GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Stabroek News – It is little over fifty years since a sustained campaign, led by the then opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) under Alexander Bustamante, resulted in a referendum decision approving the country’s withdrawal from the West Indies Federation, and supporting national independence for Jamaica. The JLP, the party currently in opposition, now appears to have started a campaign for Jamaica’s withdrawal, temporary or permanent is not clear, from Caricom. Of course the circumstances in today’s Jamaica are different from the period 1958-62. Then, Jamaica was a country full of confidence about its future, the ruling People’s National Party (PNP) government, in office from 1958 under Norman Manley, having introduced a period of sustained economic development in an atmosphere of full confidence about the country’s capacity to make progress, whether in our out of Federation. And at that time, the PNP’s commitment to sovereignty as part of a Federation was not based on any doubts in Manley’s mind, and that of his colleagues, about Jamaica’s ability to make progress as an individual entity. Rather, they felt a specific commitment to the idea of a collective identity for the people of the West Indies as a whole, historically placed in a situation of immense disadvantage in the West Indian archipelago.
