This short history of the Workers Party of Jamaica (WPJ) demonstrates that there was a moment in time when a radical remaking of Jamaican society seemed possible.
For more than half a century, Jamaican politics have been dominated by two parties, the People’s National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP). Whatever the PNP and the JLP might have been at their founding, they have since become little more than rival factions of Jamaica’s elite, both sharing an ideological commitment to neoliberal, market-driven solutions for Jamaica’s problems. With the PNP and JLP, there are no alternatives at the polls, and few alternatives in policy.
It was not always like this. The short but significant history of the Workers Party of Jamaica (WPJ) attests to this fact, demonstrating that there was a moment in Jamaica’s history when political alternatives were available, and a radical remaking of Jamaican society seemed possible.
Yet the WPA’s history wasn’t easy. As the Jamaican scholar and former WPA member Rupert Lewis has written, the party faced challenges almost from the moment of its founding in 1978 and its failure a decade later was almost predictable.
In the 1993 essay “Which Way for the Jamaican Left?,” published in Lloyd D’Aguiar’s excellent but short-lived journal Third World Viewpoint, Lewis provides a thoughtful, self-critical, but ultimately hopeful history of the WPA. A communist political party, the WPA benefited from the international socialist currents of the time, the political energies of constituencies overlooked by Jamaica’s traditional duopoly (including by Michael Manley’s leftward leaning PNP, of which the WPA was a critical ally). The WPA organized with teachers and trade union members and worked on behalf of Jamaica’s urban and rural communities around police brutality, health, and education. They protested the increasing influence of the IMF in Jamaica and, while its hopes of gaining actual political power were slim, the WPA provided a platform for critiques of and agitation against the old, entrenched political blocs.
Yet the party was undone by tactical political errors, a rigid anti-democratic, authoritarian internal structure, and the rapidly changing political environment of the 1980s – marked by the rise of Ronald Reagan in the US, the electoral triumph of Edward Seaga who led Jamaica on a conservative path, the country’s acceptance of IMF loans with their anti-worker, neoliberal conditionalities, and the collapse of socialist economies around the world.
WPA leader Trevor Munro also played no small part in its failure. His alleged interference in the internal politics of the Grenada Revolution, and his support for the assassins of Maurice Bishop cost the WPA credibility and members. Key members, including Lewis resigned, following Bishop’s murder and the military intervention of Grenada. Munroe dissolved the party in 1992 but long before that it was spent as a political force. Munroe, once a radical academic and activist, disavowed communism and now consults for business and international finance.
Lewis’s history of the WPA is unsentimental without succumbing to hopelessness or cynicism. For Lewis, the collapse of the WPA did not mean an abandonment of radical politics in Jamaica. Instead, it meant the beginning of a new period of assessment and reorganization. It demanded the search for a new political strategy based on the real, material conditions of Jamaica and the Jamaican people. And it required that we look beyond the dreams of a revolutionary past, while breaking the delusions of the neoliberal present.
Although written more than twenty years ago, Rupert Lewis’ “Which Way for the Jamaican Left?” offers important lessons for today. We reprint Lewis’s essay below.
Which Way for the Jamaican Left?
Rupert Lewis
The Workers Party of Jamaica (WPJ) was formed in 1978 as a communist party. This was during the second term of Michael Manley’s period in office as prime minister of Jamaica. This was at a time when it could be said that there was an effective international anti-imperialist movement. The political climate of the 1970s, both in its international and national dimensions, facilitated the formation of independent left-wing organizations, just as the 1980s facilitated the growth of right-wing politics in the region. Throughout the Caribbean there were a large number of radical political organizations of which the New Jewel Movement (NJM) in Grenada became the best known.
The Jamaican left-wing had two components. One was inside the ruling People’s National Party (PNP), and centered around the personalities of D.K. Duncan and Arnold Bertram, both of whom held important cabinet posts. They had no independent organizational strength among the working class or urban poor. Bertram’s strengths lay in the area of ideological think-tank work and Duncan was an effective party organizer and mobilizer of the PNP rank and file.
Manley’s attempt to maintain a balance in the PNP between his left and right wings faltered in early 1977. This was due to the enormous pressures from Washington which were particularly hostile to his close relations with Fidel Castro and his support for the Cubans in Angola. Moreover, the worsening economic situation led to the start of Jamaica’s long and painful relationship with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The domestic political situation worsened for the progressive movement and in October 1980 Manley was voted out of office and replaced by Edward Seaga and the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP).
Trevor Munroe, an academic at the University of the West Indies, along with Don Robotham, the late Derek Gordon and myself, among others, felt that a formation independent of the PNP was important if an agenda for radical restructuring of Jamaican society was to succeed. The PNP was a multi-class party and so we felt it was important to have a working class organization that would not be at the mercy of the business and middle class factions of the PNP.
The debate over the issue of whether we should start a party took place for most of the 1970s. The Cubans felt that there was no need for a working class party and that the left should essentially give Manley support so that he could stay the course against powerful domestic and international opposition. In Havana, Manley and later on Maurice Bishop, were seen as charismatic national leaders without whom there could be no sustained movement for change. However, while Cuba’s influence was strong, Moscow’s views on a party independent of the capitalist class was on the positive side. They wanted to see what support we had in the country.
Our 1978 decision to form a party modeled on the Communist party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), which was considered the party of Lenin, was motivated by several factors. These factors included the CPSU’s history and record of support to anti-imperialist struggles in the Third World, our growing links with the international communist movement, especially the parties in Central and Latin America, the writings of Russian theorists Rostislav Ulyanovsyk and Karen [K.N.] Brutents, and visits to Moscow facilitated by our close relationship with the Soviet embassy in Kingston.
What were the activities of the WPJ and what role did it play in Jamaican politics? WPJ members were involved in a wide range of political activities. Some worked in the trade union movement through the University and Allied Workers Union (UAWU) which is now the third largest union in the country. Others worked in urban communities providing representation for community members on human rights issues relating to police brutality, and on projects dealing with health, education and sports. In these areas we drew upon the voluntary assistance of party members who were lawyers, doctors and teachers. Similar work was also done in rural communities. Other party members worked in education developing the National Union of Democratic Teachers (NUD) and still others worked in the media where an intense battle went on between the different political currents in the country.
It was in the area of internal party life that most of the criticisms that have been made by former party members tend to focus. The party structure was very rigid and did not allow for democratic debate. Political education classes reinforced hierarchical political rigidity. The fact of the matter is that the WPJ was not an organization that could seriously contend for power but it provided a forum for militants to play a role in a much needed critique and agitation against the old power structure. Alternative ideas to the IMF views on economic restructuring came out of this environment of radical critique.
What were the factors which led to the dissolution of the WPJ? The reasons for the dissolution of the WPJ in 1992 lay in the political changes that took place in the 1980s. These include Manley’s electoral defeat in 1980; the invasion of Grenada and the politics of Reaganism in the region; the defeat of WPJ candidates in the 1986 local government elections; the political misreading by Munroe and the WPJ leadership of the significance of the changes that were underway in Jamaica and the world; the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe; and finally, Munroe’s blocking of democratic debate within the party.
By 1988 most of the senior leadership of the WPJ, including myself, had resigned. The issue of the party’s involvement in the infighting in Grenada’s Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG), and the position taken by Munroe in support of the military group that emerged after Bishop’s assassination created serious divisions. The WPJ came to be identified with Bernard Coard in the eyes of the Jamaican population. Political radicalism was discredited and hence Seaga who seemed destined for one term in office was re-elected for a second term (in 1983).
In retrospect, I think that if the questions that were being raised by party members had been honestly debated this could have led to a restructuring of the party in the 1980s. Our knowledge of Eastern Europe was considerable by then, at least to those of us who traveled and lived there and who had experienced the realities and contradictions of those societies. But too much was at stake in terms of ideological positions, psychological attitudes and financial support from the CPSU. It would have meant being self-critical and restructuring in a profound way, giving primacy to our national interests and accepting the inevitable hallway away of many party members and supporters who wanted to make up for “lost time” in terms of delays in pursuing careers and livelihoods
The psychological fall-out from this period as far as the left is concerned is heavy. Many women and men nevertheless maintain a commitment to the ideals of social and economic justice and are playing their part in the collective efforts towards transformation in Jamaica.
In the case of the PNP, Manley went on to rethink his positions and by 1989 when he was re-elected had made peace with Washington and committed the PNP to the continuation of the market-oriented policies of the 1980s. The transition to P.J. Patterson’s leadership has to be seen not simply as a continuation of Manley’s politics but the coming of age of the black middle-class in national politics.
In 1992 Munroe declared the WPJ dissolved and now functions as a public speaker and trade union leader, and is in the process of redefining his politics.
It is significant that what has not only survived from the 1970s but grown into a national organization is the University and Allied Workers Union (UAWU). The union is led in its day to day work mainly by people drawn from the working class. The mere existence of this organization speaks to needs that were not being met by the dominant unions. There is no doubt that Munroe’s contribution and that of other intellectuals have been significant.
Although the sphere of union activities is not threatening to the system as that of radical politics, there is a lot to learn from the experience of the UAWU and that discussion has not yet started. This will help to provide the key to any discussion of the revitalization of the progressive movement. I prefer to use the term “progressive movement” rather than “left working class politics.” I think the latter perspective is a narrow-minded one and has a history of sectarian and Stalinist politics associated with it. This of course does not rule out radical working class politics now or in the future But the view of the proletariat emerging from the Marxist tradition as a hegemonic force capable of leading all the oppressed in a revolutionary struggle against exploitation and the end of social classes is no longer tenable.
The 1970s Jamaican left inherited Stalinist political thinking from the 1930s, bypassing any critical assessment of the experience of Caribbean Marxists such as CLR James and George Padmore. CLR James’ critique of Stalinism and Trotskyism remains theoretically important. George Padmore’s critique from a Pan-Africanist perspective is invaluable. We moved to an uncritical embrace of the Brezhnev doctrines of the 1970s as they were interpreted for the Third World by functionaries of the CPSU. One therefore has to learn to re-read politics especially after the Grenada experiences and the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, as well as the crises in Cuba. What sense does it make to speak of the contradictions between socialism and capitalism when twentieth century socialism as a product of the 1917 Russian Revolution is dead.
What are the viable concepts of revolutionary change in the Caribbean given the Cuban experience? Concepts die easily but the problems of how we live remain and require new theorizing. This theorizing must begin with the concrete experiences of our people and their aspirations. I do not see a revitalization of left working class politics, but I see a revitalization of national political life and discussion of economic options. Part of the way this can be done is through a critical discussion of the past and an understanding of politics that are in keeping with the material and more interests of real social forces.
Rupert Lewis, “Which Way for the Jamaican Left? Third World Viewpoint, 1 no. 1 (May 1993), 21-22.
Source: Black Agenda Report