JAMAICA: NEW MARXIST PARTY

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 06805641
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: March 8, 2023
• Document Release Date: July 25, 2019
• Case Number: F-2017-01652
• Publication Date: January 4, 1979

Approved for Release: 2019/07/10 C06805641
.0",Tt4t, National
�L t Foreign
A Assessment
2.4y Center
Secre
Latin America
Review
4 January 1979
RP LAR 79-001
4 January 1979
Copy
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(b)(3)
LATIN AMERICA REVIEW (U)
4 January 1979
CONTENTS
NR
Record
Jamaica: New Marxist Party (U)
The new radical party launched last month
will provide a forum for Marxist views that
have become increasingly unpopular in the
ruling party, but it will not have a signif-
icant impact on the political situation. (U)
(b)(1)
(b)(3)
SECUT
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h.)
Jamaica: New Marxist Party (U)
A new radical party launched in Jamaica last month
will provide a forum for Marxist views that have become
decreasingly popular in the ruling People's National Party
(PNP) and will offer a refuge for PNP leftists disen-
chanted with Prime Minister Manley's growing political
moderation. The new party's ambitious leader, Trevor
Munroe, will also try to unify radical groups across the
Caribbean and tighten their links with Cuba and the
Soviet Union. Nevertheless, the new party will not be
able to win a Jamaican election or have a significant
impact on government policy for the foreseeable future.
Background
Munroe has initiated his Workers' Party of Jamaica
(WPJ) in a period of eclipse for local radicals, who
have generally supported
Manley during his nearly
seven years in office.
Munroe would probably prefer
to continue the cooper atve
relationship with Manley
while further failures of
moderate policies work to
the radicals' advantage.
The young leftist leader
apparently fears, however,
that ruling party moderates
will force Manley to ease
his longstanding ties with
the left.
Although the Prime Min-
ister has carried out re-
forms approved by the left
and has remained sympa-
thetic to the radicals, the
serious deterioration of the
5
-SETRET�
Trevor Munroe
4 January 1979
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ET-
island's economy--and the USSR's refusal to provide
aid--have impelled him in the past year to backtrack on
social programs and to impose harsh austerity measures.
Nearly all of Manley's once-influential radical advisers
have been displaced by moderates committed to a tough
three-year agreement with the International Monetary
Fund that has saved the government from collapse.
Munroe's party has announced conditional support
for Manley, and the Prime Minister has publicly hailed
it as a progressive force, but his relations with the
5/left are obviously cooling.
Munroe, for his part, has sternly warned the
Prime Minister that the left will desert him if he con-
tinues to yield to pressure from the moderates.
The new party is a threat to Manley primarily be-
cause it could siphon off the left wing of the PNP--a
development that would greatly embarrass the Prime Min-
ister. We have no evidence, however, that any of the
prominent radicals still in the ruling party are yet to
exchange this job security for the ideo]iogical integrity
offered by Munroe.
The Founder of the WPJ
The 33-year-old Munroe is a university professor
whose mixing of radical politics with scholarly research
has apparently hurt his reputation in both fields. Like
most leading Jamaican radicals, Munroe is a child of
privilege--the son of a prominent jurist. Jesuit-
educated in Jamaica, Munroe won a Rhodes fellowship that
enabled him to complete a major study of Jamaica's
political system at Oxford in the late 1960s.
When he returned home, Munroe turned quickly to
leftist politics and gradually allowed Marxist polemics
to pervade his published works. Munroe's organiza-
tions--a university-based union formed in 1972, and a
c) political association that laid the groundwork for his
new radical party--have never mobilized a significant
following. Munroe's stature has risen largely because
of Manley's protection a tbeaausiifany appreci-
able mass support.
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Despite his weak political performance to date,
Munroe still has ambitions to replace Manley as the
leader of the Jamaican left and to unite Caribbean radi-
nal aroups.
Although he has apparently ex-
aggerated his local and international reputation, Munroe
has managed to attract Soviet, Cuban, and numerous other
Caribbean delegates to the inauguration of his new party.
It is clear, moreover, that he will work energetically
�to increase Cuban and Soviet influence among the dispar-
ate radical groups in the region.
Prospects
Munroe may well become a nuisance for Manley and
the Workers' Party could become a rallying point for
Caribbean radicals isolated from political power. He
will probably increase his small following among disaf-
fected youth--60 percent of Jamaica's population is under
21 and 50 percent under 16. Nonetheless, the new party
will not become a maior political force for the foresee-
able future.
/,
Despite his high profile during Manley's rule,
Munroe commands a following probably no larger than 1,000
among a generally conservative electorate of over 800,000.
Moreover, the WPJ will make little headway against the two
major parties, which are based on unions that control
about 98 percent of organized labor and that have ex-
cluded all other parties from parliament since its estab-
lishment in 1944. Munroe has never contested a Jamaican
election and his abortive effort to woo port workers
away from the major unions in 1974 resulted in violence
in which Munroe himself was seriously injured.
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-ErEeRE'T�
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In breaking with Manley, therefore, Munroe would
also have much to lose for the sake of Marxist principles.
As a political historian, he is aware that minor parties
have a record of dismal failure in Jamaica. Twenty-one
minor parties--including two previous leftist groups in-
augurated with as much early fanfare as the WPJ--have
accumulated only about one percent of the total vote in
17 qeneral
4 January 1979
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