By Mr Arnold Bertram
The traditional narrative of PJ Patterson’s contribution to Jamaica’s development focuses almost exclusively on the major projects conceived and implemented during his tenure, first as cabinet minister and later as prime minister. What remains under-documented is the early years of his life’s journey which prepared him for his major role in nation-building as well as the range of programmes he initiated to enrich the lives of the Jamaican people and to make them the centerpiece of the country’s development agenda. These programmes added a critical component to the base of his popular support, enhanced his political leadership and underpinned his public career.
Part 1 – Genes and Environment
PJ Patterson’s life started in the rural community of Dias in the parish of Hanover. In the two generations which preceded him there were six teachers, including his grandparents, William and Eliza James who entered the teaching profession as early as 1881. His mother, Ina James, remained in the classroom for over forty years. Both generations also produced leaders of the Baptist Church. Two were lay preachers and his maternal grandmother was a celebrated organist in the church. Their Christian Walk predictably led to their deep involvement in the life of the community.
Science informs us that genes and environment are the fundamental factors in the shaping of the human personality. On both counts, the young PJ Patterson was well served. P.J. Patterson was nurtured in a home environment that inculcated Christian values, established the primacy of education and provided a sterling example of community leadership.
Part 2 – The Emerging Scholar & Leader at Calabar High School and the University of the West Indies
From his years at elementary school P.J. showed an insatiable appetite for reading which enhanced his scholarship and resulted in his winning the Purcell Scholarship which was tenable at Calabar High School.
As a student at Calabar, he confirmed his academic potential. In his final year he was first in the Cambridge Higher Schools Examination. However, as the record shows, he was never narrowly focused on academics. He also demonstrated a capacity for leadership which was evident in his elevation as a prefect and as the leader of both the scout troop and the school’s debating team. His sixth form colleagues, from other high schools, also recognized his leadership by electing him president of the Sixth Form Association.
After graduating from Calabar in 1953, PJ enrolled at the University of the West Indies in October 1954. There he combined studies with a range of activities that prepared him for public life. These included covering the 1955 General Election for the Institute of Social and Economic Research. The exercise provided him with an invaluable political orientation.
PJ also seized the opportunity for part-time employment as a sports reporter for the Daily Gleaner. Coverage of the major Sports competitions brought him into contact with the sports personalities of the day and indulged his passion for sports.
As a university student, Patterson also demonstrated the emerging advocate and intellectual which would underpin his professional life. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), in one of its overseas radio programmes, requested the participation of two undergraduates. PJ Patterson and Ramsey Blackwood were selected. They answered the questions with such facility that the BBC called from London to protest that the undergraduates had been given the questions in advance and had been allowed to read the answers from a prepared script. It took the intervention of the Director of the Extra Mural Department, to satisfy the BBC that the students had not been so prepared for the interview.
In 1956, the position of External Affairs Chairman was added to the Guild Council and PJ Patterson was elected chairman. In this capacity he represented the Guild of Undergraduates at the International Students conferences in Ceylon (1956) and Nigeria (1957). He was also invited to serve on the Executive of the International Students Conference, and was a member of the team which visited Nicaragua in 1957 to investigate the freedom of students.
Patterson’s next initiative was the establishment of a Political Club, which brought the campus a number of regional political leaders including Grantley Adams of Barbados, Eric Williams of Trinidad and Tobago and Forbes Burnham of British Guiana. By 1958, when PJ graduated, he had further demonstrated the breadth of his scholarship and his capacity for leadership. He had also created a regional network of friends and contacts.
Part 3 – Called to the Bar & the Peoples National Party
In his final year at the University of the West Indies, Patterson’s standing as a scholar and leader in the university community came to the attention of O.T. Fairclough, a founder of the Peoples National Party (PNP). Fairclough made it his mission to recruit the best and the brightest for political service, and introduced PJ to Party President, Norman Manley. Both men immediately recognized in the young graduate the talent and commitment that the Party needed.
The discussions with Norman Manley led PJ to postpone his Law studies to take on the job of Party organizer. For the 1959 General Elections, he was assigned to the parish of St. Elizabeth. The PNP won fifty-eight percent (58%) of the popular vote and three of the four seats, losing the fourth by 13 votes. In 1960 he enrolled at the London School of Economics (LSE). He broke his studies twice; first in September 1961 to campaign in the Referendum of the West Indies Federation, and again in 1962 to assist the Party in the General Elections held that year.
He still completed the Bar Finals by June, 1963 having been awarded the Leverhume Scholarship and the Sir Hughes Parry prize for Excellence in the Law of Contract. The Dean of the Law Faculty had assumed that his prize pupil would be proceeding to post-graduate studies and was at a loss to understand why PJ had chosen the uncertainties of political life over a professorship.
Part 4 – The Decisive Decade 1963-1972
PJ Patterson returned to Jamaica in 1963, and the next decade would prove decisive in his climb to the top of both the legal profession and the Peoples National Party as he combined a rapidly growing law practice with full-time involvement in politics.
The PNP to which PJ committed himself in 1963 was still recovering from the loss of the 1962 General Elections. However, there were no prospects of an early recovery as the Party reached an all-time low after losing the 1967 General Elections.
Patterson’s response to the demoralization in the PNP was to revive the Party spirits, was to organize a week-long party. “For Days”, the name given to the event was organized by himself and Tony Spalding with whom he shared Chambers. It went a long way in reviving the comrades and brought into activism a wide range of supporters into the re-building of the Party island-wide.
At the post-election Party conference, PJ took on the challenge of chairing the Party’s Appraisal Committee which was mandated to review and make recommendations for re-building the Party organization. His report to the 1968 conference was approved by acclamation and Norman Manley’s response was, “The future of our Party is secure and I can now depart with the confidence that our vessel is in good shape for the journey ahead.”
PJ was appointed a senator and then leader of opposition business in that Chamber. In 1970 he succeeded Maxie Carey as the Member of Parliament for the constituency of S.E. Westmoreland.
In 1969 Norman retired as president of the PNP and at the Party Conference that year, Patterson, as campaign manager, ensured the election of Michael Manley to succeed N.W. as the president of the PNP. The conference also elected PJ as a vice-President. Percival James Patterson had arrived and was the unanimous choice to lead the Party’s campaign for the 1972 General Elections.
The 1972 Election Campaign
The 1972 Election campaign united diverse political and social trends into a national movement which restored hope to a nation on the verge of implosion. The campaign ended in a victory, which is perhaps the most complete expression of national consensus on a common programme to which every social class subscribed. Two initiatives demonstrate the breadth of the campaign that PJ organized.
In October 1969, just one month after the historic conference of that year, PJ and Michael Manley went on a tour of Africa, visiting Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia and Ethiopia. The choice of Africa for their first overseas tour had a special significance in a country where the overwhelming majority traced their roots to Mama Africa. For PJ it marked the beginning of a special relationship he would build with the National Liberation Movement in Africa during both his tenure as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister.
Bandwaggon
Before 1972, PJ had established organic links with Jamaica’s popular musicians. In 1964, despite the demands of a law practice and political engagement, he made time to offer management services to the Skatalites – the finest array of Jamaican musicians ever assembled.
Against this background, PJ welcomed the introduction of “Bandwaggon” to the 1972 campaign. Bandwaggon, organized by Buddy Pouyatt, Paul Fitzritson and Clancy Eccles, added a critical cultural dimension by bringing together Jamaica’s popular artists to use popular music as a most effective tool of popular communication. It conveyed to the Jamaican people the slogans and songs that effectively called for the building of a new Jamaica in which every Jamaican would have the opportunity to join the “march to progress.”
Part 5 – The Climb to the Top 1972-1992
In the two decades between 1972, when PJ became a cabinet minister and 1992 when he was sworn in as Jamaica’s sixth elected prime minister, PJ climbed to the top of the political ladder.
Jamaicanization of the Tourism Industry
One landmark in this climb was the transformation of the tourism industry which he undertook during his tenure as minister of the tourism portfolio which he was given in 1972.
Before PJ, progress in the development of the tourism industry was calculated in terms of number of tourist arrivals and expenditure. PJ Patterson radically changed this method of evaluating the contribution of tourism to Jamaica’s development by establishing his priority for the industry as “the total transformation of the tourism industry to take it from servitude to service, from exclusion to inclusion and from benefits confined to hoteliers only to broader levels of participation.”
He began by taking steps to ensure that every Jamaican had access to the beaches in Jamaica. As a part of this campaign, he opened Doctors Cave Beach in Montego Bay to the public, which had previously operated as a private Members Club. The Jamaica Tourist Board was mandated to mount a training programme to ensure that senior management positions, which traditionally had been reserved for foreigners, would now be filled by Jamaicans.
Inter-Consults
Throughout his political career, PJ always took an interest in the welfare of his colleagues. After the 1980 General Elections, PJ systemically made contact with his parliamentary colleagues who had lost their seats. What he found was that a number of them were facing an uncertain future, with no clear economic prospect for the future. PJ’s response was to offer his assistance in using the expertise of his colleagues to establish a consulting firm, which he named Inter-Consults.
Another quality which endeared PJ to the Jamaican people was his magnanimity. When Michael Manley retired in 1991, Portia Simpson-Miller challenged PJ for the presidency. Patterson’s conduct throughout the campaign was exemplary. Simpson-Miller had been his protégé and he managed to establish his own credentials for the job without disparaging her claims. He won by an overwhelming margin and appointed Simpson-Miller a senior member of his administration.
Part 6 – Initiatives that made the Critical Difference to PJ Patterson’s success as Prime Minister
During PJ’s fourteen years as prime minister, pride of place in his achievements has traditionally gone to the transformation of Jamaica’s physical infrastructure, with the construction of highways and the modernization of airports and sea ports. However, there were also a number of initiatives which showed another side of Prime Minister PJ Patterson, which the Jamaican people grew to appreciate.
Reggae Boys
Jamaica’s journey to the 1998 World Cup Finals began with a conversation between PJ Patterson and Captain Horace Burrell, who was then president of the Jamaica Football Association. In this conversation Burrell outlined his dream of Jamaica reaching the finals of the 1998 World Cup which PJ enthusiastically embraced. PJ gave Burrell the letter of introduction to President Itamar Franco of Brazil, which facilitated the co-operation between both countries and led to the recruitment of René Simões as Jamaica’s football coach. The rest, as they say, is history.
Establishing two-way communication with the Jamaican People
One of PJ’s earliest initiatives as prime minister was the establishment of a unit in the Office of the Prime Minister to ensure that every piece of correspondence to his office received a response. This unit, headed by a senior educator achieved that objective.
Live & Direct
Another initiative to maintain two-way contact was the Live & Direct Programme. This programme took the prime minister to communities all over the island, where he had the opportunity to listen to the people and respond.
In a letter to PJ, Michael Manley remarked,
“Live & Direct was a marvelous combination of the images of the contemporary culture, opportunity to get to know the people and the chance to listen and be heard. Add to all this the calm style and judicious approach and you have created a complete image which will be sustained because it builds upon a truth of your personality.”
Prime Minister’s Youth Awards
The introduction of an annual awards ceremony for outstanding young Jamaicans in every field of endeavour motivated the pursuit of excellence and created a well-deserved national focus on the development of young talent.
Special Awards Day for Outstanding Teachers
Values & Attitudes
In 1992, the year that PJ Patterson was first installed as Jamaica’s prime minister, he recognized the urgent need to come to terms with the deterioration in moral standards, the breakdown of family structures and most frightening of all was the failure of too many people to differentiate right from wrong and the increasing tendency to resort to violence to settle differences.
It was against this background that in 1994 he convened a National Conference on Values and Attitudes. What he sought was an alliance between the government, opposition and civil society to develop a national programme to inculcate sound values and attitudes.
Unfortunately, the national alliance required for the success of the programme never materialized, and Jamaica continues to deteriorate socially as a result due to its rejection by the opposition.
In Retirement
PJ Patterson retired in 2006 after fourteen continuous years as prime minister, which made him Jamaica’s longest serving prime minister. However, even in retirement he continues his life of service.
Calabar High School
PJ never lost contact with his alma mater and seized every opportunity to play a major role in the sustained development of the school as an active member of the project launched in 1919 aimed at “Making Calabar the School of First Choice: Excellence in STEM Education and the Use of Technology in the Learning/Teaching Process”.
The PJ Patterson Institute for Africa-Caribbean Advocacy
Located on The UWI Campus, Mona, The Institute has established the framework for the co-ordination of public advocacy and development between the Caribbean and Africa. The many tributes paid to him by African leaders include the prestigious Order of the Companions of O.R. Tambo-Gold by the government of South Africa.
The University of the West Indies (UWI)
He has also established the PJ Patterson Endowment Fund to provide scholarships for students. His services have earned him the Chancellor’s Medal and the Order of the Caribbean Community.
West Indies Cricket
He chaired the Governance Committee on West Indies Cricket. The Report of October 200-7 is regarded as a seminal appeal for structured changes to promote the development of the game in the Caribbean.
The Peoples National Party
In retirement PJ has maintained an active participation in the Peoples National Party, the Party to which he has dedicated sixty-six years of his life.
Celebrating the Life and Legacy of PJ Patterson
As the Jamaican people and members of the international community join in the celebration of the 90th anniversary of the birth of PJ Patterson, we recall his life of exemplary service to the Jamaican people, to his Party and the political process along with his path-breaking contribution to nation-building. Members of the international community join us in the celebration as they recall his contribution to the Caribbean community and his progressive role in the cause of African liberation and South-South co-operation.
