The Manley Name In Jamaica:

There has been a not so subtle indoctrination of the Jamaican public, which I believe began in the ’70s when I was a boy. Folks older than I am who agree with me, may actually have evidence that it started earlier. I am not opposed to the name of leaders being given prominence, particularly if they are deceased. I don’t believe in overkill for psychological, tribal reasons.

So you enter the coun­try by way of the Nation’s Capital, and you arrive at the Norman Manley International Airport. Leaving the Airport, you dri­ve on the,(you guessed it)the Norman Manley Highway, which links the Airport to the Harbour View round-about. Drive up to the University, and you have the Norman Manley Law school; oh there is The Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts oper­ates from a sin­gle cam­pus, in Kingston, Jamaica_​w.
There is the Edna Manley clin­ic in Grants Pen Kingston 8. There is the Edna Manley gallery, a spe­cial Gallery ded­i­cat­ed to her life with­in the National Gallery of Jamaica. There is the Norman Manley High School in Kingston. The National Housing Trust (NHT) head office build­ing in New Kingston was renamed in hon­or of Michael Manley. The list goes on and on in fair­ness to the Manleys; oth­er Politicians have had their names attached to notable sites through­out our coun­try, none how­ev­er to the extent that the Manley name has been plas­tered through­out Jamaica’s nation­al life. Many oth­er sites bear the names of notable Jamaicans. Nethesole place is the area around Jamaica’s National bank bear­ing anoth­er People’s National Party func­tionary name.

Yet when the sug­ges­tion was made to rename Ocean Boulevard in hon­or of Edward Seaga for his con­tri­bu­tion to our coun­try, PNP Councillors object­ed. Mister Seaga said then; he was not inter­est­ed in hav­ing the boule­vard renamed in his hon­or because of the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the pro­pos­al. In light of the afore­men­tioned, it seems there is ample evi­dence of a sys­tem­at­ic cam­paign to name and rename every sin­gle mon­u­ment street and build­ing in Jamaica after the Manley’s or some oth­er PNP mem­ber past and present. Just recent­ly, Paul Burke made the absurd sug­ges­tion that the Donald Sangster’s Airport in Montego Bay should be renamed in hon­or of anoth­er deceased PNP mem­ber of par­lia­ment, Allan George Coombs, who died in 1969.

Edna Manley

In a coun­try small­er than the state of Connecticut, it is a bit cloy­ing and down­right stu­pid to have so many places and things named after one fam­i­ly, which brings us to my first con­tention that this was nev­er an inno­cent hap­pen­ing but a sys­tem­at­ic attempt to trib­al­ize the entire coun­try by nam­ing every­thing after People’s National Party Functionaries.
Literally, every gar­ri­son under PNP con­trol is named after PNP past and present.
With this trib­al polit­i­cal, men­tal, and psy­cho­log­i­cal bom­bard­ment, is it any won­der our peo­ple can­not extri­cate them­selves from the Liberal social­ist politics/​policies of the Manleys through Patterson now to Miller?

Some will ask, Huh? How do you make that kind of con­nec­tion? Psychologists under­stand the impor­tance of that kind of bom­bard­ment, the visu­al, the audio, they do impact the way we behave. Not so long ago, the Jamaican Police embarked on a mis­sion of remov­ing murals of crim­i­nal Dons from build­ings and oth­er places with­in cer­tain inner-city com­mu­ni­ties in our country.
They are final­ly start­ing to under­stand the impact those murals have on peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly the young and impres­sion­able. The People’s National Party under­stands this; that’s why they keep win­ning nation­al elec­tions to the coun­try’s detri­ment, of course.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
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