Norman Washington Manley - Miempowerment.com

The Rt. Hon. Norman Washington Manley

1st Premier of Jamaica
Born: July 4, 1893
Died: September 2, 1969

In office
14 August 1959 – 29 April 1962

Industry: Government; Politics

was a Jamaican statesman who served as the first and only Premier of Jamaica. A Rhodes Scholar, Manley became one of Jamaica’s leading lawyers in the 1920s. Manley was an advocate of universal suffrage, which was granted by the British colonial government to the colony in 1944.

Encouraged by Osmond Theodore Fairclough, who had joined forces with the brothers Frank and Ken Hill, Hedley P. Jacobs, and others in 1938, he helped to launch the People’s National Party which later was affiliated to the Trade Union Congress and even later the National Workers Union. He led the PNP in every election from 1944 to 1967. Their efforts resulted in the New Constitution of 1944, granting full adult suffrage.

Manley served as the colony’s Chief Minister from 1955 to 1959 and as Premier from 1959 to 1962, He was a proponent of self-government but was persuaded to join nine other British colonies in the Caribbean territories in a Federation of the West Indies but called a referendum on the issue in 1961. Voters chose to have Jamaica withdraw from the union. He then opted to call a general election even though his five-year mandate was barely halfway through.

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Norman Manley was born on July 4, 1893, to mixed-race parents in Roxborough in Jamaica’s Manchester Parish. His father, Thomas Albert Samuel Manley was a small businessman born in Porus, Manchester, Jamaica in 1852. His mother, Margaret Ann Shearer, was the daughter of a mixed-race woman (Mrs. Ann Margaret Clarke, née Taylor, a widow) and her Irish second husband, Alexander Shearer, a pen-keeper on a farm. His paternal grandparents were Samuel Manley, a white English trader who had migrated from Yorkshire, and Susannah Patterson, a black woman of the Comfort Hall plantation, in Manchester. Samuel Manley later married Esther Anderson Stone, a black woman of St. Elizabeth. He was one of four children.
Manley spent his early years on his father’s property at Roxborough. Thomas Manley died while his son was still a young boy and soon afterwards his widow Margaret Manley and her young children left Manchester for St. Catherine, where she had a property called Belmont.

Norman Manley was registered at Guanaboa Vale Elementary School at eight years old. He excelled in the classroom and began his secondary education at Wolmer’s Boys’ School in Kingston for a year. However, the following year he drew nearer home and attended Beckford and Smith’s in Spanish Town. Later on, he won an Open Scholarship to Jamaica College where his gift for athletics found full expression. After leaving school he taught at Jamaica College, Hope Farm School until he received news that he had won the Rhodes Scholarship.

He read Law at Jesus College, Oxford where his studies were interrupted by World War I. In 1919 he resumed his studies at Oxford University, gained First Class Honours and won the Lee Prizeman (Essay) Award at Gray’s Inn before being called to the Bar in 1921. In that same year he married his cousin Edna Swithenbank.

Almost simultaneously with the beginning of his work with the J amaica Welfare Ltd., Manley became deeply involved in the economic and political upheaval of the 1930’s. He was involved in union activities, which led to the establishment of the Trade Union Congress (TUC). As soon as the first period of turmoil was over, Manley went various parts of the island, recruiting persons to come to Kingston to take part in the formation of a political party.

On September 18, 1938 the People’s National Party was launched at a huge meeting at the Ward Theatre. The formation of this party was indeed the beginning of the national movement for self-government.

Six years later, in 1944, the first election under Adult Suffrage. The People’s National Party was largely responsible for paving the way towards the establishment of the new constitution, which gave all Jamaicans the right to vote. The party was, however, defeated at the polls that year but won in 1955.

During his years of administration Manley placed great emphasis on agriculture, education and industry. In 1959, the PNP achieved one of its primary goals, that of self-government. The Jamaican Government now became responsible for the internal affairs of the country, and Manley, the former Chief Minister was from then on addressed as Premier.

In 1932 Norman Manley was made King’s Counsel The Howard University conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Law in 1946. He was voted a life member of the Congress of International Organisations by the United Transport Service Employees in Chicago. A speech made by Manley at the National Press Club in Washington was published in the Congressional Record. In 1961 he was made an honorary citizen of Kansas City , Missouri. The Order of National Hero, the highest Jamaican Honour was conferred on Norman Manley after his death. His birthplace at Roxborough in Manchester is a National Monument A memorial has been erected on the site of his grave in the National Shrine, at National Heroes Park. The Norman Manley Award of Excellence has been established and is awarded annually to Jamaicans who have given distinguished service to their country.

Manley served as chief minister from 1955 to 1959.

The Facilities for Title Act of 1955 enabled people who occupy land for more than 7 years to obtain credit for development. The Loans To Small Business Act was passed in 1956 “to provide for the establishment of a board to grant loans and other forms of financial assistance to persons engaged in carrying on small businesses.”

One of his biggest goals as chief minister was to make sure all children had access to public education. The Jamaica Institute of Technology was established in 1958, and that same year Caledonia Junior College was established under the Emergency Teacher Training Scheme to address the shortage of trained teachers. The Education Law was amended in 1958 so that the old education department of the colonial period might be integrated into the ministry, and that the constitutional responsibility of the minister for the entire educational system might be fully established. A five-year education plan of 1955 was expanded into a ten-year plan in 1957, and by the following year, 15% of government funds were being spent on education. Some of this money was allocated towards a program of grants-in-aid that brought secondary education within the reach of many more children. In 1958, the Common Entrance examination was introduced, which offered an unprecedented 2,000 free places in high schools each year (previously, most high-school students were the fee-paying children of the well-to-do, with only a handful of parish scholarships available through which the bright poor could gain access).

Manley was appointed Jamaica’s first premier on 14 August 1959.

As premier, Manley renegotiated a government contract with bauxite companies, leading to a sixfold increase in revenue. His government also set the dominant economic agenda for the future in Jamaica by establishing statutory boards, government bodies, and quasi-government authorities to regulate and play an active role in the industry.

Industrialization increased agricultural production, and agrarian reform figured large in the People’s National Party’s plan for a great leap forward. According to Philip Sherlock, five years after he took office, Manley was able to claim that much had been done to correct the imbalance in the distribution of land in Jamaica. Of the country’s 2.2 million acres (8900 km2) of usable land, 1.2 million acres (4850 km2) were in the hands of people who owned under 500 acres (2 km2) each, and 0.7 million acres (2830 km2) were held by those who owned properties of over 500 acres (2 km2).

According to a 1954–55 census, there were 198,000 farmers with holdings of under 500 acres (2 km2). There had been a great shift in land ownership (which was continuing), and steps were also taken to ensure that idle acres were put to use, with Manley repeating a “commonplace thought,” that the ownership of land was a sacred obligation, and that no country could afford to regard land as unfettered private property because the life of the whole community depended on it. The Manley Government showed that it meant business by passing a Land Bonds Law that gave powers for the compulsory acquisition of land and provided the means for compensation.

Thousands of small farmers were provided with subsidies, while new markets were opened for an increase of products in various fields. The Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation was set up for public education and entertainment as well as to encourage Jamaican creative talent, public library facilities were extended to all parishes, and primary schools were built.

Sir Alexander Bustamante (left) with Norman Manley.

Agricultural aid was also increased during Manley’s time in office. Rather than giving subsidies, as the Jamaican Labour Party had done, incentives were offered and facilities for soft loans were provided. The money allocated for agricultural credit went up from £182,000 in 1954 to £893,000 in 1959 and to £947,000 in 1961. Money was available for land reclamation, dairy farming, fish farming, water and irrigation, improved land use, fertilizer programs, and the like.

In 1960, a pension scheme for sugar workers was introduced. The Shops and Offices Act was passed in May 1961 to provide for “the regulation of the hours of business of shops and offices and for the welfare and the regulation of the hours of work of persons employed in or about the business of shops and offices.”

Manley was a strong advocate of the Federation of the West Indies as a means of propelling Jamaica into self-government. When Bustamante declared that the opposition JLP would take Jamaica out of the Federation, Manley, already renowned for his commitment to democracy, called for a referendum, unprecedented in Jamaica, to let the people decide.

In the 1961 Federation membership referendum Jamaica voted 54% to leave the West Indies Federation. The vote was decidedly against Jamaica’s continued membership in the Federation. Manley, after arranging Jamaica’s orderly withdrawal from the union, set up a joint committee to decide on a constitution for separate independence for Jamaica.

Manley chaired the committee and led the team that negotiated independence. And then he called the election that was to see him become Leader of the Opposition instead of Jamaica’s first Prime Minister. Manley took Jamaica to the polls in April 1962, to secure a mandate for the island’s independence. On 10 April 1962, of the 45 seats up for contention in the 1962 Jamaican general election, the JLP won 26 seats and the PNP 19. The voter turnout was 72.9%.

This resulted in the independence of Jamaica on 6 August 1962, and several other British colonies in the West Indies followed suit in the next decade. Bustamante had replaced Manley as premier between April and August, and on independence, he became Jamaica’s first prime minister.

Mr. Manley had suffered a series of heart attacks dating from 1953, and he was forced into early retirement in 1969 due to ill health. His last public appearance was made in July 1969 when he received the Jamaica School of Agriculture Gold Medal for distinguished service to Jamaican agriculture. He became ill on Monday, September 1, 1969, fell into a coma, and died the following afternoon. He was 77 years old.

Manley lost the next election to the JLP. In the 1967 Jamaican general election, the JLP was victorious again, winning 33 out of 53 seats, with the PNP taking 20 seats.

He gave his last years of service as Leader of the Opposition, establishing definitively the role of the parliamentary opposition in a developing nation. In his last public address to an annual conference of the PNP, he said:

“I say that the mission of my generation was to win self-government for Jamaica. To win political power which is the final power for the black masses of my country from which I spring. I am proud to stand here today and say to you who fought that fight with me, say it with gladness and pride: Mission accomplished for my generation.

He added:”And what is the mission of this generation?… It is…reconstructing the social and economic society and life of Jamaica.”

Due to respiratory illness, Manley retired from politics on his birthday in 1969. He died later that year, on 2 September 1969. His tomb was designed by the critically acclaimed Jamaican sculptor, Christopher Gonzalez.

As a young man, he married his maternal cousin Edna Manley (née Swithenbank) (1 March 1900 – 2 February 1987) in 1921. They had two children together. Their second son, Michael Norman Manley, went into politics and rose to become the fourth Prime Minister of Jamaica. The elder son, Douglas Manley, became a university lecturer, politician, and government minister.

Manley was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. Manley’s speech entitled, To Unite in a Common Battle was delivered in 1945 at the fraternity’s Thirty-first General Convention in Chicago, Illinois.

After his death, Manley, and his still-living cousin Bustamante, were proclaimed National Heroes of Jamaica on 18 October 1969, joining the black nationalist Marcus Garvey, nineteenth-century hero Paul Bogle, and nineteenth-century politician George William Gordon. Manley, also being the former Premier and Chief Minister of Jamaica, can be seen on the Jamaican Five Dollar Coin, being portrayed as the country’s national hero.