Shearer
Claude Mills, Staff Reporter
THE LIVES of Opposition Leader Edward Seaga and Hugh Lawson Shearer, the doyen of organised labour in the country, are inextricably intertwined over four decades of political wranglings, political triumphs, and personal challenges.
Almost 30 years ago, in 1974, it was Hugh Shearer who was unceremoniously pushed out of the leadership spot in the JLP, eventually occupied by Seaga, and now in the last week of June, it is Seaga who has decided to call it quits with the young Turks of the JLP baying at his heels.
The relationship between the two JLP stalwarts is an intricate affair, filled with layered accounts of lukewarm allegiances and uneasy political bedfellows forged by the politics of necessity defeating the seeds of communism planted by the People's National Party in the 1970s.
Political commentators often like to harp on what they dub Mr. Shearer's "devastating brand of political non-support" of JLP Leader Edward Seaga during the years 1974 to 1979. Columnists in the Daily Gleaner of that era charged that Mr. Shearer hedged his support to Mr. Seaga. Several articles written during that period suggest that Shearer, still smarting from his rejection by the party following the JLP's dismal showing in the 1972 elections, quietly distanced the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU) from the political arena.
There was also a lot of speculation about reported breakfast meetings between then Prime Minister Michael Manley and Shearer in the 1970s which rankled JLP high-ranking executives.
Things reportedly came to a head on January 24, 1979 when Leader of the Opposition Edward Seaga indicated his decision to resign from the JLP because 'some people were not pulling their weight and there was some amount of inter-personal rivalry to the jeopardy of the party'.
Mr. Seaga, however, says that there was no resentment or jealousies between the two men, and that "we were very close from the very beginning, our relationship goes back to 1958."
One political analyst said that there was discussion that the party hierarchy expected a greater role from the former PM who ruled half of what then columnist Wilmot Perkins dubbed 'Bustamante's Kingdom'. The catalyst for Seaga's threatened resignation was said to be the 'non-participation by Mr. Shearer and the BITU in the islandwide demonstrations from January 8 to 10 which were spearheaded by the National Patriotic Movement and supported by Seaga in January 1979'.
So did Mr. Shearer attempt to undermine Mr. Seaga through the BITU's non-partisanship stance?
"No, that was not true. In the later years, the BITU began to take on white-collar workers whose sympathies were not with the JLP, but who wanted the BITU to represent them, so the union did not want to show too much of their political background at that time, especially in the 1970s when white collar workers abandoned the PNP," Mr. Seaga said.
Asked if Mr. Shearer had resented his rise to leadership in 1974, Mr. Seaga said: "No, of course not. I would not expect that there would be any. He showed no resentment, it was his desire to leave off, and he never interfered, I wouldn't either...he was a class act."
BITU Vice-President Pearnel Charles believes that the men had a cordial relationship.
"Mr. Shearer campaigned with Mr. Seaga throughout Jamaica in the late 1970s as he did in previous years. I don't know of any estrangement between the two of them during that period which was exposed to us or caused him to withdraw his support for Mr. Seaga," Mr. Charles, who was a close friend to Mr. Shearer, said. So why wasn't the elder statesman the sounding board and confidant of Seaga during those turbulent years?
"Shearer wasn't enthusiastic about Seaga because he wasn't a hypocrite," Mr. Charles said. "He had the success and survival of the party as his first priority."
Still, there is no doubting that Mr. Seaga, whatever the conflicts over the years, cared deeply for Mr. Shearer. This was quite evident when he broke down shortly after viewing Mr. Shearer's body at the Vere Technical High school in Clarendon last week.
During the state funeral last week, Mr. Seaga hailed Mr. Shearer as the "right man who came along at the right time" who, even at the time of his death, was little understood. He dubbed him as a "champion of the working class, a benefactor of the poor and protector of the disadvantaged".
"Both of us are private people who didn't try to promote ourselves. I am often told to promote myself more, but I have no interest in doing that. Hugh was not a man who promoted himself, he was a private man, like myself," Mr. Seaga said.
COLD TURKEY
Historians say that he had the will to voluntarily give up political power, in the prime of his career, giving his party the opportunity to replace him. he just went 'cold-turkey'.
"He wasn't power-hungry, he gave it (power) up voluntarily in 1974. It would be fair comment to say he left because there were some people expressing concern with his staying there. Nobody couldn't push out Shearer, if he didn't want to resign, nobody could remove him at that time. He voluntarily left it, it was a measure of the man that he could administer power, and give it up particularly where there was an indication that others felt they could do better," Mr. Charles said.
As recently as 1990, a Stone poll showed that Hugh Shearer was the person Jamaicans believed was the best person to replace Mr. Seaga as leader of the JLP. As the century stumbled to a close, in 1999 there was a direct assault on the party's second-tier leadership and caused tensions to boil over again. Pearnel Charles challenged Audley Shaw for the deputy leadership of Area Three, a position left vacant by the suspension of Mike Henry for vague 'disciplinary' reasons.
At the time, the letter penned in support of Charles' leadership bid read: 'The Bustamante Industrial Trade Union fully supports the candidacy of its vice-president, Pearnel Charles, for the post of deputy leader of the Jamaica Labour Party. We are sure that Mr. Charles will bring to the discussions at the highest level of the party, the concerns of the union which are largely ignored'.
The ensuing power struggle exposed the competing camps within the party. Hugh Shearer and the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union openly backed Charles while Mr. Seaga vociferously backed Shaw.
Mr. Charles explained that particular episode of political 'cloak and dagger'.
"My colleagues in the BITU had indicated in a letter that they were happy to have a union man among the executive members of the party. They had full confidence in me and gave me their support, I was running against Shaw. And because Mr. Shearer had signed the letter which gave me support, Mr. Seaga felt that it was unfair because it gave unfair advantage to me, and so he came out in support of Shaw to give the balance to the race."
POLITICAL NON-EVENT
Experienced political analyst Tony Myers dismissed claims that Shearer had tried to undermine Seaga, and that that had precipitated his attempted resignation in 1979.
"It was a political non-event when he threatened to resign," Mr. Myers said. "Seaga got support right across the board, from everybody because it was a matter of survival because of the communist line taken by the PNP. There wasn't much to that resignation because in 1979, the JLP was in charge of this country, people like Pearnel Charles called himself the 'General of the Street'. The PNP was demoralised, they had lost control leading up to the election that's why Michael Manley, on February 5th, announced that elections would be held as soon as the voters' list was ready. In that election, the JLP has the highest votes ever by a party, 501,000, carrying 51 of the 61 seats," Mr. Myers said.
Even as Prime Minister, Shearer's life was impacted by the awesome force of Mr. Seaga's personality. Mr. Shearer presided over a divided Government between 1970 to 1972 as his Ministers Wilton Hill and Edward Seaga duked it out in a raw, bitter power struggle that threatened to engulf the entire administration.
"Shearer was never the leader of the party. It was Seaga who was the second leader of the JLP (after Bustamante). It was at a meeting at the home of Dr. Herbert Eldemire, a friend of Mr. Shearer, that Mr. Shearer decided he was no longer willing to continue on as leader. Mr. Seaga really went for the leadership post," Mr. Myers said.
In an interesting twist, Mr. Myers said, laughing, several years later Shearer later married the daughter of his good friend Dr. Eldemire. Enter Dr. Denise Eldemire-Shearer.
Through it all, Mr. Shearer remained the gracious elder statesman.
"He was a great man, a unique man, he would have been a hypocrite to have been close to Seaga, but he was Deputy Prime Minister, and Minister of Foreign Affairs under Seaga's administration in the 1980s," Mr. Myers said. "Shearer's departure has restored some sanity within the JLP, they were going at it like crazy a couple days ago, and Mr. Seaga did the right thing although I expected him to make his last speech in November, and then calling an early conference next year; this is a good move by him."
Mr. Charles was almost effusive in his praise of the late trade unionist.
He was the gentlest of gentlemen, the most humble man among the powerful men of the country. No man handled power with such humility. He refused to take actions against his colleagues as others were requesting, instead he negotiated a settlement between them, for instance, the dispute between Wilton Hill (Minister of Housing) and Seaga (Minister of Finance). He did not take the strong-arm method of settling disputes, he used his trade union background to negotiate and arrive at consensus between any quarrelling parties. Jamaica has lost an icon."
