacy in the other Trelawny seat to the south. So perhaps the current aspirants like Paul Lyn, Damion Crawford, Aloun Assamba and Senator Dennis Meadows can take heart that the area, contrary to Dr Harris' hypo-thesis, is apparently quite accommodating to outsiders.

Unsuccessful recruit

The late John Maxwell used to revel in the story he consistently told about his dad, the Rev John W. Maxwell Sr, chasing both Norman Manley and Alexander Bustamante out of his house at Duncans in 1944 when they both tried unsuccessfully to recruit him as a candidate for the seat in the first general election. The last member of the Legislative Council (MLC) for the parish of Trelawny (1935-1944), Rev Maxwell, like many of his former MLC colleagues who contested the '44 election as Independents, clearly overrated their popularity and importance and were thrashed by mostly JLP candidates with far less political influence. In Busta's case, he simply went across the road and recruited Aitcheson, the humble headmaster of the Duncans Elementary School, who polled a mere 2,759 votes (36.3 per cent), some 659 more than the total rejected ballots, and massacred Maxwell by 911 and a margin of 12 per cent to become North Trelawny's first member under adult suffrage.

One of the best

In the summer of 1946, Clement Aitcheson would attain further glory when he was appointed the second speaker of the House, following the death of West Hanover's Dr Felix Gordon Veitch on July 4, three months after the passing of Rev Maxwell. His tenure as speaker, which has been regarded as one of the best, occurred at a time when his own party was undergoing a rather turbulent period. At the last sitting of the first five years of the first administration on November 22, 1949, he was eulogised by all the members for the "impartial and dignified" manner in which he had conducted the affairs of the House.

Interestingly, Aitcheson also paved the way to the speaker's chair for a long, distinguished list of other educators down through the years - such as O.A. Malcolm, Clifford Campbell, B.B. Coke, Tacius Golding, Talbert Forrest, Carl Marshall and Violet Neilson. But after one term, he had had enough and withdrew from the political arena at age 49.

In 1949, the seat was retained for the JLP by attorney Allan Douglas who became Jamaica's first minister of trade and industry in 1953 when amendments to the Constitution increased the number of ministers from five to eight in what was officially called a 'Cabinet', as we now know it. Douglas held on for a second term when the PNP gained power in 1955, then handed it over to Elliston Wakeland, who continued the JLP tradition in 1959, 1962 and 1967, but passed away two months after the '67 election. The by-election which ensued on June 6, 1967 brought back Allan Douglas to his old seat as well as to another JLP Cabinet where he became the minister of youth and community development.

But the JLP's dream run ended on February 29, 1972 when Douglas was trounced by the PNP's Desmond Leakey, his councillor for the Duncans division, who more than doubled his margin against the JLP's Leon HoSang in 1976, then bit the dust in the JLP tornado in 1980 when Keith Russell became the seat's youngest member and who was returned unopposed in 1983. Leakey returned in 1989 to take back the seat by a margin of 3,229 votes, the largest ever recorded in the constituency, then consolidated in 1993 even when Russell cut his majority to less than half. By the time Desmond Leakey completed his fourth and final term in 1997, he had become the longest-serving member for not just North Trelawny, but also for the entire parish, with an accumulated total of 17¹/² years of service.

That year, Wendell Stewart took the PNP baton and even after registering the area's second-highest margin of 2,571 against the JLP's Charles HoShing, he was unceremoniously removed in 2002 and replaced with Dr Harris. Harris' margins of 1,189 against the JLP's Christopher Jobson in 2002 and 1,522 against Meadows in 2007 eventually strengthened the PNP's resolve in the seat, especially after the PNP went behind by some 246 votes in the 2003 parish council elections and was able to bounce back by over 800 votes in the 2007 PC elections, winning just two of five divisions.

However, although it has been JLP dominance overall at the parliamentary level, it is the PNP that has mostly reigned at the local government level, controlling six of the 14 council accumulations in the constituency to the JLP's five, with a 5-5 tie in 1974 and both parties being outdone by the independents in 1947 and 1951. The PNP's Luther S. Wakeland (elder brother of former JLP MP, Elliston Wakeland) and the JLP's Samuel Gordon share the record as the longest-serving councillors in the parish, each winning six times in the Deeside and Hampden divisions, respectively, for 27 years (1947-1974). During that period, Luther Wakeland also stepped up as a candidate at the national level, but could only manage third as an independent in 1944 and was the losing PNP torch-bearer against Douglas in 1949 and 1955.

Household names

Many other North Trelawny councillors such as Uriah Rowe, Victor Gentles, Isaac Johnson, Beriah Henlon, Zenas Reid, Cedric A. Wakeland, Linnel McLean, Joseph Wright and Errol White became political household names throughout the parish. But one of the most prominent was the popular pharmacist and sugar icon Cedric O. Titus, whose victory as an independent by only 12 votes over Elliston Wakeland in the Wakefield division in 1947 (and as a councillor for that division until 1956) was later avenged by Wakeland in the 1959 and 1967 general elections by the constituency's two smallest margins of 179 and 191, respectively. His final effort in the 1967 by-election made even less of an impression on the electorate, which turned out in droves to give Douglas and the JLP a majority of 1,156 votes.

A constituency which, before Harris, had been largely dominated by the Wakelands of Wakefield, Desmond Leakey and Allan Douglas, North Trelawny now boasts the 13th largest voters' list, which at May 31, 2010 stood at 31,321, an increase of more than 3,800 (14 per cent) above their 2007 list. If selected by the PNP, either Claudette Jackson-Rickards or Aloun Assamba would become the first woman from the two major parties to contest this seat, but would have to play second fiddle to Olive A. Gardner, who became the first woman to run here in a national election in 2002 on the NDM/NJA ticket.

Nevertheless, now that PNP strength is largely relegated to metropolitan Falmouth, it would appear that after some 22 years as spectator, the JLP will need to regain a winning formula to return this one to the greener fields of yesteryear - from what is still perceived to be quite an overt orange meadow.

Troy Caine is a political commentator. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and trodencorp@gmail.com.