ABSTRACT
Ten years of political independence had neither facilitated national liberation nor initiated a process of development. By 1972, bourgeois political and economic authority in Jamaica found itself in crisis. In addition, the balance of political forces had begun to tip away from the landed sugar elite. The People's National Party was formed in 1938 during a period of political and social ferment in Jamaica, and immediately became the main anti-colonial political force. Some of its early leaders were influenced by Fabianism and British socialist politics, and during the 1940s a radical wing with ties to the trade union movement developed within the party. The sugar worker movement led by Sugar Workers Coordinating Council was militant and committed to establishing the cooperatives and to increasing the political representation of the workers. The trade union wing of the party was also under the influence of a politically conservative leadership.
