Arnold Bertram, Contributor

Last week, the 65th anniversary of the granting of Universal Adult Suffrage (UAS) to Jamaica passed without either the elected Parliament or the electorate taking notice of the event, which more so than any other has shaped modern Jamaica. As a young nation, we continue to pay dearly for ignoring what should be important in the development of a national consciousness and the building of a national consensus.

Universal Adult Suffrage was introduced to Jamaica as a fundamental aspect of the new constitution embodied in an Order in Council, signed on October 27, 1944 and published in the Jamaica Gazette on November 17 of the same year. This landmark event was celebrated in a formal ceremony on November 20 when it was announced that a general election would take place on December 14.

After the most intensive campaign in Jamaica's history, 389,109 voters, comprising 58.7 per cent of the electorate, went out on that historic day to poll their votes. Of the 61 candidates who offered themselves for 32 seats, 29 were Independents, 29 represented the JLP, 19 stood for the PNP, nine for the JDP and four for other parties. The spontaneous enthusiasm which characterised the first elections to be held under Universal Adult Suffrage contrasted sharply with the apathy of the electorate in the preceding century.

The making of a multi-racial electorate

A multi-racial electorate was created in November 1830 when the white planter-dominated assembly granted civil rights, including the right to vote and to be elected to the free black and coloured population. This concession was hardly the result of pressure from below. It was a clever piece of opportunism by the white slave masters who thought that by granting civil rights to the free coloureds and blacks who owned some 70,000 slaves, they would join them in the fight against emancipation.

The qualifications for voting were ownership of property worth £6, an annual rental of property exceeding £30 or payment of £3 in direct taxes. Candidates for the Assembly were required "to prove receipt of a net annual income from an estate of £180, real property worth £1,800 or combined real and personal property worth £3,000."

Absence of Black Solidarity

Even under the restrictive formula for voting which obtained, some 20,000 black and coloured small freeholders could have qualified for the franchise under the property qualification. However, up until 1865 when the constitution was suspended, the electorate never exceeded 3,000 and in the elections of 1837 a successful candidate received 37 votes.

The black voters showed a marked reluctance to mobilise the vote for one of their own. Their support was certainly critical to the election of the first two coloured assembly men, Price Watkis and John Manderson in 1831, and the first successful Jewish candidate, Daniel Hart, in 1832. For the elections of 1844, the Baptists, led by William Knibb, mobilised the black voters to support a platform which included land reform and the disestablishment of the Anglican Church. None of the black candidates were elected. Edward Vickars, the first black assembly man, had to wait until 1847.

The Resumption of Electoral Politics

The constitution was suspended after the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865 and after a period of Crown Colony government, electoral politics was resumed in 1884. That year the franchise was broadened to allow males of "not less than 21 years of age who had paid annual taxes of not less than 20 shillings and all parish rates due on a dwelling house, or had paid taxes on land of not less than 30 shillings" the right to vote. In 1906 the qualifications were again altered to include "males who owned or occupied property on which they had paid 10 shillings in annual taxes or receipt of wages of £50 or more." Females had to wait until 1919 and only women over 25 years of age showing "ownership or occupation of property on which not less than £2 had been paid in annual taxes" could apply for the right to vote.

The apathy of the black masses remained. One cause of the apathy in this period was the increasing hardship faced by the masses and the cynical indifference of successive political administrations.

Robert Love, Marcus Garvey and the raising of Black Consciousness

The failure of blacks to unite around their fundamental interests and candidates who showed the capacity and willingness to advance these interests surfaced again in this period. Robert Love, regarded as the first man "to publicly challenge the tacit assumption that black and inferiority were synonymous", was defeated in the elections of 1897 for lack of support from his own. While this experience did not deter him in his efforts to create a new political and racial consciousness, he spoke feelingly after his defeat. "I feel bound to record and I record with shame that the opposition to and the abuse of me came primarily from my own class, in whose interest, in a special manner, during the last three years, I have employed without stint my time, my talents and my money." In 1899 in a by-election held in St Elizabeth, black voters finally elected one of their own, Alexander Dixon, to the legislative council.

Next came Marcus Garvey and his People's Political Party which contested the 1930 elections. Garvey's loss was due more to black apathy than to the limited franchise. Like his mentor Robert Love before him, Garvey identified a lack of racial consciousness to his defeat. "The people of my race unfortunately were fed on rum, sugar and water and sandwiches as a reward for their votes." He was also aware of the limitations of the franchise, and in the edition of The Blackman newspaper of August 25, 1930, he advocated full adult suffrage. Five years later, he left Jamaica a broken man for his self-imposed exile in London, where he died in penury in 1940.

Up to the elections of 1935 the apathy continued as in the elections of that year of the 66,000 voters who were entitled to vote only 25,668 actually voted.

Enter the Jamaica Progressive League

The next voice to be raised in support of the demand for UAS for Jamaica was that of the Jamaica Progressive League, founded by the Jamaican migrant community in New York on September 1, 1936. Thirteen Jamaicans, including W. Adolphe Roberts, W.A. Domingo, Jaime O'Meally and Ethelred Brown, were named directors at the founding conference of Jamaica's first nationalist organisation. In addition to the demand for immediate adult suffrage, the abolition of property qualifications for the holding of public office was also mooted.

However, when on November 27, 1937 a meeting was held to inaugurate the league on Jamaican soil, the handful which turned out was denied the opportunity of passing a resolution as a gang of ruffians broke up the meeting, loudly declaring their opposition to self-government. The resolution was passed 10 days later in an office at 66 Duke Street and witnessed by a reporter from The Daily Gleaner.

1938

It was the 1938 labour rebellion which brought an end to the period of apathy and created a new paradigm for Jamaican politics. For three weeks in May of that year, working people by their militant action islandwide brought the colonial administration to its knees, and created the environment in which organised labour and the nationalist movement emerged.

By the end of the rebellion, the masses had placed themselves on the political centre stage and in such a manner that they could never be removed again. They had also made critical alliances with progressives and liberals of other social classes and the rebellion had created a leadership that was determined to act with and for them in the building of a new Jamaica. The campaign for a new constitution and Universal Adult Suffrage assumed a new urgency.

Arnold Bertram is a historian, author and former government minister. He may be reached at: redev.atb@gmail.com.