“The way to avoiding violence in the political system is clear but presents an enormous challenge because it involves tackling the basic economic and social structural problems of Jamaican society. An army of twenty thousand men, a massive police force, and armed citizens defending their front porch could not bring an end to political or criminal violence and are no substitute for the economic and social policies which alone can solve the long-term problems of Jamaica. Meanwhile there is little chance of coping with the problems of economic and social development in Jamaica if rackets and gangsters are able to corrupt and undermine Jamaican society.

A generation of Jamaican youth has probably been lost for development and comprises a tragic social problem and a security risk as long as youthful dispossessed lumpen-proletariat hangs about the streets of Kingston doing nothing. The same thing must not be allowed to happen to the next generation of Jamaican schoolchildren.”

The above might have been written yesterday, so accurately does it reflect present Jamaican realities. But it was penned 23 years ago in Terry Lacey’s “Violence and Politics in Jamaica : 1960-1970”, where he also speaks of “social developments which were little short of catastrophic” and “a rising wave of social and political violence which pervaded society, politics and Jamaican life.” It should be noted that the Jamaican homicide rate in 1970 was 8.03 per 100,000. In 1999 it was 32.92, an increase of 410%.

Lacey closes his book by saying “Jamaica cannot solve her ‘internal security’ problem without such a mobilization of her resources and, above all, of her people.”

This implies of course that this has not been done previously. And that is exactly the conclusion Ken Carter reaches in “Why Workers Won’t Work : A Case Study in Jamaica.”

“This book has empirically confirmed what very few of us have suspected all along: Jamaican workers are highly demotivated and dissatisfied; they are deliberately producing well below their potential; they do not believe that management will share the benefits of increased production with them; they believe their salaries and promotions are based on factors that have absolutely nothing to do with production or production-related considerations and that the benefits of hard work are converted to the good of the few.

When these empirical facts are superimposed on our second ‘national motto’, ‘Produce or perish’, the only conceivable conclusion one can accommodate is that unless there is immediate and comprehensive change in workers’ perceptions and reinforcing on-the-job-experiences, we shall surely perish.”

Apparently in the 20 years between Lacey’s and Carter’s book little has changed. There is clearly something fundamentally wrong with Jamaica’s social and political structure, what people commonly refer to as ‘the system’. But what is the source of the problem? Here is Lacey again.

“The materialism… the emphasis on acquisition and the popular legitimacy attached to making a fast buck, had a pervasive effect on society… Corruption in the wider sense in political and judicial institutions appeared to be unobjectionable to most Jamaicans. Both main parties complained about job victimization and both main parties were held responsible. The criteria for the allocation of public works contracts were often related to party or union loyalties.

The police inevitably became disillusioned with a judiciary which was unable to convict prominent politicians and trade unionists of serious offences because of lack of evidence, and a legal system in which leading Queen’s Counsel and barristers were allegedly politically partisan, defending their own supporters on serious charges relating to political violence. The Jamaican bourgeoisie presided over a bent society. It is remarkable in the circumstances that the police remained so straight.”

“Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose” – the more things change, the more they remain the same. Everything said above is as apt today as in was in 1970.

Simply throwing up our hands and saying “nothing is ever going to change so what’s the use in even trying” is a sure recipe for failure. It is better to light a single candle than curse the dark. And if matters are ever going to start getting better instead of worse in Jamaica, change will have to start at the top. All classes may to some extent be at fault, but a fish rots from the head. As Carter says

“A major perception of the workers… is that management has a responsibility to create an organization culture which is sensitive, aware and responsive to the needs of employees at all levels…. workers’ inability to perform productively and to assume responsibility is explained not so much by technical knowledge deficits as by a mixture of unwillingness, psychological inability, frustration and passivity…

…though economically disruptive, workers’ underproduction, strikes and other career passive behaviour are rational authentic and positive behaviour and, therefore, change-resistant… these behaviours are rational if they are derived from net exchanges between management and workers. Changes in workers’ behaviour, therefore, must be concurrent with or preceded by changes in management’s behaviour.”

Of course it is not only private sector bosses who are at fault in Jamaica. If strikes are rational behaviour from workers whose managers are disrespectful of their needs, roadblocks are certainly logical actions from tax payers whose government pays no attention to their wishes.

“Rampant roadblocks : Hanover cops say they’re stressed out” ” read a recent headline over a story saying “Successive two-day long roadblocks by residents protesting against deplorable road conditions in various Hanover communities have taken their toll on the police.”

From time to time we hear government ministers complaining about Jamaica’s ‘roadblock’ syndrome. Which is like a man complaining about his car not starting when he has neglected to put in any gas. When a government insists on spending millions of dollars on a Caribbean Court of Appeals that few are asking for and allows roads all over the island to deteriorate into gravel pits, what does it expect the people to do? The day may yet come when it is not just the police in one parish who are unable to man the barricades but the entire police force of Jamaica. You reap what you sow. changkob@hotmail.com