Orville Taylor | A Phillips-tipped bit for a flat-headed screw

Late 1970s, led by Head Boy Clyde McKenzie, we upper school boys at St George’s College often engaged our brothers from the other side of North Street, Kingston College, whose intellectual standard-bearer was Stephen Vasciannie while joking about the canine contents of the delicious patties we consumed. Recognising our privilege in attending the two top boys’ schools in Jamaica, with free conduit to the great plantation, University of West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus, our mission was to make Jamaica better, because geographically, we were inner-city schoolboys.

Vasciannie justifiably felt great discomfort as former Deputy Prime Minister, President of the PNP and immediate past Leader of Opposition, Peter Phillips, charged, “For the most part, however, there is little policy-focused research available from the UWI. To this I can personally testify, having held four ministerial portfolios over the past 30 years.”

Somehow, this shiny broad brush does not stand up to scrutiny and demonstrates a repugnance to the work of those academics, especially the ones who actually had worked outside of the UWI and melded practice, research and experience. My ‘Fortis’ colleague gave an insightful and inciteful menu of policy relevant research, which as great an appetite as Phillips has for knowledge, is more than he could possibly chew.

It would be disingenuous to downplay the introduction of Research Day by then Principal Kenneth Hall, with outstanding academics being recognised and awarded for ‘Best Publication’ annually. Ultimately, I agree with Vasciannie, that the plantation has produced an astounding body of knowledge, which policymakers might have or have not used. However, while I might accept the possibility that as we get older the short-term memory wanes, as mine has; Phillips, who himself was part of that incubator consortium graduate programme, with academics brighter than missing light bulbs, cannot be excused.

DEVELOP KNOWLEDGE

Doubtless, I agree with him that the mandate and obligation of the UWI is to develop knowledge useful to the policymakers. However, Phillips should remember that his party is about to compete, albeit with a ‘Risen’ leader, in an impending election.

Current leader Mark Golding will be assessed on the track record of Phillips and others; so he ought to choose his speaking moments and content. True, current Minister of Finance Nigel Clarke owes Phillips a debt of gratitude, because he led the country through one of the most difficult economic storms and was so exemplary, that the head of the International Monetary Fund herself came here to bump his fist.

Nevertheless, choosing to respond to Vasciannie, he declared, “during my ministerial tenure there was no relevant policy advice concerning any of the fundamental policy issues arising in the portfolios...” Furthermore, “as in the case of national security, there was no available research focusing, for example, on the main determinants underlying the steady rise of violent crime since Independence.” Apparently, he slept on the UWI.

As security minister, he inherited a constabulary, guided by sociology, psychology and social work (SPSW) graduates Jevene Bent, Novelette Grant and the late Mary Royes, and leadership by a ‘unsworn’ member of the department that revamped its training profile and led the Staff College to tertiary-level registration with the University Council of Jamaica. The next steps did not take place until Peter Bunting succeeded him.

His comments spit in the face of Anthony Harriott, the late Bernard Headley and more recently Herbert Gayle, who offered and proffered research-based policy suggestions regarding the antecedents of crime and violence. My colleagues in the FSS and in particular SPSW produced much of the work related to the Census, labour market, The Survey of Living Conditions, the Social Development Commission and Statistical Institute of Jamaica.

When did Phillips seek out FSS and SPSW work while he was a part of government from 1989 to 2007 and again from 2011 to 2016?

The Childcare and Protection Act of 2004 reflects the contribution of the body of social work from our unit. Claudette Crawford Brown, body of work related to child development, led America’s NBC to do a documentary on her. Ask her and the other colleagues about antecedents of violence.

At the risk of sounding self-serving, in 2001, the International Labour Organization contacted me via professor Neville Ying, an academic whose practical work in business and human resource development has produced results in the private and public sector. Hidden in full view, I produced a study outlining the dangers of contract work and some of the issues of connected to vulnerable groups within the labour market including security guards. I explicitly warned against the inadequacy of the 2002 proposed amendment of the Labour Relations and Industrial Disputes Act.

DEAF EARS

In fact, some of the recommendations relating to the LRIDA fell on ‘deaf eyes’ and ‘blind ears’, until Pearnel Charles Sr asked me for a point-by-point document, which ultimately influenced the 2010 amendment of the act.

My work on flexitime was ignored by the government until the ILO, in response to a post-facto request for technical assistance, directed me to present a seminar on its behalf in 2004. In several Mona academic conferences between 2000 and 2005, independently and as part of the Ying-led Labour Studies Group, I developed and publicly presented a body of work, showing the relationships between the decline of ‘decent work’, the reduction in labour productivity and increase in social violence/homicides.

For the record, my book Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets … launched on Research Day in 2015, warned about the ’insecurity’ industry and has 19 pages of recommendations.

Nevertheless, regrettably, UWI, like the rest of the society, has a few house slaves and overseers, who, for whatever reason, denigrate the work of their own peers and cannot blame their political allies for blinking. After all, imagine a ‘thermometer’ of degreed men ruling that the compliment, by an internationally reputed academic that their colleague’s “work ... needs to be considered as a particularly worthwhile area of expertise and scholarly involvement for an eminent institution such as the University of the West Indies,” is a negative evaluation.

Phillips might mean well, but one can’t see if he doesn’t look.

Dr Orville Taylor is senior lecturer at the Department of Sociology at The University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.