http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20090524/focus/focus3.html
Published: Sunday | May 24, 2009
Kevin O'Brien Chang

When the $1,000 bill with Michael Manley's portrait was put into circulation, no one objected. So why the protests about putting Hugh Shearer on the new $5,000 note? He is just as worthy as Alexander Bustamante, Norman Manley, Donald Sangster, and Michael Manley. To argue otherwise is ignorant disrespect of a great Jamaican.

My July 8, 2004 Sunday Gleaner article, 'Hugh Shearer - Jamaica's greatest prime minister?' statistically analysed each prime ministerial regime using four measures - life expectancy, literacy rate, GDP per capita and murder rate per capita. The numbers ranked Hugh Shearer (1968-72) Jamaica's most effective prime minister, followed by Edward Seaga (1981-89), Alexander Bustamante/Donald Sangster (1962-7), the 1990s' Michael Manley (1990-1992), P.J. Patterson (1993-2002) and the 1970s' Michael Manley (1973-1980).

Shearer's was the only administration where Jamaica did better than the global norm, while we suffered our largest relative decline under the 1970s' Manley. Life expectancy and literacy rates changed at similar rates during both regimes. For 1968-1972, our annual GDP growth rate was 3.5 per cent greater than the world average, and our murder rate increase per annum was .2 per cent less than in the US. For 1973-1980, our annual GDP growth rate was six per cent less than the world average, and our murder rate increase per annum was 9.1 per cent more than in the US.

Numbers may not tell the whole story, but they speak without bias. Sources and methodology are outlined in the aforementioned article.

First UN address

Prime Minister Hugh Shearer at a sugar industry meeting at Petersfield Primary School, Westmoreland in 1969. - File

On October 8, 1962, Hugh Shearer delivered Jamaica's first United Nations address, calling for an international year of human rights.

To quote from Hartley Neita's Hugh Shearer: A Voice for the People:

"It was, and still is, customary at the United Nations for addresses by the representatives of governments to be given generous applause. But as Shearer ... walked from the podium ... the applause which began as a polite exercise slowly increased in tempo and decibels as the tremendous significance of the proposal for a celebration of human rights registered ... delegates left their seats to crowd the Jamaican delegation and Shearer, genuinely congratulating him on his presentation and promising support for the extraordinary, and possibly controversial, proposal on human rights." A year later the UN designated 1968 the International Year of Human Rights. [1] In terms of actual results, this was probably the most important UN speech ever made by a Jamaican.

Race

NEITA

Hugh Shearer had also previously urged then Prime Minister Bustamante to appoint the black former school teacher Clifford Campbell as the first Jamaican governor general, when others had been recommending someone from the light-skinned elite. [2]

Here is Neita again:

"In the public and private sectors, the senior posts were held by men who were caucasian and white, or what was defined as brown. In the banks, airlines and major companies, the staff was also of a similar colour, except for the messengers and cleaning staff who were all black ...

"Shearer was very aware of these distinctions and prejudices which flowed from them. In labour negotiations, the chairmen, managing directors, personnel managers, accountants and lawyers of companies who sat across the conference tables from him were from the white upper stratum of the society. The thousands for whom he argued - the factory workers, drivers, barmaids, cane-cutters, and shop assistants - were black. Obtaining facilities for them at the workplace, such as showers and canteens, was, as we Jamaicans would say, "as hard as pulling teeth".

So to have a black person living in the State house of the country was a powerful symbol of change." [3]

Hugh Shearer was a pioneering trade unionist, who won many improvements for workers in the areas of wages, living conditions, pension rights, working hours, maternity leave, and health and education benefits. He was renowned for his mastery of the facts during negotiations.

"The upcoming mathematical wizard was to strike terror in the hearts of the many bigwig employers with their "cook and book" exposition of income and expenditures calculated to prove their perennial inability to pay more to the workers ... More often than not, Shearer disproved these claims with remarkable mathematical accuracy ..." [4]

Shearer was never politically ambitious. When Donald Sangster died a few weeks after being sworn in as prime minister in 1967, his successor was chosen by JLP parliamentarians. Only prompting by Bustamante persuaded the reluctant Shearer to put his name forward. On the first ballot Clem Tavares' received 12 votes, Hugh Shearer 10 and Robert Lightbourne 8, with Shearer reportedly spoiling his ballot. On the second ballot Shearer gained 16 votes to Tavares' 15. [5]

Shearer was Jamaica's first visibly black head of government - his predecessors, Bustamante, Norman Manley and Sangster were all brown. One of his first significant moves was the establishment of national Jamaican honours and awards to replace British ones. He also instituted a deliberate policy of gradual 'Jamaicanisation', whereby locals slowly replaced the white English expatriates who held most senior civil services posts at Independence.

Then there was the Walter Rodney affair. In October 1968, the black power activist Rodney was a lecturer at the University of the West Indies' Mona campus. He attended a black writers' conference in Montreal, but on his return was refused re-admittance to Jamaica, for "carrying on activities which constituted a danger to the security of the nation". [6] This sparked a demonstration by UWI students, which degenerated into a riot that claimed three lives and caused over £1 million of property damage.

A parliamentary motion upholding the Government's decision to ban Rodney was passed without dissent. Then Opposition leader Norman Manley said, "Let me state that I am satisfied on those facts that they put before us, that Walter Rodney is an undesirable person." [7]

Manley added, "It is good for Jamaica to know that the reason why Dr Rodney was expelled from this country was because he was engaged in organising activities which advocated violence and the overthrow of those things which are highly treasured in this country - our progress toward a multiracial society in which a man is not as good as his skin, but as good as his merit. And anything that tends to undermine our motto - in spite of our hardship, in spite of our suffering, in spite of our troubles ... is bad for Jamaica." [8]

Years after, Shearer reflected:

"Black ambition, black equality of opportunity, black dignity, economic strength and self-respect. That's black power! ... when Sir Alexander Bustamante made Isaac Barrant a minister, a man who started his working life as a side man on a truck, and the middle class opposed the appointment, that was black power in operation! And when Edwin Allen, minister of education, prescribed that 70 per cent of the places in secondary schools should be reserved for Primary School children who passed the Common Entrance Examination, and 30 per cent for preparatory school children, that was black power! And when Sir Clifford Campbell was appointed governor general, that was a move in furtherance of black power! And don't forget the strong and vulgar criticism about the appointment of this black man to the highest post in the land. And when we decided to send for the body of Marcus Garvey to give him eminence in his own country, that was black power!" [9]

It's almost criminal that a man who contributed so much to building his country should be belittled today because of sheer ignorance. Which itself is partly, if not largely, a product of the virtual elimination of history as a separate subject in our schools. To put it bluntly, misguided government policy is causing Jamaicans to forget their past. Do our public and school libraries even have copies of Hartley Neita's Hugh Shearer: A Voice for the People?

If you don't know where you're coming from, how can you know where you're going?