Embodiment of a Labourite
published: Tuesday | December 20, 2005

THE EDITOR, Sir:

I WRITE in response to Ms. Dawn Ritch's article in The Sunday Gleaner of December 18, under the inscription 'Why Labourites love Portia'.

You don't need a PhD in political philosophy or political science to see why Labourites young and old may feel affection for her and admire Portia - she is the embodiment of a Labourite. She is a black woman from a working-class background and community, not a post-modernist technocrat or an autocratic ruler in waiting; she is a humanist like most Labourites are. She looks like a Labourite, she walks and talks like a Labourite, and I am sure she was born a Labourite like Pearnel Charles.

She has not yet bought into another sociology; she still has that mass support from the downtrodden and neglected grassroots of her party and Jamaica; she is also a treat to the shopkeepers for the middle class within her own party, the intellectual and educated. I think quietly Mrs. Portia Simpson Miller knows that her party and government is the embodiment of the Peter Principle. So Mrs. Portia Simpson Miller, why wait? Give Bruce Golding a call; don't wait for your 'comrades' to call you a dutty Labourite.

I am, etc.,

COTTRELL HYATT

chyatt@postmaster.co.uk

14 Clermont Road

London E9 7RR