Bruce Golding, seen in an October 1, 1984 file photograph, after being unanimously elected chairman of the Jamaica Labour Party.
Laura Tanna, Contributor
IN PART II, published October 24, 2004, Bruce Golding spoke about his father, Tacius Golding, who served in Parliament until age 72 and then lived for another 23 years, continuing to do community work, including being chairman of the Upper St. John's Parish Council Bank, a cooperative bank that lent money to small farmers, in Golding's words "perhaps the responsibility he cherished more than anything else that he'd ever done."
Golding also spoke warmly of his mother, Enid Bent Golding, from Southfield, St. Elizabeth: "My mom worked hard. She bore a lot of the burden of raising the children because more often than not dad was up in the country and we were in town. My mom (a teacher by profession) could fix things. If you go to my mother's house right now, and my mother is 84, she has a tool panel under the bed! She has a heart of absolute gold. Even now, if I'm saying goodbye, my mother will say: 'You need a little pocket money?' She's like that, a wonderful lady, wonderful woman."
ASSISTING FATHER'S CAMPAIGN
Golding experienced the discipline of Catholic educational institutions Alpha and St. George's before becoming head boy at Jamaica College, and then entered the University of the West Indies at Mona as the 1967 election was taking place.
He recalls: "A lot of politics was discussed on campus. Campus at that time was predominantly PNP and I started hearing, 'Bwoy, your father can't win'. They had cut new constituencies in St. Catherine, created what is now West Central St. Catherine. They had taken two huge sections of my father's constituency Red Hills and Point Hill which had always supported him heavily. He normally won by over 3,000 or 4,000. I kept getting reports that he was going to lose his seat so I left campus one day, headed to Old Harbour, walked straight into his office and said: 'How's the campaign?' He gave me some dismissive answer.
When I looked at the organisation that he had in place, I became worried. He was 67 and had the same old organisation that he always had. So I grabbed hold of his campaign, started structuring his programme and looking at the PDs (polling divisions) how much time we were spending in each, where we were having meetings I was, what, 19 at the time. After I was out on the road for a couple of days, I realised he was in trouble. There was a new generation on the voters' lists who had come on gradually, with whom he couldn't relate. He was teacher and represented the old order. This was the height of the Black Power movement and a new consciousness. In fairness to him, he allowed me to do what I wanted. These were his old-time, faithful people, but for the first time they were brought into a school room and were trained in how you manage a polling station how you check off your lists, how you get out your voters and he won by 800 something."
FIRST POLITICAL SPEECH
"The first time I ever made a political speech in all my life was in Old Harbour Bay, the same day I arrived to ask him what was happening with the campaign. I spoke about him. When I went to the platform, it was kind of a shock to everybody because I was a 19-year-old, young fellow. But from I made that speech, he started picking up from the ground sounds like: 'Teacher, whenever you step down, this is the man we want'. Almost a dynastic kind of thing.
During that campaign we had a meeting in Pennington, always a strong PNP area, but the way my old man campaigned, he went to every area, whether they were hostile to him or not. I spoke before him and when I finished speaking I spoke in a soft tone, barely above a whisper for maybe 15 minutes and what was significant is that you could hear a pin drop when I spoke. I got no big applause when I was through but normally they don't listen to you. Normally, you're speaking and they're chatting and if you say something that they don't like, they will heckle you. But there was dead silence when I spoke.
The old man went and spoke afterwards, spoke a little too long and they started heckling, what we call today disrespect. On our way home, he said to Percy Coleman, an old faithful, a councillor: "You know, Percy, this is my last election. Not running any more." And Percy said: "Teacher, you mad or what? You can't do that." And he said, "I know when it is time for me to retire." I think it had something to do with that Pennington meeting. I was reaching them and he wasn't."
POLITICAL MENTORS
After describing the 1967 elections, in which Bruce actively campaigned for his father who won the South West St. Catherine seat for the last time, Golding spoke about his other political mentors.
"Sangster was my hero. That was the man who I was hoping would shepherd me into politics and after he died, Clem Tavares, who was a good friend of my father, took me under his wing. Clem would call me up I'm still on campus and I would arrange to meet somewhere and travel with him.
"Of all the people that I've ever campaigned with in my life, there's nobody who made campaigning more enjoyable than Clem Tavares. He just had style. He appeared as if he was choreographed. Clem would be in the middle of a speech and he builds to a crescendo. It has its effect on the audience and he pulls away from the microphone and three girls go to the microphone right away and start singing a song that is relevant to the point he just made. They would sing for five minutes, work up the crowd, and they'd pull away and he goes back to the microphone. I've never been able to find out whether it's something that he sat down and choreographed or whether it was just spontaneous. Clem was six foot four, tall as hell. But the way he would move into the crowd really fabulous!
"So Clem was now my man. Then shortly afterwards, Clem died and I was beginning to wonder if there was some obeah on me. I mean, first I was attached to Donald. Donald died. I got attached to Clem, then Clem died! Then Eddie Seaga took me under his wing and I started worrying about him, and wondering if he was going to die. My relationship with him was a more intimate relationship than with the other two because he was minister of finance at the time, living at Vale Royal. He was closer in age and he communicated more, he engaged me more in discussions and he wasn't patronising. To Clem, I was something to the future; to Seaga, I was something for the present.
"I would call him up. I got the impression that he always reserved Sunday afternoons, he was always home. Very often it was myself and Percy Broderick. We were very close then. Eddie Seaga would say: 'Well, don't come before four o'clock'. You go to Vale Royal and he sits you down in the study. Made you feel like you were (special), Mitsy coming in, offering you drinks and serving you meal in the study and you're chatting. You're talking issues, talking about the party. We were now getting into discussions big time in a way that I had not been involved before.
GETTING EXPOSURE
During that period, he appointed me to the board of the National Lotteries Commission. It was a government-sponsored lottery and the proceeds went to, I think, health services. Every week there was a drawing on television and one member of the board had to be there so we did it in rotation every six or seven weeks. Gave me a little exposure.
"One of the significant things, too, and this is part of what bonded Eddie Seaga and myself, could have been early '68 after Clem died a discussion came up at Central Executive. It was known that my father was retiring. A number of persons immediately acquired an interest in that constituency and a discussion came up. Who were possible successors? My name was mentioned. Somebody asked: 'Well, how old is he?' At that time, to be on the voters' list you had to be 21, and when the response came: '20', I gather the whole executive kind of erupted in laughter. Seaga was stone-faced. He waited until the laughter had subsided and said: 'Yes, but by the time the next elections are called, he'll be 24. So he's not to be ruled out'. That same year, at the constituency conference that my father had, I remember Seaga was the guest speaker. I was elected vice-chairman, which sort of put me in a position where I was next to him in terms of being an authority in the constituency. Then Seaga started helping me in terms of how you organise the constituency with voter registration. We started from then to put a whole new kind of organisation in place."
Golding, a member of the Central Executive of the Jamaica Labour Party from 1969, won in the 1972 election to become member of Parliament for West St. Catherine. He remembers: "Seaga had said to me: 'As soon as you finish your exams, let me know cause you're going to have to face an early selection'." Golding finished his UWI exams in June 1969 and had three weeks to campaign against seven other contenders for the party selection, including Hector Wynter and the then mayor of Spanish Town. "I spent two weeks just going right through the constituency, hitting every district, talking to all the workers, everyone. The selection was held and I was the only nominee. Then I started virtually full-time work. Seven days a week I'd get up every morning, have breakfast, head out, come back 11, 12 o'clock at night. I just took the whole constituency, I worked out a schedule and determined that there was no district that must not see me at least once every two weeks. We did that every day, every day for two-and-a-half years.
Next: Life in the socialist '70s and his views on P.J. Patterson.
