Remembering Michael Manley — A

YESTERDAY marked the 96th birthday of Michael Norman Manley, Jamaica’s fourth prime minister, who was born on December 10, 1924. He died on March 6, 1997 at 73 years old.

He served as president of the People’s National Party (PNP) and was prime minister of the nation from 1972 to 1980 and from 1989 to 1992.

One of his former wives, Beverley (Manley) Duncan, in her book The Manley Memoirs, noted that “he was diagnosed with cancer early in his third term and, as a result, left politics in March 1992. She noted that he was a worried man as he was concerned “about how history would assess him. He worried constantly about his legacy. It was important to him that his children recognise and appreciate what he had tried to do for Jamaica, that they should understand his deep concerns about justice and equality”.

And perhaps those two last words — justice and equality — best sum up his legacy because those issues were what consumed him most even as he sought to champion a democratic socialist agenda as a populist politician.

Notwithstanding his warts and all, Manley has undoubtedly remained one of Jamaica’s most popular prime ministers. Readers will recall how strongly thousands of Jamaicans reacted in anger and consternation when Prime Minister Andrew Michael Holness, in a reported speech, cast some doubt on Manley’s legacy. Needless to say, he subsequently recanted much of what he had said and sought penance.

For people who are questioning the legitimacy of a Mark Golding as party president because of his pigmentation and social background — especially those within the PNP — it must be noted that Michael Manley, in 1972 when he ascended to the leadership of that noble political movement, was of a similar ilk, his mother Edna being a white Englishwoman. Indeed, as the late Professor George Eaton in his seminal work Alexander Bustamante and Modern Jamaica wrote: “Manley, who was facing the Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) Hugh Shearer at the polls, despite having all the social credentials lacked by Shearer, adopted quite the opposite posture. Here was Joshua, with his rod of correction, coming to attack privilege and wrongdoing, and to lead his people into the promised land. In direct contrast to the impeccably dressed Hugh Shearer, Michael Manley instituted the ‘bush jacket’ and casual wear as the symbolic dress of a liberated people and a manifestation of the determination of the PNP to achieve a unified and more egalitarian society.”

One has to wonder if

“Brogad” and his Clarks has a similar objective? No offence meant, of course.

There has been much debate about whether or not Michael Manley should be named a national hero. If one is to go by the outpourings of grief and kind sentiments that came from a wide cross section of the society at the time of his passing, then it is safe to conclude that “Joshua”

Manley, notwithstanding his faults and peccadilloes, was well-loved and respected by the majority of the Jamaican people. Indeed, cutting across narrow partisan lines, he has had national, regional and international stature — a feat few Jamaican politicians have attained in living memory.

Delano Franklyn, attorney-at-law, in his compilation of Manley’s many speeches entitled Michael Manley, The Politics of Equality, declared: “Michael Manley was a true internationalist who understood the complex interplay among national, regional and global processes. He readily grasped the fact that the historically determined structures underpinning these relationships played an important role in perpetuating the asymmetric power relations between the developed and developing countries and the need therefore for the adoption of a proactive stance in promoting the interests of the latter…indeed during the 1970s and 1980s Manley became the most articulate voice on behalf of the developing world in championing the cause of the New International Economic Order which dominated the international economic agenda during the period.” (taken from the foreword)

In a Jamaica Observer article on March 18, 1997, during the period of mourning his passing, I wrote, “It is not for this generation to make Manley a national hero. Already he is a hero in the eyes of many of the poor and dispossessed, the marginalised and wretched of the Earth. What we should be doing is to fulfil his mission so that, in the long run, generations to come will call him blessed. Norman Manley took us into political independence and charged the next generation epitomised by his son, Michael, to achieve economic independence which is yet to

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