Michael Manley was elected president of the People’s National Party (PNP) on February 9, 1969. Ironically, this anniversary comes around this year when the party’s president, Portia Simpson Miller, has announced her intention to retire.

Michael Manley led the PNP to power in 1972 and won again in 1976. The PNP went down in defeat in 1980 and did not contest the 1983 General Election in protest against a three-year-old voters’ list. The PNP returned to power with Michael Manley as prime minister when that party won the general election held on February 9, 1989, exactly 20 years after Michael Manley was elected president of the PNP.

It is easy to just think that Michael Manley was elected president of the PNP simply because his father was Norman Manley. While that was a contributing factor, it was far more than that. One has to understand the role that trade unions played in politics in Jamaica between the 1930s and the 1970s.

In the same year that Michael Manley entered first form at Jamaica College (1935) the National Reform Association was founded to press for self-government. There were also the local branches of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and its leader was St William Grant.

At that time, the banana industry was as important to the Jamaican economy as tourism is today. With a disease wiping out the industry, scores of individuals from rural Jamaica flocked to Kingston. To get the workers back to the banana estates, Jamaica Welfare was founded in 1937 by Norman Manley to bring about rural development, making it more attractive for banana farming.

Riots at the sugar estates in Westmoreland in 1938 had a spillover effect in Kingston as the waterfront workers, who mainly packed the boats with bananas and sugar, also went on strike. Out of this, Alexander Bustamante, who had joined the UNIA platform of St William Grant and formed the Bustamante industrial Trade Union (BITU) in May 1938.

By September 1938, the National Reform Association evolved into the PNP with Norman Manley as its first president. Up to this stage, Bustamante was a member of the PNP. The PNP had organised a league of the splinter trade unions in 1939 and called it the Trades Union Advisory Council.

When Bustamante split with the PNP and formed the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in 1943, he took his powerful union with him. At this time, the young Michael Manley had entered McGill University. After a week at that university he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force.

In 1944, the JLP won the general election by a landslide, mainly due to its trade union affiliate, the BITU. After that election, the PNP organised the Trades Union Advisory Council into the Trades Union Congress because the PNP could not compete unless it had a trade union — such was the nature of politics then.

After Michael Manley left the Royal Canadian Air Force without seeing combat in the Second World War, which had just ended, he studied at the London School of Economics. Returning home in December 1951, he was caught in the middle of a split in the PNP between the right and left wings of the party.

In 1952 the leadership of the Trades Union Congress was expelled from the PNP, allegedly as communists, and the Trades Union Congress was disaffiliated. By January 1953, the PNP formed the National Workers’ Union at a time when Michael Manley was employed to the

Public Opinion newspaper.

Wills Isaacs invited Michael Manley to a trade union negotiation and left it suddenly to attend another event taking place in Portland. He left the young Michael Manley in charge of the meeting and that is how Michael Manley got involved in trade unionism. Coupled with his natural charisma it catapulted him into representational politics in 1967.

Apart from 1938, the period of the greatest amount of strikes and protest demonstrations in Jamaica was the 1960s. There were ‘wildcat’ strikes all over Jamaica as workers felt the novelty of their power to strike. There were the Coral Gardens riots in Montego Bay in 1964. And there were the Chinese riots of 1965.

There was a ferment caused by a greater need for the recognition of black people. There was the protest demonstration caused by the expulsion of Guyanese lecturer Water Rodney in October 1968. It was in this mood of revolution in Jamaica that Michael Manley was elected PNP president and appointed Opposition leader in 1969.

Having become prime minister in 1972, by 1974 Michael Manley piloted the Industrial Relations Act through Parliament, which made wildcat strikes illegal. The Act also gave certain rights to workers. This was the start of the mood of complacency in Jamaica, especially in the workplace.

The greatest amount of social legislation in Jamaica was passed between the 1972 and 1980. Opinions have been aired about the attempts at socialism and the handling of the economy at the time. But any discussion about it that does not take into account the world oil crisis that began in December 1973 is unbalanced, no matter who is discussing it.

Will there be a heat wave effect from the anti-USA President Donald Trump demonstrations worldwide that will reach Jamaica? Already, one such ferment that seems to be heating up is the row over bank fees. It does appear that the banks have gone too far on this one.

The fact is that if Jamaicans see the demonstrations in the USA on TV every day it is bound to have an effect on Jamaica, just as the demonstrations in the 1960s did. The Walter Rodney riots of 1968 took place when the black power riots took place in the USA. And during the Rodney riots the people shouted: “Black man time now!”

Any heat wave effect in the USA could be advantageous to the PNP and its new president. Still, Michael Manley’s electoral victories were not totally spontaneous: the PNP was highly organised.

But it is not just the large banks that will feel the effects of the protest. Credit union members are bound to insist on a similar rollback.