STUDIES OF THE AMERICAS

Transcription

1 STUDIES OF THE AMERICAS edited by Maxine Molyneux Institute of the Americas University College London Titles in this series include cross-disciplinary and comparative research on the United States, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Canada, particularly in the areas of politics, economics, history, anthropology, sociology, development, gender, social policy, and the environment. The series publishes edited collections, which allow exploration of a topic from several different disciplinary angles by eminent scholars, and booklength studies, which provide a deeper focus on a single topic. Titles in this series published by Palgrave Macmillan: Cuba s Military : Revolutionary Soldiers during Counter-Revolutionary Times By Hal Klepak The Judicialization of Politics in Latin America Edited by Rachel Sieder, Line Schjolden, and Alan Angell Latin America: A New Interpretation By Laurence Whitehead Appropriation as Practice: Art and Identity in Argentina By Arnd Schneider America and Enlightenment Constitutionalism Edited by Gary L. McDowell and Johnathan O Neill Vargas and Brazil: New Perspectives Edited by Jens R. Hentschke When Was Latin America Modern? Edited by Nicola Miller and Stephen Hart Debating Cuban Exceptionalism Edited by Bert Hoffman and Laurence Whitehead Caribbean Land and Development Revisited Edited by Jean Besson and Janet Momsen Cultures of the Lusophone Black Atlantic Edited by Nancy Priscilla Naro, Roger Sansi-Roca, and David H. Treece Democratization, Development, and Legality: Chile, By Julio Faundez The Hispanic World and American Intellectual Life, By Iv á n Jaksi ć The Role of Mexico s Plural in Latin American Literary and Political Culture: From Tlatelolco to the Philanthropic Ogre By John King Faith and Impiety in Revolutionary Mexico Edited by Matthew Butler

2 Reinventing Modernity in Latin America: Intellectuals Imagine the Future, By Nicola Miller The Republican Party and Immigration Politics: From Proposition 187 to George W. Bush By Andrew Wroe The Political Economy of Hemispheric Integration: Responding to Globalization in the Americas Edited by Diego S á nchez-ancochea and Kenneth C. Shadlen Ronald Reagan and the 1980s: Perceptions, Policies, Legacies Edited by Cheryl Hudson and Gareth Davies Wellbeing and Development in Peru: Local and Universal Views Confronted Edited by James Copestake The Federal Nation: Perspectives on American Federalism Edited by Iwan W. Morgan and Philip J. Davies Base Colonies in the Western Hemisphere, By Steven High Beyond Neoliberalism in Latin America? Societies and Politics at the Crossroads Edited by John Burdick, Philip Oxhorn, and Kenneth M. Roberts Visual Synergies in Fiction and Documentary Film from Latin America Edited by Miriam Haddu and Joanna Page Cuban Medical Internationalism: Origins, Evolution, and Goals By John M. Kirk and H. Michael Erisman Governance after Neoliberalism in Latin America Edited by Jean Grugel and P í a Riggirozzi Modern Poetics and Hemispheric American Cultural Studies By Justin Read Youth Violence in Latin America: Gangs and Juvenile Justice in Perspective Edited by Gareth A. Jones and Dennis Rodgers The Origins of Mercosur By Gian Luca Gardini Belize s Independence & Decolonization in Latin America: Guatemala, Britain, and the UN By Assad Shoman Post-Colonial Trinidad: An Ethnographic Journal By Colin Clarke and Gillian Clarke The Nitrate King: A Biography of Colonel John Thomas North By William Edmundson Negotiating the Free Trade Area of the Americas By Zuleika Arashiro History and Language in the Andes Edited by Paul Heggarty and Adrian J. Pearce Cross-Border Migration among Latin Americans: European Perspectives and Beyond Edited by Cathy McIlwaine

3 Native American Adoption, Captivity, and Slavery in Changing Contexts Edited by Max Carocci and Stephanie Pratt Struggle for Power in Post-Independence Colombia and Venezuela By Matthew Brown Taxation and Society in Twentieth-Century Argentina By Jos é Antonio S á nchez Rom á n Mexico s Struggle for Public Security: Organized Crime and State Responses Edited by George Philip and Susana Berruecos Ra ú l Castro and Cuba: A Military Story By Hal Klepak New Political Spaces in Latin American Natural Resource Governance Edited by H å vard Haarstad Politics and Power in Haiti Edited by Kate Quinn and Paul Sutton Citizenship and Political Violence in Peru: An Andean Town, 1870s-1970s By Fiona Wilson Aesthetics and Politics in the Mexican Film Industry By Misha MacLaird Reconfi guring the Union: Civil War Transformations Edited by Iwan W. Morgan and Philip John Davies Making Brazil Work: Checking the President in a Multiparty System By Marcus Andr é Melo and Carlos Pereira Sexual Violence during War and Peace: Gender, Power, and Post-Conflict Justice in Peru By Jelke Boesten Argentina Since the 2001 Crisis: Recovering the Past, Reclaiming the Future Edited by Cara Levey, Daniel Ozarow, and Christopher Wylde The Origins of Bourbon Reform in Spanish South America, By Adrian J. Pearce The Political Empowerment of the Cocaleros of Bolivia and Peru By Ursula Durand Ochoa Gender, Globalization, and Health in a Latin American Context By Jasmine Gideon Peru in Theory Edited by Paulo Drinot Race, Class, and the Politics of Decolonization: Jamaica Journals, 1961 and 1968 By Colin Clarke

4 Also by Colin Clarke Jamaica in Maps Kingston, Jamaica: Urban Development and Social Change, Caribbean Social Relations (editor) A Geography of the Third World (joint author) Geography and Ethnic Pluralism (joint editor) East Indians in a West Indian Town: San Fernando Trinidad, Politics, Security, and Development in Small States (joint editor) South Asians Overseas: Migration and Ethnicity (joint editor) Society and Politics in the Caribbean (editor) Class, Ethnicity and Community in Southern Mexico: Oaxaca s Peasantries Kingston, Jamaica: Urban Development and Social Change, Decolonizing the Colonial City: Urbanization and Social Stratification in Kingston, Jamaica Post-Colonial Trinidad: An Ethnographic Journal (joint author) War s Nomads: A Mobile Radar Unit in Pursuit of Rommel during the Western Desert Campaign, (joint editor)

5 Race, Class, and the Politics of Decolonization Jamaica Journals, 1961 and 1968 Colin Clarke

6 RACE, CLASS, AND THE POLITICS OF DECOLONIZATION Copyright Colin Clarke 2016 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission. In accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 2016 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN The author has asserted their right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number , of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of Nature America, Inc., One New York Plaza, Suite 4500, New York, NY Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. ISBN: E-PDF ISBN: DOI: / Distribution in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number , of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Clarke, Colin G. Race, class, and the politics of decolonization : Jamaica journals, 1961 and 1968 / Colin Clarke. pages cm. (Studies of the Americas) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Jamaica Social conditions 20th century. 2. Jamaica Politics and government To Jamaica Politics and government Jamaica History Autonomy and independence movements. 5. Race relations Jamaica Political aspects. 6. Communism Jamaica. 7. Decolonization Jamaica. 8. Clarke, Colin G. Diaries. I. Title. HT1098.C dc A catalogue record for the book is available from the British Library.

7 To Gillian with love

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9 Contents List of Figures List of Plates Preface Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations xi xiii xv xvii xix Introduction 1 Part I Jamaica Journal 1961 Maps 29 Chapter 1 Jamaica: A British Colony on the Eve of Independence 37 Chapter 2 Kingston and Rural Jamaica 63 Chapter 3 The Ras Tafari Movement, Marxism, and Race 95 Chapter 4 Race, Class, and the Referendum 131

10 x CONTENTS Part II Jamaica Journal 1968 Chapter 5 Sovereign Jamaica: Post-Colonialism as Neocolonialism 153 Notes 177 References 201 Index 205

11 Figures 1.1 Western Jamaica: Place Names and Roads Eastern Jamaica: Place Names and Roads Kingston s Regional Context Kingston: Street Names Kingston: Place Names Kingston: Land Use, Kingston: Socioeconomic Status (Class), Kingston: African (Black) Population, Kingston: Population Density,

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13 Plates 1.1 Colonial great house in the heart of the white elite area in Kingston in The house is more suited to a sugar plantation than to its suburban location A tenement district dating from the late nineteenth century Jones Town in inner West Kingston. Small houses have been built one behind the other to create a yard; tenants rent rooms by the month. Services are communal Dissection by erosion of the upper Yallahs Valley, Blue Mountains Placing bunds along the contours to prevent erosion, Yallahs Valley, Blue Mountains Hampden great house, built in the late eighteenth century by the sugar planter, John Stirling, and modified by the Kelly-Lawson family from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries Yam sticks and yam hills in the mountainous interior of Jamaica near Christiana, an area to which the ex-slaves migrated after emancipation in Mixed cropping of ground provisions for subsistence on the edge of a doline (solution depression in the limestone) Devon, Christiana The Foreshore Road squatter community in Sam Brown s store and hut are behind the cyclist Men scuffl ing (recycling) on the dungle (waste dump) adjacent to the Foreshore Road in West Kingston in They are reclaiming discarded oil barrels 132

14 xiv PLATES 4.2 A shanty at Moonlight City in Housing in this small squatter settlement on the edge of Hunts Bay is made of recycled materials The redevelopment of Back o Wall into a high-density, government-apartment scheme at Tivoli Gardens. A view from the Ebenezer Church graveyard,

15 Preface This book consists of two journals kept while I was carrying out fieldwork in Jamaica the first in 1961, one year before the colony s independence in 1962, and the second in Research in Kingston and visits to rural communities are described before the reader is taken into the 1961 political underworld of black racism and Marxism, where the machinations of the various political groups lead up to the Federal Referendum and rejection of federation in favor of Jamaica becoming independent on its own. The 1968 journal explores the impact of independence and the intervening post-independence elections of 1962 and 1967 on the dissolution of the dissident forces of Marxism and black racism. It also identifies the postindependence roots of Jamaica s constrained two-party democracy. The Jamaican crisis of was played out in a Cold War context, in which US hegemony in the Spanish Caribbean was being challenged by the anticapitalism of Castro s Cuba. British voluntary decolonization in Jamaica and the smaller territories, which had been precipitated by the 1938 labor riots, was implemented after 1942 through constitutional decolonization in the shape of adult suffrage. In Jamaica during the 1940s and 1950s two political parties, each backed by a trade union wing, had come to dominate politics and compete for power. But the movement for Jamaican independence soon tangled with British post-war plans for West Indian decolonization via a Caribbean-wide federation. Although Jamaica s economic development was highly successful in the 1950s, as world markets for primary products expanded, the society s color-class stratification remained largely unchanged, and poverty was widespread among the black peasantry and urban and rural proletariat. The Ras Tafari movement became prominent in the squatter camps in Kingston in the 1950s, and in 1959 it was involved in petty public violence. Revd Claudius Henry, one of its most controversial leaders, believed he was the black Jesus, the son of God or

16 xvi PREFACE Ras Tafari (Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia ), and began to preach redemption to his black followers through their return to Africa. Under surveillance by the authorities, Revd Henry was arrested for treason felony in April Two months later his son, Ronald, a Jamaican-born American, arrived in Kingston from New York with military-trained black associates and linked up with some of his father s Ras Tafarian followers. The Americans of Ronald s First Africa Corps and the Ras Tafari fell out, and three of the latter were killed. Almost immediately the camp they had established in the Red Hills near Kingston was raided by the police, some British Army attackers were killed, and the Americans, having fled the scene, were eventually captured, tried, and sentenced, in the case of Ronald Henry, to death. The rebellious activities of Revd Henry and his son caused great public alarm, and as some of the Ras Tafari had been involved in the Red Hills incident, a survey was rapidly carried out by three local university lecturers into the history, composition, organization, and beliefs of the Kingston Ras Tafari. They made ten recommendations to the government, advocating the amelioration of living conditions in Kingston and the setting up of a mission to investigate emigration to Africa. However, the Ras Tafari were already being manipulated by local Marxists for their own ends, and the lower-class issues of black identity, Back-to-Africa, and violent revolution in 1961 became intertwined with the national problem of withdrawal from the West Indies Federation, which reached its climax with the calling by the government of a federal referendum. The rejection of federation by the Jamaican lower class and the various groups mobilized by the Marxists, Ras Tafarians, black racists, and the anti-federation political opposition, ushered in independence. Despite their short-term success, the dissident groups and their affiliated political parties were swept away in the 1962 general elections. Sovereign Jamaica in the 1960s was once more dominated politically by the two established political parties. The independent state returned to a condition of normality, which enabled the government to initiate a system of patronage involving homes and jobs in return for electoral support, and the deployment at election times of gang violence on the streets against its opponents as the 1968 journal reveals thus setting the pattern for Jamaica for the rest of the twentieth century.

17 Acknowledgments I have been carrying out research on Jamaica for more than half a century, and I am grateful for the academic advice and support that I have received from colleagues and friends in recent years, especially from Barry Higman, Trevor Hope, David Howard, Gad Heuman, David Lowenthal, and Elizabeth Thomas-Hope. I owe especial thanks to Barry and Gad for their advice over the contents and presentation of this book. It is a pleasure to thank Professor Robert Hill for sending me the once-secret Local Standing Intelligence Committee Reports for Jamaica, covering the period , first identified as a major source on decolonization by Richard Hart. In addition, Robert Hill has shared with me other archival materials that relate to his path-breaking research on the background to the writing of The Ras Tafari Movement in Kingston, Jamaica by M. G. Smith, Roy Augier, and Rex Nettleford (1960). Stimulated by his findings, I have carried out my own research in The National Archives at Kew, London, and these materials, together with the intelligence reports I received from Robert, have provided important collateral evidence set out in the footnotes with which to interrogate the two journals contained in this book, based on my fieldwork in Jamaica in 1961 and I am indebted to Michael Athanson, cartographer in the Map Department of the Bodleian Library, Oxford University, for drawing the place-name and road maps of Jamaica ( Figures 1.1 and 1.2 ) and the street and place-name maps of Kingston ( Figures 1.4 and 1.5 ). The remainder of the maps were prepared for me by Ailsa Allen, Cartography and Graphics Officer in the School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University. I am grateful to her for her skillful map work, and for preparing my color slides for publication as black-and-white images. Joe Gerlach generously read the entire text for me and asked many pertinent questions about my original reaction to the Jamaican field

18 xviii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS situation; I have attempted to respond to his queries in the introduction. My final, and most important, debt is to my wife, Gillian, who was a student at London University when my 1961 visit to Jamaica took place. However, she was with me in Kingston in 1968, and has accompanied me on most of my numerous visits to Jamaica since then. She read, criticized, and made important suggestions about the content and structure of the book. In gratitude for her persistent good humor and her unflagging support for my research, I dedicate this book to her.

19 Abbreviations ALCAN ALJAM BITU BMPP CALA CAWIA CPU EWFI ISER JCR JIDC JLP JOS KSAC LSIC NWU PFM PNP PPP SCR TPD TUC UCWI UDC UNIA UWI WISCO YVLA Aluminium Company of Canada Aluminium Company of Jamaica Bustamante Industrial Trade Union Black Man Political Party Christiana Land Authority Council on Afro-West Indian Affairs Central Planning Unit Ethiopian World Federation Inc Institute of Social and Economic Research Junior Common Room (UCWI) Jamaica Industrial Development Corporation Jamaica Labour Party Jamaica Omnibus Service Kingston St Andrew Corporation Local Standing Intelligence Committee National Workers Union People s Freedom Movement People s National Party People s Political Party Senior Common Room (UCWI) Town Planning Department Trades Union Council University College of the West Indies Urban Development Corporation Universal Negro Improvement Association University of the West Indies West Indies Sugar Corporation Yallahs Valley Land Authority