Our uncertain steps towards nation-building

Ken Jones, Gleaner Writer

By a national referendum in 1961, Jamaicans voted to 'go it alone' as an independent country. The decision was officially signed and sealed, and delivered on August 6, 1962. By that move, we were pledged for evermore to the building of a nation with whatever human and natural resources we had at our command.

We are still legally bound to the declaration of self-government; yet, to this day, there are politicians in high places who cannot fully accept the fact. Shuffling along with uncertain steps they go about the business of nation-building, looking over their shoulders and sometimes declaring, by word or deed, that there are obligations and responsibilities impossible of achievement without mendicancy or a hard reliance on the wit, wisdom and wealth of others.

From time almost immemorial, there have been more nationalistic Jamaican leaders saying that we have all the God-given assets required to go it alone. The colonising settlers stoutly defended the self-governing status they enjoyed up to 1865 when, in the aftermath of the Morant Bay Rebellion, Britain revised the liberal constitution of the time. Later, Marcus Garvey advocated self-government in the 1929 manifesto of his People's Political Party. Norman Manley called for it in 1937 and Bustamante marked it as a right to be fulfilled as soon as the country was properly prepared.

No advocate of genuine Jamaican self-government has ever seen the status as being dependent on any tie with Caribbean or other territories. It was not until the British imperial government, weary of the burdens of empire and anxious to turn her colonies loose, put West Indies Federation into our heads. They said that in the swim towards Independence it was best for us to be joined with other of their colonial possessions and cast into the Caribbean Sea of British decolonisation.

Old England had it all planned out. It was in 1942 that Clement Atlee, waiting in the wings to be prime minister of England, spoke about the folly of "bearing financial burdens for the sake of empire".

Shedding weight

Victorious but badly bruised by World War II, the British knew that their economy was no longer able to carry an empire. In 1947, they set India and Pakistan free; and they began the process for Africa and the Caribbean. But even as they divested, they hoped to maintain influence among their former colonies; and so the British Commonwealth was established in 1949 to keep the former colonies together for ease of association under the titular leadership of the Queen. Historian William Roger Louis put it plainly: "The goal was not that Britain should sustain the empire, but that the empire, in a new form, should continue to sustain Britain."

In 1942, Winston Churchill declared: "I have not become the King's first minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British empire." However, in 1954, the Commonwealth secretary serving his administration gave expression to the change of strategy:

"However uncomfortable it may be to have some of the emergent territories as full Commonwealth partners, we are quite clear that the wiser course is to admit them to a status of nominal equality, and seek from the start to ensure that, through sharing in that intimate exchange of views and information on foreign policy which marks relations between members of the Commonwealth, they will remain within our own sphere of influence ... the existence of a Commonwealth composed of like-minded, independent and freely associating members drawn from every continent, is a source of strength and prestige for the United Kingdom."

Since that time, most of the former British colonies became members of the Commonwealth, given roughly the same constitution, each containing restrictions not imposed upon England itself. One of these is the controversial clause regarding dual citizenship, a divisive rule that has set us at each other's throats in the old colonial format of 'divide and rule'. So while we fritter away our time and energy and money creating two classes of citizens, England goes merrily along boasting that all its citizens are free to elect and be elected.

Out of the British decolonisation strategy, the West Indies Federation was created. Unfortunately, in my view, Norman Manley fell for it, changed his course, and began declaring that Jamaica could not go it alone. It was reasoned that the federation was viable, even though we could not be described as a people occupying contiguous territory or living and working together for any length of time. This view was summed up in the book 'Britain's Declining Empire', written by Ronald Hyam, fellow and librarian of Magdalene College, and emeritus reader of British imperial history at the University of Cambridge. He opined: "On the face of it, the British West Indies should have been eminently suited to cooperate in a single government. They had a common language, a common heritage, and a common devotion to cricket and calypso; and mostly to Christianity."

However, in four years the federation flopped, because, as Hyam put it: "The most immediate explanation for failure offered at the time was that the 'leadership was awful' ... . The bickering leaders were variously assessed in the Colonial Office as irresponsible, immature, impatient and inefficient. Adams was "not big enough" for the job, unimaginative, tactless, rude, vain and lazy, quite apart from his failing health and mental powers."

Lord Hailes, the federation's governor general, is reported to have predicted that Federal Prime Minister Grantley Adams, left to himself, would have become a West Indian Mossadeq, retiring to bed whenever things looked dangerous. But not only that, the federation failed because the greatest common factor among its people was the British imperial rule that each had experienced for more than 300 years. In addition, most of the territories had already been enjoying internal self-government, with their own aims and objectives arrived at without any consultation between them. It is out of that mess that Jamaica, located more than a thousand miles from the others, extricated itself nearly 50 years ago; and yet strangely some, claiming to represent the people, are looking back, determined to prove the people's decision in the referendum was wrong.

One example is in the costly, nagging debate about a Caribbean Court of Justice. I do not believe that when our people voted to become an independent nation, they intended to abandon a justice system with which they were familiar and fairly satisfied. Any anticipated change must have been a gradual withdrawal in favour of some apparatus devised by ourselves and suited to our interest rather than the taste of other countries having their own legitimate agenda.

When we opted for Independence, we must have expected our creative workforce to be mobilised for fullest use of available human, technical and natural resources, with progress for the nation being translated into prosperity for the people. It could never have been our belief that the production and marketing of our world-famous coffee, ginger, rum, bauxite and banana would depend on CARICOM arrangements. It could never have been thought that our manufactured products such as cement, beer, soft drinks and flour would in time be placed in the hands of foreign interests; that financial institutions reared by our entrepreneurs would be undermined and auctioned off to neighbouring territories no bigger or more blessed than ourselves. Yet all these reverses and more have taken place, and no one is held accountable.

The Gleaner recently recognised the awful shortcomings of political leadership and suggested that 'civil society must lead Jamaica's rescue'. It is a proposition that I, personally, would approach with caution. Yes, we have reason to be dissatisfied with the way our Independence has been treated by some of those administering the responsibilities of government. But not all of them have been found wanting or corrupt. We are still operating a democracy, which means delegating the power of the people to a government subject to review and replacement every five years. We, the people, can monitor and advise, but we cannot all be engaged in government. That would result in chaos worse than the present miserable state in which every institution and special-interest group is putting forward policies and programmes allegedly in the name of the electorate they never faced.

What we need is not chaos but consensus, something in which our political parties seem to have little or no interest. We need a strong civil society, but even stronger government - clean, honest and conscious of its responsibilities; leadership with new ideas, decisive action and highly contagious enthusiasm. Overall, we need to be a people, united, scornful of the blandishments of those who would divide us, and ready to consider the national interest above partisan appeals. In this regard, the words of Norman Manley, when he was the primary advocate for Jamaican Independence, are worth recalling:

"No amount of economic good will make our people a real unity. All efforts will be wasted unless the masses of the people are steadily taken along the path in which they will feel more and more that this place is their home, that it is their destiny. They will then do more for it, more work, more effort, more thinking, more sacrifice, more discipline, and more honesty than by any other measure you can bring to this country."

Ken Jones is a veteran communications practitioner. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and kensjones2002@yahoo.com.