The recent death of 90-year-old Cuban leader Fidel Castro sparked memories of an event at a Pentecostal Caribbean-led church I attended in Huddersfield in 1977.
An emergency prayer meeting was called. All members were gathered together for an intense session of singing, prayer and more singing. The reason for this state of emergency style church meeting was influenced by something that was heading towards Jamaica. Not a hurricane or Tropical storm, but far worse. With every man woman and child focused on the pastor he said with bible in hand, ‘Pray for Jamaica, it is in danger of heading towards communism’.
To understand the fear and trepidation that filled the church pews and the need to pray and sing harder that ever before, a return to the Jamaican political arena of the late 1970’s is appropriate.
In 1977 Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley declared to the world that he would continue to reform Jamaica under the political ideology of Democratic Socialism. His close friendship with Cuban leader Fidel Castro led to opposition party JLP and giant neighbours United States concluding that Manley was secretly creating a communist state. Fidel Castro was, it seems, the voice behind a soft Jamaican Revolution. Not since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, where the world came close to world war three, had the US taken such a threat from Castro so seriously.
In fact, over the few years that would follow, Cuban financial aid and training would see the emergence of huge engineering projects, Colleges (G C Foster College), education, military and health training.
Others, with JLP leader Edward Seaga, on the opposite side of the political fence saw Cuban infiltration, indoctrination and God forbid…..Revolution, as the hidden threat. Were the Cuban gifts nothing more than a collection of Trojan Horses?
In the years between 1977 and 1980 violence between the two-party state supporters rose to unprecedented levels. In urban communities a civil war erupted between the JLP and PNP which saw both ideological and geographical boundaries erected.
Attempts by the Legendary Bob Marley to bring the two warring party leaders together at one of his concerts remains a symbol of Jamaicans struggle to find peace amidst chaos.
By October 1980 a struggle between JLP and PNP supporters during the Jamaican election campaign led to 800 deaths, one of the most violent on record. Conspiracy theories suggest that the CIA played a role in destabilising Jamaican politics in a bid to thwart Castro’s efforts on controlling a strategic Caribbean island.
General elections were held on 30 October 1980. The result was a victory for the Jamaican Labour Party (JLP), which won 51 of the 60 seats. Norman Manley’s PNP were all but wiped out. Edward Seaga triumphed and Jamaican Democratic Socialism was strangled at birth.
In the end, Fidel Castro and the Manley political ideology were unable to withstand the Jamaican alliance of the private sector, security forces, media, intelligentsia, workers, unemployed and the Church prayer meeting in Huddersfield, England.
