Two of the best known figures in Caribbean nationalist politics died within hours of each other last month, marking the end of an era stretching back to the fight against colonialism.
Cheddi Jagan was president of Guyana at the time of his death. Michael Manley had been elected Jamaican prime minister three times and was the dominant figure in Caribbean post-independence politics. Yet despite their intentions and resolve, Manley and Jagan failed to fulfil the expectations of the mass of the Caribbean population that had struggled so hard for independence.
Both leaders considered themselves socialists Manley called himself a 'democratic socialist' and Jagan thought of himself as a Marxist and a communist. They were essentially engaged in the same project attempting to build up their respective economies through state intervention. They embarked on this course in the face of the legacy of colonialism and the effect of imperialism. Both countries were underdeveloped by British capitalism, left in debt and then prone to the harsh winds of world recession and the Cold War. These factors, combined with the limits of nationalism itself, saw both leaders come seriously unstuck. In both Guyana and Jamaica the working classes found their interests pushed aside in favour of local and multinational business.
The two leaders arose from different backgrounds. Jagan was born in 1918 into a family of East Indian indentured labourers, among the many who had been brought across by the British after the abolition of slavery to work British Guiana's (as it was known then) sugar plantations. The plantations exemplified the 'two worlds' of colonial rule. As Jagan said, 'One was the world of managers and their European staff in their splendid mansions; the other was the world of the labourers in the "nigger-yard" and the "bound-coolie-yard".' To escape this his family sent the young Jagan to study dentistry in Washington in the late 1930s where he became politically aware.
Manley, by contrast, was the London School of Economics educated son of Jamaica's 'brown skinned' (mixed race) elite. His father was Norman Manley, first prime minister of Jamaica and founder of the People's National Party. Michael took over the reins of the PNP, in dynastic manner, in 1969.
The countries into which the two men were born had a fine tradition of militancy and opposition to British colonialism. The Jamaican struggle went back to the Maroon Wars, where escaped slaves fought a successful running conflict with British troops for decades.
In British Guiana throughout the 1930s there was the growth of trade unions among the Indian sugar workers, who made up near half the population, leading to a mass revolt in 1937. Across the whole of the British West Indies during this period there were strikes and uprisings. The British sent troops to suppress the struggles, only to provoke a hardening of resolve. But the working classes were to be confined by their leaders as a stage army principally.
The movement began to founder in British Guiana on divisions between the rural Indians and the urban black (ex-slave) population. In 1950 Jagan founded the People's Progressive Party and tied the Indian sugar unions to it as a working class block. The stated purpose of the PPP was to build 'a just socialist society in which the industries of the country shall be socially and democratically owned for the common good'. Similar declarations of intent were being made by nationalist leaders across the colonies in the aftermath of the Second World War as Britain faded as a world power.
Jagan knew that to shake off the British he had to try and get a section of support from the blacks. So he asked Forbes Burnham, an Afro-Caribbean lawyer, to be chair of the PPP. In 1953 the PPP easily won the first elections under adult suffrage (full independence was not to come until 1966). Jagan immediately moved to strengthen his hand against the British and called a general strike throughout the sugar industry. After 133 days the British, alarmed by the strike and Jagan's 'communism' sent in troops and warships, suspended the constitution and briefly detained Jagan.
Soon afterwards the PPP split and Burnham saw the opportunity to build his own ethnic base amongst the black population. Jagan, despite his protestations, was not averse to using these divisions to swing his block behind him. So in the 1957 election Jagan's supporters used the Hindi slogan 'Apan Jaat' (Vote For Your Own) to ensure victory. As Ralph R Premdas writes in Modern Caribbean Politics,
'After 1957 a new pattern was set: a divided African and Indian leadership, each at the helm of a separate party, elicited and exploited sectional fears and prejudices in order to obtain votes... Jagan won the 1961 general elections in an ethnically inflamed contest, and the whole period from 1961 to 1963 was marked by demonstrations, strikes, civil war and external influence.'
The nationalist politicians, instead of attempting to overcome colonial divide and rule by appealing to the masses on a class basis, instead perpetuated and deepened divisions. The same splits have also dogged Trinidad's politics.
Between 1961 and 1964 the essence of Jagan's 'communism' was a mixture of leftist rhetoric combined with a modest attempt at economic development. But the two main areas of the economy remained in the hands of multinationals. These areas of economic dominance were left unchallenged. Instead, in 1962 Jagan moved to impose an austerity budget, triggering the black population to rise up in protest. The black trade unions struck for 79 days, beating back Jagan. In 1964 Burnham, in coalition with a small capitalist party, won the elections and effectively kept Jagan out of power for the next 30 years.
Ironically it was the supposedly more 'US friendly' Burnham who was to embark on the state capitalist course Jagan had desired. His ruling People's National Congress (PNC) nationalised all the major industries, declared Guyana a 'cooperative republic' and attempted to play a Cold War game with America by courting Cuba and the Soviet Union.
Of course Guyana wasn't socialist colonial rule had been replaced by home-grown managers and administrators just as arrogant and exploitative. The working class paid the price both ways.
The high hopes that things would be better after colonial rule turned to dust. Jagan in opposition complained that the crucial 1964 elections had been rigged and he had been the victim of a destabilisation campaign funded by the British and US secret services. But while it is true that the British and US, in the midst of the Cold War, did see the 'communist' Jagan as a threat to their interests and did their damnedest to oust him, it was his failure to attack the real divisions in society that sent him into opposition.
Similarly when Manley lost the blood-drenched 1980 Jamaican elections to the right wing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) headed by Edward Seaga, his supporters blamed a pact between the 'outside forces' of the CIA and the International Monetary Fund.
Yet the defeat was down to Manley's inability to overcome the contradictions embedded in nationalism. Manley's People's National Party was a cross-class alliance. As Anthony Payne has pointed out, both the PNP and the JLP were 'financed by prominent members of the local capitalist class, serviced by trade unions run primarily as "vote-catching annexes", and defended in the ghettos of Kingston by political gangs drawn from the poor and the unemployed'.
When Manley came to power in 1972 he attempted to balance between these social forces. Manley signalled his intention to pursue a 'third path' of 'non-aligned' states which could steer between the Russian and US superpowers. He hoped that Jamaica could promote some kind of minor trading block, entice foreign investment and grant improvements to the working class through levies on industry.
For a couple of years this strategy seemed successful with Manley able to grant the working class rising living standards. But US capitalism proved to have the whip hand. When Manley supported Cuba's involvement in the Angolan civil war the US administration withdrew economic aid and funded a destabilisation campaign.
But it was the world recession and rising oil prices that pushed the Jamaican economy to the point of collapse. And it was the working class that were expected to give way. They did so under protest, striking repeatedly.
In the 1976 election Manley responded to the crisis with a campaign which utilised all his charisma and popular support getting reggae star Bob Marley onto his election platform. However, this 'zigzag' to the left was soon succeeded by a rightward shift. Behind the election rhetoric that 'we are not for sale', he was engaged in secret negotiations with the International Monetary Fund. The IMF demanded a major devaluation in the Jamaican currency, a public sector wage freeze and that the government balance the books. Wages, welfare and work programmes were cut and many staple items of food disappeared from the shops, out of the reach of ordinary Jamaicans. Unemployment reached 30 percent and inflation 47 percent.
This propelled an embittered working class towards Edward Seaga who won the 1980 election with a landslide on the promise of 'deliverance' from Manley's government. But there was to be no deliverance for the Jamaican working class. By the mid-1980s the country's debt had reached US $500 million. The gap between rich and poor widened even further. Despite Seaga being formally to the right of the PNP he performed the same kind of zigzags as Manley, courting the IMF and foreign investment and then denouncing it when the inevitable social repercussions followed. In 1989 Seaga suffered the similar whipping at the polls that had been meted out to Manley at the beginning of the decade.
Manley was returned as prime minister before being forced to resign through ill health in 1992. In that same year Cheddi Jagan's political fortunes finally recovered when he was returned to the cockpit of Guyanese politics. Jagan now presided over a country depleted by emigration and having suffered 'restructuring' at the hands of the IMF. In 1989 Guyana was designated as the poorest country in the western hemisphere.
Both Jagan and Manley re-entered office on tickets to the right of their previous standpoints. Jagan dropped his hostility to the US, embracing free market 'pragmatism'. Manley was now advocating private sector leadership of the economy, saying that in the past he had been 'locked into trade union thinking' and in thrall to the left in his party.
It should not be thought that this move to the right was part of the aging process. Both were following the logic of their politics. They had always believed in reform from above in an effort to carve out a niche for their countries within world capitalism. With the room for reform disappearing in the 1990s they limited their demands likewise.
Manley's and Jagan's stories are of battling against the odds and there can be no doubting the personal dangers they endured and the sacrifices they made. But theirs is also a story of the failure of the nationalist project to challenge the priorities of capitalism.
With that failure crashed the hopes of a generation. New forces from below need to emerge in Jamaica and Guyana, based on the self activity of the working classes But that demands an honest appraisal of the past. It would be a tragedy if history were to repeat itself at a time when capitalism is entering a new, deeper crisis, opening up new opportunities for working class struggle. The stakes are much higher this time round.
See Modern Caribbean Politics, Edited by: Anthony Payne and Paul Sutton (Johns Hopkins University Press) and Politics in Jamaica Anthony Payne (Heinemann 1988)