Norman Manley

Norman Manley, full name Norman Washington Manley (1892-1969), Jamaican statesman. As head of the People’s National Party, Manley created many of the conditions necessary for that country’s independence from the United Kingdom. In 1914 he won a Rhodes Scholarship and was admitted to Jesus College, at the University of Oxford, to study law. In 1915 he enlisted in the Royal Field Artillery. He returned to Oxford in 1919 and was admitted to the bar in 1921.

In 1922 Manley returned to Jamaica, where he gained prominence as a barrister. The economic distress of the late 1920s and the 1930s drew him into public service. Manley helped form Jamaica’s first large cooperative, the Jamaica Banana Growers Association, which challenged the United States-owned United Fruit and the British-owned Elders and Fyffes companies. Manley's efforts produced a contract favorable to the cooperative and acceptable to United Fruit. By 1938 Manley was convinced that fundamental social change required political action, and so he organized the People's National Party (PNP) to campaign for the elimination of property requirements for voting and to win Jamaican self-government. Slowly he built a mass base and thereby introduced organized politics into Jamaica. The PNP lost the 1944 election to the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), but it won power in 1953.

As prime minister from 1953 until 1962, Manley created many of the administrative and financial situations necessary for Jamaica’s independence. He supported Jamaica's entry into the West Indies Federation in 1958 but held a referendum on withdrawal in 1962 when Federation and Jamaican interests clashed. Independence was obtained later that same year, and in the elections that followed the PNP lost to the JLP, headed by Alexander Bustamante. Manley became leader of the parliamentary opposition and retired in February 1969.