Premier Jennifer Smith was right to call for the Progressive Labour Party to unite behind its leadership at the party's conference on Monday night.

No political party should be divided going into an election year and the divisions in the PLP, in spite of various efforts to paper them over, are severe.

The Premier, in perhaps her most direct acknowledgement of the PLP's internal divisions, said some of the dissent was reminiscent of the mid-1980s when the party split in the wake of the 1983 election defeat and four MPs were eventually expelled.

That split and the subsequent 1985 election catastrophe led to the resignation of then-leader Lois Browne Evans and then the long and ultimately successful reconstruction of the party under the late L. Frederick Wade.

If he were alive today, Mr. Wade would no doubt agree with Premier Smith on the need for unity; but he might take a different approach to bringing the party back together.

That's not because Ms Smith said anything wrong in her speech to delegates. She acknowledged there was a time and place for creativity and individualism and a time for pulling together. She compared the PLP to an orchestra; if all the members are playing different tunes, the result is noise, not music.

But what Ms Smith omitted when she recalled the 1984 expulsions was the fact that MPs like Gilbert Darrell, Walter Brangman, Lionel Simmons and Austin Thomas were at odds with the then-leadership of the PLP for the same reasons that some backbenchers are now; they feel left out of a tightly controlled PLP inner circle.

The Premier, as leader must call for unity and she must call for all members of the team to pull in the same direction. But if she really wants to win the dissidents back, she has to acknowledge that some of the problems are of her own making. When nine out of 18 MPs at a meeting say they are unhappy with your leadership, that means you have bridges to build. And although the MPs then agreed to work with the leadership, there has been little evidence of genuine efforts to solve the internal problems the PLP faces.

Assuming the PLP does paper over the cracks, pull together and win re-election, there are no guarantees that the divisions in the party will not resurface after the election, especially if the PLP loses seats.

So the Premier should take a leaf out of Mr. Wade's book to bring the party back together. To be sure, Mr. Wade, once his mind was made up, stuck by his decisions. But he seemed to listen to a good many points of view beforehand and gave people of disparate views and opinions the sense that they were all being taken seriously and were respected.

They might not always get their way, but most people in political parties accept the idea that they are governed by the majority view, even when they think it is wrong. But there has to be a good debate first.

To be sure, it is easier to be all things to all people in opposition. It is much harder when a party is in power and real decisions affecting people's lives have to be made. But it is still possible to listen to a wide range of views and then make the best possible decision, and it is not too later for the Premier and other members of the inner circle to reach out to the disaffected members of the PLP.