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Last year, Mr. Shearer (left) was one of three Jamaican Prime Ministers who received the Order of the Nation at Jamaica House. P.J. Patterson (second left) and Edward Seaga (right) were also honoured.
Earl Moxam, Senior Gleaner Writer
HUGH SHEARER was elected to the House of Representatives in 1955, and it wasn't long before he was making his presence felt in the legislature.
On Tuesday, August 9 that year, he was a major contributor to the debate on a Ministry Paper setting out the Government's plans to convert the railway company's operations to diesel power.
Mr. Shearer, then an Opposition Member, clearly demonstrated that he had done his homework, explaining to the House that, based on the research he had done, he was convinced that the Norman Manley-led administration had selected the wrong type of diesel power.
The more prudent option, he suggested, would have been the diesel hydraulic system instead of the mechanical diesel electric power that the Government had settled on, citing geographical conditions and cost differentials in support of his argument.
One month later, on September 22, he was at it again, this time weighing in on the Sugar Industry Control Law.
CONCERN FOR SENIORS
During this debate, Mr. Shearer demonstrated his concern for senior citizens, by speaking up on behalf of elderly sugar workers who were likely to lose their jobs as a result of the planned cutbacks in sugar cane production.
"That cutback would mean that the elderly would be affected. We urge the Government to speed up attention to pensions of sugar workers. The reason for that is that with the cutback and the automatic effect of it on the numbers of workers in the industry there will be retrenchment and, as you can well appreciate, the first workers to be retrenched are the oldest ones, some of whom are only kept on for sentimental reasons," he said.
It was also during that debate that Mr. Shearer's mentor, Sir Alexander Bustamante, made plain his partiality towards the young man.
As he spoke, Sir Alexander kept prompting him, causing Chief Minister Norman Manley to chide his cousin: "Give him a chance nuh!"
To which Bustamante replied: "He is my boy!"
Manley shot right back: "Don't coach him in public!"
It was a more seasoned Hugh Shearer who took charge of proceedings as Leader of Government Business in the Senate, after the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) returned to power in Independent Jamaica, in 1962.
On Friday, December 7, 1962 he participated in the debate on a bill amending the Trade Law of 1955. The purpose of the Bill was to abolish the Trade Board and to confer on the Minister of Trade and Industry the functions previously exercised by the Board.
Mr. Shearer voiced strong opposition to the existing arrangement, saying that under that regime, members of the Trade Board were allowed to participate in the Government's trade policy and have access to information about other businesses to their own competitive advantage.
In a scorching criticism of some members of that sector, he identified a group of three per cent merchants and a group of prosperous bankrupts, the latter of whom are in abundance, but declare that business is in the red. Those three per cent merchants, he said, were the ones who claim that their heads are barely above water and that the three per cent profit is based on the calculation that they buy for one pound and sell for three pounds.
WALTER RODNEY AFFAIR
Five years later, in 1967, Hugh Shearer, at age 44, became Prime Minister, following the sudden death of Sir Donald Sangster.
One year into his term as Prime Minister, he faced one of the sternest tests of his time in office the Walter Rodney affair, which, ultimately, helped to define his administration.
In a statement to the House of Representatives on October 17, 1968, he outlined why an exclusion order had been issued against Dr. Rodney, a lecturer in African History at the University of the West Indies (UWI), effectively blocking his re-entry into the island from a visit to Canada.
Among other things, he told the House that Dr. Rodney had openly declared his belief that as Jamaica was a predominantly black country, all brown-skinned, mulatto people and their assets should be destroyed.
Dr. Rodney, he continued, had consistently told the groups with whom he associated that this could be only achieved by revolution and that no revolution had ever taken place without armed struggle and bloodshed.
This resort to violence, Mr. Shearer said, was the recurrent theme of all his (Rodney's) discussions with these groups as was his condemnation of the democratic system of government in Jamaica.
That address in Parliament was made against the backdrop of the protests on the streets of Kingston, led by students of the University of the West Indies.
Prime Minister Shearer told the House that even with the element of surprise involved in the Government's sudden action, well-organised groups, which have been indoctrinated by Dr. Rodney, have been able to spring into action immediately to carry out a campaign of terror and destruction.
It needs no imagination therefore to determine what would have happened by way of additional organisation, greater terror and maximum destruction if Dr. Rodney had been allowed to land and given time to more effectively organise all that he, a foreigner, has been plotting against Jamaica before being required to leave. The Government, he vowed, would not change its decision on the exclusion of Dr. Rodney from Jamaica.
"The decision of the Government in this matter is irrevocable and absolutely final," he said to thunderous applause from Government members.
He ended his statement, with profound thanks to members of the security forces for their resolute action in response to the Rodney riots. Eleven years later, now in Opposition, Mr. Shearer, in his contribution to the Budget debate, on June 19, 1979, asserted his keen interest in regional cooperation.
He called on the Heads of Government of the region to meet and review the entire situation in the region and see what can be done to assist the newly independent countries on a regional basis and to pool our influence and our representation on their behalf at regional and international levels.
If that was not done, he said, the difficulties of single territories will, in the long run, produce turmoil for the area as a whole. As if in anticipation of inevitable criticism from members of the People's National Party (PNP) Government, he asserted that, while it was his party that said no to the West Indies Federation, we did not say no to cooperation.
ACP AGREEMENT
In 1984, Hugh Shearer was back in Government as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs & Foreign Trade. In the Budget Debate that year, he reported to the House on the ongoing ACP-EEC trade negotiations. The main issues in these negotiations, he said, were market access and the constraints imposed by too stringent a set of rules of origin.
One area in which agreement had been reached, he reported, was that of acquired rights. Meaning, he said, that both sides have reached agreement on the principle of maintaining all rights that have been negotiated and established over the years.
That, according to Mr. Shearer, was a very significant agreement, which meant that ACP states do not have to negotiate again the right of access to the market.
Hugh Shearer spent his final years in Parliament on the Opposition benches.
In his last contribution to the annual Budget Debate, in 1992, he went back to some of his primary concerns trade, the minimum wage, and the welfare of members of the security forces. He was particularly worried about the working conditions which police personnel had to endure and the low salaries that they were paid. He, therefore, called for a substantial increase in their pay, which, in turn, would improve their pension entitlements.
If this is done, if reasonable and attractive salaries and allowances are put in place, that will help to attract more of the best skills available to strengthen the existing Force, he argued. And, with an eye to an important future challenge, Mr. Shearer warned that Jamaica and other CARICOM states would have to prepare for the eventual phase-out of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement, which allowed preferential market access for regional textile producers into the lucrative American market. That preparation, he suggested, should include improved human resource capabilities, improved workplace conditions, product quality and supply reliability design, marketing, textile production, accessories, weaving, transportation and packaging.
The phase out of that Multi-Fibre Arrangement is scheduled to take effect at the end 2004, the year of his passing.
