A unique election campaign experience occurred in the parish of St. James during the 1944 general election. The head of a powerful commercial enterprise found himself locked in a hard-hitting electioneering bout, with his principal opponent being one of his own most trusted employees.

Walter Fletcher was one of Jamaica's most astute businessmen. He had come to Jamaica from England in the closing years of the 19th century, responding to an advertisement published in England inviting young Englishmen to come to Jamaica to be trained in tropical agricultural production.

The advertisement promised that young Englishmen who took up the option would be entitled to a variety of benefits, including free boarding and lodging on Jamaican estates, and ultimate appointment to management positions. The British colonial Government did not take into consideration the fact that there were already on those estates countless numbers of black Jamaicans who possessed decades of farming experiences.

Fletcher enjoyed privileged treatment for many years on various estates spanning from St. Catherine to Portland, and was eventually sent by the United Fruit Company (which then owned many banana-producing properties in Jamaica) to manage some of their estates in Central America. There he continued to practise the management style he had learned in Jamaica (getting the most out of the small farmers). Until the little farmers plotted to murder him.

The facts I am giving now were told to me by Fletcher himself many years later when I got to know him well. He explained that in Costa Rica where he had managed a United Fruit Company farm, the labourers plotted to get rid of him, and almost succeeded. He was going through his accounts late one night, and one of the papers had dropped to the floor. As he bent down to pick it up, a gunshot rang out, blowing a hole in the window-curtain just where the light had cast a shadow in his head the moment before.

The small farmers were so sure they had killed him that they published a 'death notice' in a newspaper the next morning. This incident convinced him that it was time to leave Costa Rica.

Fletcher returned to Jamaica, and with borrowed funds he set up his own business in Montego Bay. The business grew from strength to strength for Fletcher was a hardworking person. He devised ways and means both to serve the farming community and to earn money in the process. He bought agricultural produce for export, and was so successful at this that he eventually competed against United Fruit in Jamaica, establishing his own wharf on the Montego Bay waterfront from which he shipped farm produce to United Fruit's competitor ­ Standard Fruit.

While buying produce from the farmers, Fletcher in turn sold them various items needed on farms, such as farming tools and saddles for horses and donkeys, so that, as he put it, he 'made something coming and going'.

As years passed, Fletcher branched out into the insurance industry (which eventually became the dominant section of his firm). His business also became the western-region circulation and advertising agent for the Gleaner Company, and his son, Sydney Gerald Fletcher, eventually became the managing director of the Gleaner Company.

It may not be widely known that Fletcher's enterprise in the buying and export of farm produce actually led to his participation in the founding of Grace, Kennedy and Company Limited.

In time, Fletcher became influential as shareholder/director of other businesses in Montego Bay, as well as heading the Doctor's Cave Bathing Club and the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce. During that period he began to focus on rendering community service, became a Justice of the Peace, and generally made himself available to help in various community activities.

In the meantime, the people of Montego Bay had come to know and respect ­ and be grateful ­ to Charles Agate, who, apart from having worked his way up the ladder at Fletcher and Company, had made a great impression as a voluntary social worker. He had founded the Montego Bay Boys' Club in the depressed Railway Lane area, and this club was making a visible difference among the under-privileged youngsters. Incidentally, one of its products is the Honourable Rex Nettleford, O.M., the present administrative head of the University Of The West Indies.

By 1944, Agate had risen to be in charge of the large warehouse in the Fletcher and Company complex. And all Montego Bay knew it was in for electioneering fireworks when both Walter Fletcher and Charles Agate announced they would contest the Montego Bay seat in the House of Representatives. It was quite a tug-of-war, but not just between those two candidates - there was also pharmacist, Mr. Greene-Spence, for the People's National Party, and for the first time in Jamaica a female came forward to contest an election - she was Iris Collins, campaigning for the Jamaica Labour Party. In this election race, she was popularly referred to as 'the filly', and it was the filly who won the seat.

When the dust of the hustings had settled, the other candidates gracefully acknowledged their defeat, but many observers wondered how matters would evolve in the future relationship between Walter Fletcher and his trusted employee, Charles Agate.

Agate decided he should give up his position with Fletcher and Company, and tendered his resignation on the day after the results were announced. In his letter, he asked Fletcher to arrange for a stock-taking before he gave up the job. Fletcher replied saying that he had every confidence in Agate's honesty, and therefore saw no need for stocktaking ­ he could just hand in the keys.

Agate proceeded to established a business of his own, while continuing to operate the Montego Bay Boys' Club, while Fletcher also served the community in various ways, eventually becoming Custos Rotulorum for the parish of St. James. And the two men were even firmer friends than they were at the time of the election campaign. And the constituency of Montego Bay welcomed the lesson - that competing candidates can remain friends both during and after the heat of an election campaign.

Part 1