Reflecting on the tenure of P.M. Micheal Manley

Recently the news has highlighted the recent visit of the British Royals William and Kate to Jamaica. This is an important development because their visit coincided with significant protests surrounding the topic of reparations for slavery in which Jamaica was Britain’s paramount slave-colony. The development of fellow CARICOM nation Barbados ditching Britain to become a republic has set a presitent for Jamaicans who are attempting to bring their relationship with the British Commonwealth to a close. However, this is not Jamaica’s first attempts at becoming a republic, as the socialist government of Micheal Manley had made efforts to making that transition that for many reasons never materialized.

I started my journey in the HistoryMakers digital archive with the search term “Micheal Manley” in order to isolate Jamaica at a specific moment in time, i.e. the Manley Government. I came across an interview with Professor Edward Palmer of Illinois University in which he reflects on why he formed his connections with the Manley government stating: “He [Reagan] stated that what brough Jamaica to his attention was he was being destabilized and my argument was what we had to do was we had to create a back graft, a backfire. We had to burn some--and we needed to bring people down there”. Reagan’s destabilization of the Manley government prompted Prof. Palmer to want to bring down some folks from the United States in solidarity with Jamaica. Professor Palmer developed good relations with Micheal Manley but however the real political engine behind the Manley socialist reforms presented itself in the form of Manley Wife in which Prof. Palmer noted as the origins of Manley’s racialism stating: “Michael and I became very close and I became even closer to his wife, who I really liked, Beverly. I used to always say she's twice the man that Michael is because Michael would hesitate, and Beverly was just straight ahead, just a powerful woman”. Professor Palmer was brought to Jamaica to consult Prime Minister Micheal Manley on what he thought he should be doing in terms of crafting policy and solidarity with Black circles in the United States. His advice was so good he was given lot of privilege with Jamaica as he Palmer sates: “so I explained what I thought he should be doing in America and in Jamaica and so he put up his hand again and he said listen he told his cabinet member for now on Buzz Palmer is to have carte blanche in Jamaica. Anything he says or wants assume it's coming directly from me. So then I began moving people in and out of Jamaica”.

In another interview concerning the Manley Government, William E Ward recounts his time studying at the University of the West Indies, the Caribbean’s most prestigious university, during the time of the Manley government, reflecting on its political character stating: “And at that time, Michael Manley was the president of Jamaica, and here again, Jamaica was experimenting with its version of socialism and kind of indoctrinated--not indoctrinated, but kind of exposed to, again, Caribbean socialism and the kinds of plights and problems and struggles of the Caribbean”. The Manley Government had sought to address Jamaica’s underdevelopment by creating a grassroots electoral government that looked to create a more just society via progressive taxation, primarily on the Bauxite mines (a necessary component on making aluminum). In another interview with Hugh Barrington Clarke, Jr. reflects on the effect of these mining cartels after having brought his father to return to Jamaica after a long time stating: “wasn't so much that as much as the country was changing. It was production columns and it wasn't as pretty as he remembered it, it wasn't as lush as he remembered it. A lot of the strip mining for bauxite and aluminum products, it just robbed the land”.

Micheal Manley’s government acquired the ire of the Reagan Government as Manley linked Jamaica increasingly with Cuba and the social movements of the Third World. A large platform for his election campaign would be to transform Jamaica into a republic and distancing itself from the British royal family and the British Commonwealth, a move that would anger certain conservative forces internally such as Edward Seaga, and imperial forces externally.

I started to expand my search by looking up Manley’s political right-wing pro-US political opponent “Edward Seaga” and I came to an interview with Frank Morris of USAID. In his interview he stated that: “Seaga really convinced Reagan [President Ronald Wilson Reagan] that he was big private enterprise fellow brilliant. Seaga [sic. Michael Manley] London School of Economics [London School of Economics and Political Science, London, England] all very, very socialist (unclear), he convinced Reagan he was going to be the private enterprise man and we went from almost being the bottom of the per capita U.S. foreign assistance to almost to the top and Reagan in his visit to Jamaica was his first foreign trip and so we were part of a plan and I figured this was coming”:

Jamaican Attempts to form a republic were undermined by the Reagan Regime which funded violence in the country to disrupt any form of revolutionary electoralism. Now Jamaica finds itself in a similar position today about what its future will be, and by the proclamation of the current prime minister, it looks like Jamaica is on its way to realizing one of Manley’s key political goals.