If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. This example Michael Manley, Jamaican Political Leader Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. Mona, Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2000. Narratives of Resistance: Jamaica, Trinidad, and the Caribbean. Seaga, and in the context of the neoliberalism of the Reagan-Thatcher years, Manley recast his policies during his third and final term in office (1989–92), privatizing some industries, cutting government spending, and pursuing more orthodox monetary, trade, and investment policies, while never relinquishing his rhetorical or practical commitment to improving the living standards of the majority. After his 1980 electoral defeat by Conservative E. A shrewd politician, he cast himself as an authentic expression of the needs and aspirations of Jamaica’s poor and dispossessed, allying himself with the religio nationalist Rastafarian movement and integrating reggae music and other forms of Afro-Caribbean artistic expression into his political repertoire. He also instituted a range of left populist policies in the arenas of health, education, and unemployment. Described as “tall, handsome, charismatic, and a spellbinding orator,” Manley promoted a pragmatic left-socialist democratic populism that resonated among large sectors of the Jamaican electorate.ĭetermined to improve the living conditions of his country’s poor majority and to enhance Jamaica’s standing vis-à-vis the more advanced industrial world, during his first term as prime minister he increased the state’s role in the country’s bauxite industry, the country’s principal export commodity and a major source of foreign exchange.

Returning to Jamaica, in the early 1950s he became involved in the country’s burgeoning trade union movement in 1962 he was appointed to a Senate seat in the newly independent nation-state and became vice president of the PNP. After the war he attended the London School of Economics, becoming a protégé of prominent British socialist Harold Laski. He was the son of Jamaican premier Norman Washington Manley and Edna Manley and the older brother of former Jamaican Prime Minister, Michael Manley. Despite his privileged background, which he readily acknowledged, in 1942 at age 18 Manley enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force, serving in the European theater but seeing no combat. Douglas Ralph Manley ( - 26 July 2013) was a Jamaican politician, Member of Parliament (MP), and Government Minister.

Michael manley jamaica prime minister