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Rastafarianism & Michael Manley
Connor Doyle
The 1972 general election in Jamaica is often remembered
for what followed it: Michael Manley‟s first administration and the
most radical experiment in the modern era of Jamaican politics.
However, the campaign itself was also a novelty, perhaps most
notably because of the People‟s National Party‟s self-conscious
adoption of Rastafari symbolism and imagery. As the sociologist
Anita Waters has written of the party in that election: “Her Majesty‟s
loyal opposition, in contrast to the „racial harmony‟ of the previous
campaign, was now saluting with clenched fists and threatening to
„beat down Babylon‟.”1
The infusion of Rastafari into mainstream political
discourse was a radical departure from past experience. Whereas the
Jamaican establishment traditionally viewed the sect as a subversive,
criminal sub-culture, Manley appeared to embrace it openly. At PNP
rallies across the country, reggae music with unabashedly
revolutionary lyrics blared from the sound systems. Candidates could
be heard using recognizably Rasta expressions such as “Hail de
man,” and “Peace and love.” Campaigners even took to styling
Manley as a latter-day Joshua, sent to deliver Jamaicans from the
oppression of Hugh Shearer‟s ruling Jamaican Labour Party. Manley
encouraged this image by wielding a staff he called the „Rod of
Correction‟, a campaign device laden heavily with Rastafarian
symbolism.
The unprecedented appropriation of Rastafari in 1972 raises
some intriguing questions. How, for instance, had Rastafari removed
itself from the “lunatic fringe” of Jamaican society to find a place in
mainstream politics? Moreover, does this development reflect
changes in the movement itself or within broader Jamaican society?
In this essay I will try to uncover the reasons for this shift. I will
argue that Rastafari became a political commodity in 1972 because
by then it enjoyed a newfound cultural legitimacy, had lost much of
the taboo that once surrounded it and had become an outlet for
popular expressions of Black Nationalism and discontent with the
postcolonial status quo. Manley understood the resonance of
1 Anita M. Waters, Race, Class, and Political Symbols: Rastafari and Reggae in
Jamaican Politics (New Brunswick, U.S.A.: Transaction Books, 1985), 90.
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Rastafari themes among parts of Jamaican society, and sympathized
with its core objectives of alleviating the country‟s deeply-entrenched
poverty and altering the inherited power structure. Though he
shared some of the concerns of Rastafari and used its language and
imagery to communicate certain ideas, this should not be mistaken
for a sincere embrace of the movement in its entirety.
Rastafari seemed to emerge almost spontaneously in
Jamaica during the early 1930‟s. In fact, the movement drew on
several trends embedded in Jamaican culture: the religious
revivalism of the late 19th century, traditional Afro-Christianity and
an anti-colonial peasant movement dating to the maroons of the 18th
century. The influence of two more recent developments, however,
distinguished Rastafari from earlier native religious movements in
Jamaica. The first was the teachings of Marcus Mosiah Garvey which
were by then in currency throughout North America and the
Caribbean. Garvey‟s emphasis on black nationalism and Pan-
Africanism informed the Rastafarians‟ Afrocentric world view, as
well as its demand for repatriation to the spiritual homeland of
Ethiopia. The second inspiration was the coronation of Haile Sellasie
as Emperor of Ethiopia in 1930. The event, widely featured in
Western newspapers and newsreels, was imbued with messianic
significance by some of Garvey‟s followers, who saw it as the
fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
Although adherents have always been loath to describe
Rastafari as containing an official doctrine or ideology — preferring
instead to regard it as a way of life — a few essential tenets can be
identified. First and most important is a belief in the divinity of Halie
Selassie, a living incarnation of god, or Jah. Rastafarians viewed
Jamaica as an exile analagous to that of the ancient Israelites, a
hellish existence characterized by systematic dehumanization at the
hands of Babylonian oppressors. Africa, and specifically Ethiopia,
represented the promised land to which Selassie the redeemer would
soon arrange repatriation. The practice of Rastafari must be
understood as a response to the perceived Babylonian conditions of
Jamaican society. Their resistance was manifested most visibly in
cultural practices such as the growing of dreadlocks and marijuana
usage, which rejected the norms and aesthetic preferences of colonial
society.
The identity of the first Rastafarian preacher remains in
dispute, but the distinction is most often given to Leonard Howell. A
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committed Garveyite, Howell began preaching news of the coming of
the black messiah throughout the poorer districts of Kingston in
1933. Although he attracted only a small following in the early years,
Howell‟s radical preaching earned him the fearful scrutiny of the
colonial government and Jamaican establishment. An early account
of one of his meetings from the Daily Gleaner reflects the tone of the
initial response to the emergence of Rastafari: “Devilish attacks are
made at these meetings, it is said on the government, both local and
imperial and the whole proceedings would tend to provoke
insurrection.”2 For much of its history, the Gleaner was the voice of
the island‟s planter and merchant elite and featured a strongly pro-
British editorial position. Its coverage of Rastafari is thus highly
slanted, but nevertheless serves as a useful barometer for measuring
the changes in mainstream responses to the movement.
From the outset, the Jamaican establishment regarded
Rastafari — despite the sect‟s relative obscurity — as an existential
threat to the colonial order. The source of the official anxiety
surrounding the movement is not hard to identify. Rastafari
represented at its core a wholesale rejection of the hegemony of
whiteness and the will to “bring about fundamental transformation
of an unjust social society if not its total destruction.”3 In his
preaching, Howell openly supported the Nyabingi, an anti-colonial
resistance movement in Uganda and called openly for death to all
“white oppressors” in Jamaica. Before preaching to crowds of
typically a few hundred, Howell would often ask his followers to sing
“God Save the King” but to do so knowing that they sang not “for
King George V, but for Ras Tafari, our new king.”4 In colonial
Jamaica, this act of pledging allegiance to a foreign sovereign
amounted to treason. Indeed, it was for selling images of Haile
Selassie for one shilling apiece that Howell was eventually arrested
in 1933. In the official indictment, the colonial government accused
Howell and his deputy Robert Hinds of sedition for attempting
to excite hatred and contempt for his majesty the King of
England and of those responsible for the government of the
2 Anthony Bogues, Black Heretics, Black Prophets: Radical Political Intellectuals
(London: Routledge, 2003), 159.
3 Rex Nettleford, Introduction to Dread: The Rastafarians of Jamaica, by Joseph
Owens (London: Heinemann, 1979), ix.
4 Ennis Barrington Edmonds, Rastafari: From Outcasts to Culture Bearers
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 40.
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island, and to create disaffection among the subjects of his
majesty in this island and to disturb the public peace and
tranquility of the island.5
Thus the colonial government considered Rastafari an
unappeasable and existential threat which, like virtually all anti-
colonial movements of the era, was met with violence and
repression. This initial response to Rastafari set a tone and precedent
for several successive Jamaican governments — even after
independence — in their approach to dealing with the movement.
It was the 1938 labour rebellions — sparked primarily by the
hardships of economic depression — which gave rise to the two
political cartels that have dominated Jamaican politics ever since.
The protests lacked an explicit racial motive or content, but
nevertheless engaged matters of economic disparity redolent of
Rastafari critiques. Nevertheless, the brethren were conspicuous by
their absence in the marches and roadblocks which for a time
paralyzed the entire country. Rastafari, as we have seen, dismissed
the possibility of redemption from within Jamaica, and looked
instead to a salvation that must perforce come from without.
Although the labour movement did include several ex-Garveyites,
Rastafarians took little or no part in the revolt. This disengagement
from a genuine moment of mass radicalism had, I submit, lasting
significance. Instead of achieving an early rapprochement with the
labour movements that became Jamaica‟s dominant political actors
in the postwar period, Rastafari solidified its place in the outermost
margins of Jamaican politics. This in turn ensured a fraught
relationship with the fledgling Jamaican state, which repressed the
dissident movement with a zeal worthy of its colonial predecessors.
Official antipathy for Rastafari in Jamaica persisted even
after self-government was ceded by the British in 1944. The
antagonism remained in part because the Rastafarian, with his
strident calls for a fire and brimstone destruction of the Jamaican
state, was still regarded as a likely agent provocateur. This long-
standing association between Rastafari and lawlessness was, in the
eyes of the Jamaican establishment, borne out by several episodes in
which Rastafarians were seen to be taking up arms against the state.
The most prominent of these incidents took place in 1960, when
5 Horace Campbell, Rasta and Resistance: From Marcus Garvey to Walter
Rodney (London: Hansib Publications, 2007), 71.
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security forces raided the Rastafarian commune of the Reverend
Claudius Henry. The government believed that Henry, with the
support of a black militant organization in New York, was planning
an armed insurrection against the Jamaican state. A raid on the
camp in June 1960 ended in a prolonged shootout which killed two
soldiers and wounded three others. The revolt was met with a
massive week-long security operation involving over 500 police and
soldiers, resulting in the arrest of over 100 Rastafarians.6 The „Henry
Rebellion‟ was a relatively minor skirmish and easily suppressed, but
the scale of the government response is revealing.
Another episode of Rastafarian unrest three years later
seemed to confirm official suspicions of the movement. The precise
cause of the Coral Gardens incident remain obscure, but it seems
likely that it was a land dispute between a group of Rastafarians and
a local businessman in the Montego Bay area that resulted in the
torching of a petrol station and the murders of eight people. News of
the violence was soon reported in Kingston as an attempted
insurrection. Within hours, the Prime Minister and the
Commissioner of the Jamaican Constabulary Force convened on the
area, backed by nine armored vehicles from the Jamaican Defence
Force. The Coral Gardens incident, like the Henry Rebellion before
it, amounted only to a minor disturbance. Yet the government‟s
response, as Lacey notes, was to mobilize “the full weight of state
power...against four men whose motives and proposed actions were
unknown.”7 The paranoia surrounding any perceived attempt at
rebellion can be explained in part by Cold War anxieties, specifically
the recent memory of Castro‟s revolution in Cuba. It also suggests
however that the image of Rastafarians held by the guardians of
society had changed little with the end of colonial rule.
The Coral Gardens incident was thought to demonstrate
another dangerous aspect of Rastafarian criminality, namely its
association with the cultivation and trade of marijuana. The link
between ganja — a plant the Rastafarians considered sacred — and
crime was considered self-evident. The Gleaner was only repeating a
widely-held belief when it observed in an editorial that “most crimes
of violence in Jamaica, as in India, British Guiana, Trinidad and
6 Terry Lacey, Violence and Politics in Jamaica, 1960-1970: Internal Security in a
Developing Country (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977), 83.
7 Ibid., 85.
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other places can be traced directly to the use of ganja.”8 The would-
be rebels behind the Coral Gardens incident were widely reported to
be under the influence of marijuana. Partially as a response to that
episode, the JLP government amended the Dangerous Drugs Act in
1964 to increase marijuana-relented sentences from twelve months
to five years. The prominence of Rastafarians in the marijuana trade
and the drug‟s association with criminality enforced official
perceptions of the sect as a public menace.
The image of Rastafari held by much of Jamaican society
during the period was not, on the whole, any more sympathetic.
George Simpson, an American sociologist who visited the island to
study Rastafari in 1955, noted that the prevailing attitude among the
middle and upper classes was “one of contempt and disgust.”
Although he played down the threat of a Rastafarian uprising, he
reported that “it is widely believed that the members of this cult are
hooligans, psychopaths, and dangerous criminals. Ras Tafarians [sic]
are often referred to as „those dreadful people‟.”9 A Gleaner
columnist in 1960 wrote that, “it is self-evident that the majority [of
Rastas] are lazy, dirty, violent and lawless scoundrels mouthing
religious phrases to cover up their aversion to work and ill habits.”10
Perhaps the response was extreme, but the quotation does neatly
encapsulate most of the Rastafarian stereotypes which, anecdotally
at least, appear commonplace before the late 1960‟s. Certainly the
charge of idleness was frequently leveled against the brethren. In
1963, when a group of Rasta youths protested an American-funded
real estate development on the island‟s north coast, the response of
many middle class observers, according to Campbell, was dismissive:
“de bway dem lazy and dem no wan wuk, dem only wan fe smoke
ganja.”11
Indeed, the Rastafarians association with marijuana
presents a fascinating contradiction. As the above quotation
suggests, marijuana use was occasionally used to prove that
Rastafarians were generally work-shy, unproductive members of
8 Rex Nettleford, Mirror, Mirror: Identity, Race and Protest in Jamaica (Kingston:
W. Collins and Sangster, 1970), 81.
9 George E. Simpson, “Political Cultism in West Kingston, Jamaica,” Social and
Economic Studies 4, no. 2 (1955), 144.
10 Edmonds, From Outcasts to Culture Bearers, 82.
11 Horace Campbell, “Rastafari: Culture of Resistance,” Race and Class 22, no.1
(1980), 11.
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society. This is closely related to another trope of anti-Rastafarian
prejudice: mental deficiency. It is highly telling that the colonial
government eventually decided to commit the incurable Howell to a
mental asylum. This stereotype seems to have endured; Waters
reports meeting a middle class respondent who explained his disdain
for Rastas simply because “they are stupid people.” Even as late as
1970, becoming a Rastafarian was still “regarded by the wider society
as one of mental deterioration,” and was seen as “an urgent matter
for the psychiatrist.”12 According to stereotype, the link between their
mental deficiency and the Rastafarians‟ chronic marijuana use was
clear.
Yet as we have seen, their involvement in the cultivation
and trade of ganja was often invoked to link the movement with
violence and lawlessness. This too can be found in contemporary
responses of Rastafari, including in a Gleaner column from 1961. In
that piece, the author argues that the “aggressiveness” of the
Rastafarians was “intimately wrapped up with ganja smoking,”
which in turn “breeds irritation which flares up all the time in
„incidents‟.”13 Thus the Rastafarian appears to have held dual
representations in the popular imagination: at once the spliff-
smoking, mentally deficient idler as well as the violent, ganja-
addicted revolutionary. In any case, the close association between
Rastafari and marijuana served to underscore a perceived
remoteness from the mainstream of Jamaican society.
In the first part of this essay I have discussed the
continuities in the official response of successive Jamaican
governments (both before and after independence) toward Rastafari
and how these attitudes were mirrored in wider Jamaican society.
The purpose of the preceding pages has been twofold: first, to
provide some essential context to the place of Rastafari in Jamaican
politics and second, to highlight the complete novelty and radicalism
of Manley‟s appropriation and apparent embrace of the “lunatic
fringe.” The question now presents itself more pressingly: given the
longstanding antagonism between Rastfari and the political
establishment as well as an apparent widespread distaste for the
movement in Jamaican society, how was Manley‟s reggae campaign
of 1972 even possible? In the following pages I will try to trace the
12 Nettleford, Mirror, Mirror, 56-57.
13 Stephen A. King, Reggae, Rastafari, and the Rhetoric of Social Control
(Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2002), 77.
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changes, beginning roughly in 1960, to both Rastafari and Jamaican
society which made such a strategy feasible, and even politically
attractive.
In 1960, apparently disillusioned with negative press
coverage and the myriad popular misconceptions surrounding their
movement, several Rastafarians approached the University College
of the West Indies (the precursor to the University of the West
Indies) to discuss the possibility of an academic study in to Rastafari.
This proved to be a shrewd decision. The report, produced by three
researchers in a mere fortnight, provided for the first time an
historically accurate account of the movement‟s origins and
development. The report was broadly sympathetic to Rastafari, and
went to great lengths to dispel many of the myths which had for so
long surrounded the sect. As Rex Nettleford, one of the study‟s
authors later recalled, the researchers encountered a complex and
diverse group of people who defied simple categorization: “some
were indeed committed to a political and military struggle, others
revivalist in orientation and in origin, some quietist but all deeply
involved with the poverty and deprivation that was their climate of
prime concern.”14
The report was serialized in the Gleaner in eight parts, so as
to ensure a wide discussion of its contents. It did not alter opinions
of Rastafari overnight, but its central conclusions — that the
movement was driven by legitimate social and economic grievances,
and that the “criminal element” comprised a tiny fraction of the
Rastafarian community — seems to have had resonance. As one JLP
councillor later recalled:
The Rastas were frowned on until the 1960 study. The study
presented Rasta to the public as something other than
criminals. I grew up in a house near a Rasta, and I always
thought of him, and any locksman, as a thief. He was said to
steal chickens, and he may have — he probably needed to. For
most of the middle class, we don‟t bother to probe much. The
professors pointed out that Rastas have non-criminal
qualities.15
14 Ibid., 43.
15 Waters, Race, Class, and Political Symbols, 71.
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Government repression of Rastafari and the suspicion often
shown towards its followers continued, as we have seen, well into the
1960‟s and the report did little to alter this in the short term. It
remains significant, however, as the first serious attempt within
Jamaican society to engage with Rastafari with the aim of
accommodation and not further marginalization.
The second major turning point in the legitimization of
Rastafari in Jamaica came in 1966, with a brief state visit by
Emperor Haile Selassie I. A massive crowd of Rastafarians converged
on the airport, as the Gleaner reported the next day with some
bemusement: “thousands of Jamaicans for whatever reason, were in
a frenzy over an alien leader around whom they had woven
legends.”16 It was perhaps the single largest gathering of Rastafarians
in the movement‟s history, which resulted not, as the stereotypes
would have it, in disorder but rather a mass demonstration of
goodwill. As the same Gleaner report noted, never in Jamaican
history had there been “such a spontaneous, heartwarming and
sincere welcome to any person, whether visiting Monarch, visiting
VIP or returning leader of a Jamaican party.” The state visit earned
the movement a respectability it had seldom enjoyed, as several
prominent Rastas found themselves socializing with members of the
upper and middle classes at the Governor General‟s residence. The
exposure and dignified conduct of the Rastas during the visit,
Edmonds argues, “conferred a sort of warrant of credibility on the
movement.”17
Another consequence of the visit was a noticeable doctrinal
shift among some adherents away from the founding tenet of
repatriation. During a meeting between the Emperor and several
Rasta elders, Selassie was reported to have used the phrase
“liberation before repatriation” which soon gained traction in the
Rastafarian community. This not only dampened the repatriation
fervor within the movement but, according to some scholars, gave
rise to more explicitly political groups such as the Rastafarian
Movement Alliance, which eschewed traditional political passivity.
As enthusiasm for a divinely-appointed salvation in Ethiopia waned
16 Nettleford, Mirror, Mirror, 82.
17 Edmonds, From Outcasts to Culture Bearers, 86.
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during the 1960‟s, it came to be replaced by its logical alternative:
“Deliverance must be in Jamaica.”18
The newfound cultural legitimacy of Rastafari as well as its
increased politicization during the 1960‟s were both helped
immeasurably by the rise of reggae as a popular art form. By the
early 1970‟s, songs by Desmond Decker, Bob Marley and the Wailers
and Jimmy Cliff had appeared on the pop charts throughout Europe
and North America. The widespread popularity of reggae not only
achieved global notoriety for Rastafari, but meant increasingly the
movement became synonymous with Jamaican culture for foreign
audiences. Many scholars have stressed the importance of reggae‟s
global success in altering domestic perceptions of Rastafari, with
Chevannes noting: “International approval silenced all middle-class
criticism and opened the way for even greater identification.”19 Even
the Gleaner, which had previously repeated the familiar middle class
criticisms of “primitive” and “uncultured” Jamaican music, began by
the early 1970‟s to feature extensive coverage of reggae artists.
The domestic popularity of reggae and other forms of
Rastafarian culture, especially among the young, contributed to
another process evident during the 1960‟s: the blurring of previously
rigid distinctions between Rastafari and the mainstream. As
Nettleford and his colleagues discovered, Rastafari had always been
a heterogenous movement in which „orthodoxy‟ could be only very
loosely defined. These ambiguities were deepened by the popularity
in the 1960‟s of what Gray calls “functional Rastfarianism” to wit, the
selective embrace of Rastafarian language and accessories while
ignoring other aspects of its core doctrine.20 As one Rasta elder
recalled to Waters of the late 1960‟s, “There was a lot of young blood
in Rasta then. After that, you might expect anyone to have
dreadlocks.”21 Rastafari, aided in no small measure by the popularity
of reggae, had become an attractive counterculture for many lower
and even middle class Jamaican youths. Typically this psuedo-
Rastafarianism took the form of “long and carefully unkempt hair,”
18 Stephen A. King, “International Reggae, Democratic Socialism, and the
Secularization of the Rastafarian Movement, 1972–1980,” Popular Music and
Society 22, no. 3 (1998), 51.
19 Barry Chevannes, “Healing the Nation: Rastafari Exorcism of the Ideology of
Racism in Jamaica,” Caribbean Quarterly 36, no. 1/2 (1990), 79.
20 Nettleford, Mirror, Mirror, 94.
21 Waters, Race, Class and Political Symbols, 106.
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the donning of clothing believed to be African, the open defiance of
marijuana laws, and the flagrant breach of strict Rastafarian dietary
laws.22 So Rastafarian attitudes and cultural symbols had become
widely diffused in Jamaican society by 1972, embraced by people
who were in other respects decidedly not Rastafarians. This means
we cannot understand any subsequent political appropriation of
Rastafari as addressed exclusively to the Rastafarian community,
strictly defined.
Another effect of reggae‟s explosion in popularity was to
place Rastafari firmly in contemporary political discourse. There
remains a debate among scholars about the timing and scale of
Rastafarian political engagement. As we have seen, Rastafari did not
shy away from vociferous criticism of every aspect of colonial society,
including its political arrangements. At the same time, Rastafarians
formed no political parties of their own, did not join the existing
parties and refrained from discussing politics in all but the broadest
conceptual terms. Reggae, however, was often quite topical, replete
with references to everyday events relevant to ghetto life. In one hit
song from the late 1960s, for example, the Ethiopians reflected on
the rolling strikes and go-slows that had become a fixture of daily life
for Jamaicans:
Look deh now — Everything crash
Firemen strike — Watermen strike
Telephone pole men too
Down to the policeman too
What bad by the morning
Can‟t come good a-evening23
Reggae not only served to popularize Rastafarian argot, but
to associate it with the politics of resistance. Given the genre‟s
leitmotif of escaping “downpression” and “beating down” the
tormentors of Babylon, reggae leant itself to co-optation by
opposition politicians. So it is not surprising that “Look deh now”
became a popular phrase at PNP rallies, especially when speakers
were pointing to alleged abuses or corrupt practices on the part of
the ruling JLP. It is worth noting that the PNP‟s use of reggae
declined in subsequent elections (when they enjoyed incumbency)
while the now-opposition JLP quickly embraced it. Indeed, few
22 Edmonds, From Outcasts to Culture Bearers, 89.
23 Waters, Race Class and Political Symbols, 96.
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politicians of the 1970‟s referenced reggae and Rastafari with as
much enthusiasm as JLP leader Edward Seaga, who declared at one
party rally in 1976: “But I want him [Manley] to know that Eddie is
trodding creation, and the kingdom over which he rules no longer
exists, because „Jah Kingdom Gone to Waste‟...Youthman and
daughta should know which is their party.”24 Seaga, a light-skinned
scion of the Levantine minority, made for an unlikely dread. His use
of Rastafarian idiom however underscores a broader point. The
popularity of reggae made it possible for politicians, especially those
in opposition, to appropriate the Rastafarian language of resistance
without necessarily embracing the core tenets Rastafari itself.
All of the developments listed thus far are essential in
understanding the PNP‟s appropriation of Rastafari in 1972. The
movement had gained visibility, cultural legitimacy and, if not
acceptance, certainly unprecedented accommodation in Jamaican
society. Perhaps the most important development, however, was a
newfound association between the Rastafarian critique of Jamaican
society and an emergent black consciousness and disillusionment
with the postcolonial status quo that had taken hold in Jamaica by
the late 1960‟s.
To explain this process, a word on the socioeconomic
context of the 1960‟s is necessary. One of the central tenets of the
Jamaican nationalism propagated by the two political parties was
what Gray calls “Jamaican exceptionalism,” the belief that race had
ceased to be a dominant factor in social relations.25 Alexander
Bustamante — the first prime minister of an independent Jamaica
and a member of the largely brown middle class — identified racial
harmony as one of his guiding political principles: “People in the
world have come to point at Jamaica as a leading example…[of a
country] where races work and live in harmony with ever increasing
respect for each other.”26 The myth of racial harmony was ubiquitous
in official expressions of the Jamaican “national ethos” in the 1960‟s.
For instance, a civics textbook produced by the Ministry of
Education wrote approvingly of this multiracial ideal, urging high
school students to “accept ourselves as an integrated community and
24 Edmonds, From Outcasts to Culture Bearers, 92.
25 Obika Gray, Radicalism and Social Change in Jamaica, 1960-1972 (Knoxville:
University of Tennessee Press, 1991), 54.
26 Ibid.
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work towards the full development and prosperity of every
individual, disregarding racial identification.”27
In the historical narrative endorsed by Bustamante and
Norman Manley then, nationalism was concerned primarily with the
achievement of political sovereignty, a linear process which
culminated with independence in 1962. The Rastafarian critique
rejected the received narrative in the strongest terms, supplanting its
pre- and post-independence periodization with a cyclical “Dread
history” which stressed temporal and ontological continuities. In this
conception of history, “multiracial Jamaica” was simply Babylon in
another guise, fundamentally unaltered by the manufactured
symbolism of independence. This idea of a “continuous colonial
society” is repeatedly expressed by the reggae artists of the era, such
as Peter Tosh who sang in a popular song: “Four hundred years, four
hundred years / and it‟s the same philosophy.”28 For Rastafarians,
the notion of a racially harmonious Jamaica was an obvious lie; a
ploy to justify the continued exploitation of the black majority. As
one Rasta critic — writing under the pseudonym „Interpreter‟ —
observed in 1963:
[We] the black majority who has helped plow the soil, planted
the vineyard and gather the fruits thereof , we are not the
benefactors. Those who benefit are the protectors. They share
the crops, they boss the work and own the shares...the
majority of Jamaicans are black — why then are not the black
supreme here?...Jamaica‟s independence means a well
without water, a treasury without money.29
The Rastafari critique of neocolonialism — which
maintained the rule of white, creole and “socially white” elements of
society over the black majority — was mirrored by the economic
stratification of Jamaica‟s dependent economy, which made mockery
of the self-serving mythology of the island‟s elites. The country‟s
principal industries were almost entirely foreign owned or else in the
hands of the tiny ethnic minorities. The economic boom supported
by the expanding bauxite and tourism industries failed to alleviate
gaping economic inequities in Jamaica. Indeed, it has been
27 Nadi Edwards, “States of Emergency: Reggae Representations of the
Jamaican Nation State,” Social and Economic Studies 47, no. 1 (1998), 23.
28 Ibid., 25-27.
29 Nettleford, Mirror, MIrror, 61.
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estimated that shortly after independence the country held the
highest rate of inequality in the world: the richest five percent of the
country controlling thirty percent of the economy, the poorest fifth
controlling only two percent.30 Despite nationalist rhetoric,
independence had failed to alter the colonial structure of the
Jamaican economy and had only served to entrench existing class-
colour correlates.
Although Rastafarian had once been alone in uttering these
subversive criticisms, this was no longer the case by the late 1960‟s.
These ideas were a central component of the Black Power movement,
which by then, had taken hold of the middle class intelligentsia.
Walter Rodney, a visiting Guyanese academic at the University of the
West Indies at Mona, was perhaps the first to recognize the
commonality of interests and ideas among Jamaica's discontents. In
the eight months he spent on the island before his expulsion in 1968,
he worked to forge an alliance between radical intellectuals, the
urban poor and Rastafarians. He recognized Rastafari as an
authentic, homegrown black nationalism which could be used in the
effort of ending the “mental slavery” of neo-colonialism. The rioting
sparked by Rodney‟s expulsion suggested that black pride and
criticisms of the incongruities of the inherited power structure had
become widespread. In short, Rastafari did not create the growing
Black Power sentiment or radical political engagement of the late
1960‟s, but it provided both with an outlet for their expression, a
readily available culture and language of resistance.
We can turn now to the election of 1972 and its
unprecedented incorporation of Rastafari. As I have argued in the
foregoing pages, by the time of Manley‟s campaign Rastafari was no
longer the “cult of outcasts” it had been a scant decade earlier.
Indeed, between 1960 and 1972, it had been transformed from an
obscure, dissident fringe group of perhaps 10,000 to a vibrant
movement of upwards of 100,000 followers.31 At the same time, its
language and attitudes had become widely diffused throughout
Jamaican society. Largely through the success of reggae, Rastafari
enjoyed a cultural legitimacy it had long been denied. Although
negative stereotypes persisted, the movement had come to be viewed
by many as an authentic, Jamaican expression of black
consciousness. Indeed, its critique of neo-colonialism gained
30 Edwards, “States of Emergency,” 28.
31 Lacey, Violence and Politics in Jamaica, 39.
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widespread credibility as disillusionment with the record of
Jamaica‟s post-independence government grew. By 1972 it had
become possible to invoke Rastafari simply because the movement
had lost much of the taboo that once surrounded it. As one PNP
campaign manager later recalled:
[Their] numbers had swelled. A lot of middle class kids
became Rastas. It is also true that by that time, their image
had improved...they weren‟t necessarily a bad element. Their
language was gaining currency among the middle classes and
the school children. We had the feeling that Rasta talk was
understood across the country.32
The question is often posed in the literature about the
sincerity of the PNP‟s appropriation of Rastafari. Should we
understand Manley‟s use of Rastafari as cynical opportunism or as
evidence of a genuine embrace of the movements beliefs and
principles? The answer, as ever, probably lies somewhere in
between. Manley did cleverly manipulate the language and
symbolism of Rastafari to successfully cast himself and his party as
the voice of popular aspirations against an authoritarian and
undemocratic regime. Reggae music was particularly useful in
demonizing the JLP as the oppressive agents of imperialism, out of
touch with the concerns of the “sufferers” or black poor. Manley‟s
familiarity and ease with Rastafari helped him appeal to
progressives, the youth, the urban poor and to benefit from the
“diffusion into the crevices of Jamaican society of black pride.”33
Yet it would be mistaken to attribute the PNP‟s turn to
Rastafari to mere cynicism alone. Under Michael Manley, the party
had undergone a fundamental transformation between 1968 and
1972, which ended the traditional policy convergence between the
two parties. In essence, the PNP rediscovered the leftist impulse
which it had suppressed during the 1952 purge of an internal Marxist
faction. It absorbed many elements of 1960‟s radicalism, including
members of the new independent unions, which advocated
nationalization and workers control of industry, as well as Black
Power intellectuals such as D. K. Duncan and Arnold Bertram after
32 Waters, Race, Class, and Political Symbols, 196.
33 Michael Kaufman, Jamaica Under Manley: Dilemmas of Socialism and
Democracy (London: Zed Books, 1985), 63.
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the dissolution of the Abeng collective.34 The party‟s turn to the left
meant that it was now more open to discourses it would have once
eschewed. In other words, Manley‟s criticisms of the dominance of
foreign capital and extreme wealth disparities did not make him a
Rastafarian, but it placed him and his party in a similar intellectual
framework. Although Manley used Rastafari idiom and symbols to
communicate these ideas to a broader audience, this did not render
them insincere.
Still, there remains a hint of truth to the charges of co-
optation which many scholars have leveled against the PNP‟s
campaign. This is probably best demonstrated by considering the
relationship between Manley‟s government and the Rastafarians
after the election victory. Initially there was hope within the
Rastafarian community that it had found an advocate and defender
in Manley. A hymn sung at Claudius Henry‟s Peacemakers‟ Church
during the election went: “Haile Selassie I is our God / Claudius
Henry is our King / Michael Manley is our Joshua / What a peace of
mind / Our Joshua has come.”35 This optimism seemed at first to be
justified. Manley made headlines by publicly condemning the police
for shaving off the dreadlocks of brethren who they were
interrogating. He also paid more than just lip service to the ideals
black pride, and even encouraged his cabinet colleagues to replace
their suits and ties with open neck African-inspired karebas.
Manley‟s government certainly evinced more sympathy to
Rastafari than its predecessors, but its attitude was hardly a sincere
embrace of the movement and all its beliefs. For instance, despite his
pledge to review Jamaica‟s draconian drug laws, Manley‟s stance on
ganja differed little from the established policies. He agreed to only
minor reductions in sentences and even cooperated with the Nixon
Administration in Operation Buccaneer, aimed at eradicating
Jamaica‟s marijuana fields. Furthermore, it was at Manley‟s behest
that “Babylon” was given unprecedented powers under the Gun
Court and Suppression of Crime Act. Reggae songs were regularly
and arbitrarily banned from the airwaves, just as they been under the
JLP. This, coupled with the failure of democratic socialism to
alleviate poverty or demonstrably alter the class structure meant that
34 Carl Stone, “Stone, Power, Policy and Politics in Independent Jamaica,” in
Jamaica in Independence, ed. Rex Nettleford (Kingston: Heinemann Caribbean,
1989), 28.
35 Waters, Race, Class, and Political Symbols, 127.
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Rastafarian support faded into disillusionment. By the late 1970‟s,
Manley‟s place in the brethren's esteem appears to be best described
by Max Romeo‟s tune “No, Joshua, No”:
You took them out of bondage,
And they thank you for it,
You sang them songs of love,
And they tried to sing with it;
But now in the desert
Tired, Battered and Bruised
They think they are forsaken
They think they have been used36
In conclusion, the answer to the question posed at the
beginning of this essay is perhaps the most obvious one: Manley and
his party turned to Rastafari in 1972 because it had become
politically advantageous to do so. Much of this has to be attributed to
the drastic overhaul of the image of Rastafari in Jamaican society
witnessed during the 1960‟s. Not only had the Rastafarian movement
grown in the decade between independence and Manley‟s victory, it
had earned a cultural legitimacy long denied to it. The PNP‟s
campaign can also be explained by the popular explosion of reggae —
which supplied the party with a wealth of topical references as well
as a familiar idiom of resistance, which suited the populist tenor of
the campaign. By demonstrating his fluency in the language of the
„sufferers‟, Manley solidified his image as a champion of the
discontented and dispossessed.
Manley did not share the central Rastafarian concerns of
repatriation or the legalization of marijuana, as his record in office
shows. Yet, in some ways the 1972 campaign reflects a meeting of
minds. Manley and the re-radicalized PNP shared the Rastafarian
criticisms of Jamaica‟s economic injustices. Indeed, the socialist
project of the 1970‟s represented a genuine, although ultimately
failed attempt to address these problems.
36 Campbell, Rasta and Resistance, 137.