Michael Manley

Michael Norman Manley ON OM OCC PC (born 10 December 1924 in St. Andrew; died 6 March 1997 in Kingston) was a politician who served as the fourth prime minister of Jamaica, from 1972 to 1980, and from 1989 to 1992. He also wrote seven books.

• Democracy means far more than the right to vote every five years. It means the right to participate in every aspect of national and community life. The people must believe that they can take part.
  • from Broadcast statement on his retirement from office (March 15, 1992)

• To understand today’s politics one must always begin with yesterday’s economics.
  • Jamaica: Struggle in the Periphery (1982)

• Democracy should be as much a system of participation as a method of representation.
  • Address at UN conference on Non-Governmental Organisations (August 25, 1980)

• Just as surely history is the product of those forces which seek to dominate in the name of glory or profit, equally is history the product of the forces of those who rebel.”
  • Address at special plenary session of the UN General Assembly on ‘International Anti-Apartheid Year’ (October 11, 1978)

• In a plural world, it is the right to self-determination, and not its outcome, which is the inalienable right of every man. And it is wherever the absolute right to self-determination is denied that peace is most at risk.
  • Address at special plenary session of the UN General Assembly on ‘International Anti-Apartheid Year’ (October 11, 1978)

• Where political sovereignty has been conceded but economic power remains untouched, equality remains a myth, social justice proves unattainable and even freedom becomes an ambiguous phenomenon.
  • Address at International Conference in Mozambique in support of the peoples of Zimbabwe and Namibia (May 17, 1977)

• If we look about us we see the lengthening shadows of a thousand small corruptions creeping across the landscape of our nation. This is monstrous, for it is not the evening of our history; it is the morning and the shadows should be forming the other way.
  • collected in The Search for Solutions: Selections from the Speeches and writings of Michael Manley edited by John Hearne (writer) (1976)

• We believe that the idea of equality is the only enduring principle by which mankind may be guided in the conduct of national and international affairs.
  • Address to the UN General Assembly (October 2, 1972)

• Any realistic vision of change must be based on the notion of empowerment of people.

• The globalisation of the world economy has not led to a more equitable distribution of wealth but is facilitating its further concentration.

• All organized societies depend on a power system; and politics is the business of power, its acquisition and its use. Observation of history suggests that there have been three approaches to politics and, therefore, three approaches to the use of power. There are men, perhaps the majority, who see power as something to be acquired for its own sake. Then there are those who see power as something to be used for purposes of minor adjustments in the society. Finally, there are the idealists who seek to arrange fundamental change. (from Introduction)

• The more that I have thought about the morality of politics, the more there has emerged for me a single touchstone of right and wrong; and the touchstone is to be found in the notion of equality...The more I have thought, therefore, about social organization, the more I have concluded that here is only one supreme, moral imperative that cannot be affected by time, by circumstance, by the seasons, by man's moods or intellectual distractions, by the injunctions of philosophers or the sermons of pastors; and it is the notion that social organization exists to serve everybody or it has no moral foundation. (Introduction)

• In the early post-colonial phase of a developing country, only political movements devoted to the politics of change have relevance. An analysis of the legacies of colonialism suggests a degree of social debilitation together with economic and social malformations so grave as to make the politics of tinkering within the status quo, irrelevant to our condition. (1: The Setting for Change)

• As Hegel divined philosophically, and as every physicist since Newton knows as a matter of course, history is the story of action and reaction. (4: Self-Reliance and the Problem of Attitudes)

• Government today must not only reflect the politics which have been described as the art of the possible. It must reflect also the pursuit of the ‘impossible’, so that our own capacity may be confirmed to ourselves and self-doubt banished. (4: Self-Reliance and the Problem of Attitudes)

• Self-reliance refers to our capacity to accept responsibility for our own development within the social grouping; while social responsibility implies our awareness that our development must take place in the context of a general respect for the interests of others in the group. So too, with nations. (4: Self-Reliance and the Problem of Attitudes)

• At the international level, colonialism is an extension of the slave-master relationship as between classes within a society to the larger scale of the relationships between entire peoples and nations. I suggest, therefore, that the consequences of the relationship as between nations locked in the colonial equation is markedly similar to those that arise amongst people locked in the slave equation. Here, of course, one has used slavery as an example only. It must be remembered that the master-servant, superior-inferior relationship has taken many forms in history. European feudalism, czarist despotism, Latin American military dictatorships operating at the behest of an oligarchy, South African apartheid and Dixiecrat racism are all variants of a common theme. Similarly, colonialism in the sense of the rule of one people by another is an extreme form of a generalized historical phenomenon in which societies, for one reason or another, are externally dominated. Thus, one must make distinctions within a common category to understand history. (4: Self-Reliance and the Problem of Attitudes)

• your first duty is to challenge the chain that ties tomorrow's possibilities to yesterday's conclusions. The task is to break the chain even at the price of shocking the society. Indeed, it is desirable that one should shock the society, because only by the act of shocking are you likely to generate a form of collective introspection through which people will begin to re-examine the basic workings of their own unconscious assumptions. (from Introduction)

• when we talk of an open foreign policy we are seeking to establish the fact that the entire world is the stage upon which a country, however small, pursues this perception of self-interest. Nor does one have to conclude that self-interest is either an immoral or an amoral phenomenon. National self-interest for example, leads no wise man into war. War has often been the resort of fools like Mussolini or knaves like Hitler. They shared a common fate. And even successful wars of aggression set in train forces that undo the temporary advantage that they may confer. The only wars that are morally justified in history are those dedicated to national liberation where it is clear that no other method can succeed. Therefore a policy of enlightened self-interest will commend to any intelligently-led nation the conclusion that peace is in every man's interest in the end. Hence every country, and Third World countries even more so, has a tremendous investment in the success of the United Nations. But even as a supporter of the United Nations, it is also important that our foreign policy reflect a clear adherence to principle and the expression of those principles in the councils of the United Nations...The commitment must be to principle but tempered with a cautious recognition that many of the issues of international politics bristle with difficulty. In fact, it is the very complexity of these problems and the tensions that they create in the world that makes it so imperative that the United Nations itself survive and increase in influence and strength in the world. Hence a foreign policy must include a concern for everything that affects peace in the world which in turn implies a constant vigilance about international relations generally. (3: Foreign Policy)

• Art is the mirror through which a society perceives itself; and it is a mirror that must be held up to young societies constantly if they are to achieve a sense of their separate identity in the world. Clearly, therefore, the development of the latent artistic talent of a society is important to its growth and critical to the process of psychological transformation with which we are concerned. (4: Education)

• Class divisions and social justice are incompatible. Hence, if the latter is to be achieved the former must yield. However, as with all human behaviour patterns, class attitudes are deeply entrenched. The difficulty of the task leads many political leaders of idealistic commitment to shrink from the remedies that are required because these are drastic. It is clear that the process of transformation from a stratified to a classless society must begin with the educational process. (4: Education)

• If people are to acquire self-confidence and rediscover the cultural continuity to which they are heirs, the mask of obscurity and shame must be ripped from the face of our African heritage. Once again, this will disturb the establishment, but it is a pre-condition of national maturity. Cultural exchanges between the Caribbean and Africa and the introduction of a stream of basic teaching about African history must take their place alongside the flow of European artists who are understandably encouraged by the British Council and similar metropolitan bodies. If we are to know ourselves, we should know at least as much about the Ashanti wars as about the Wars of the Roses. If we do not know ourselves, we cannot hope to acquire the self-confidence upon which the spirit of self-reliance must rest. (4: Education)

• If the moral purpose of this mission is to remain intact, it must be approached in humility and supported by prayer. Hegel once remarked that 'history is the march of God in the world'. Ours, then, is the task to see that the road tends ever towards justice. (6: First Directions)

• Missing from the book was an analysis of imperialism, capitalism, socialism and tribalism within the Jamaican political system. Each of these represent an important element in the understanding of both international and national politics. The extent to which they were incompletely recognised or understood was to have a significant bearing on events between 1973 and 1980.

• In a macabre way, debt, drugs and development all have a bearing upon each other. All three are incapable of being defeated in the case of drugs; of solution in the case of debt; or of progress in the case of development, if pursued in a purely national context.

• time is not on the side of a country like Jamaica. The world economy is evolving in both technical and structural terms at an incredible pace. Our ability to maintain and if possible increase our position within that framework will be largely determined by our success in education. The commitment has been made to treat education as the central social priority of the 1990s. The old sterile debate about whether education is a right or a privilege has long since been overtaken by a new reality. The training of the young is the critical investment in a nation's future and its capacity to provide a better life for its people. The attempt is now being made to persuade an entire nation to understand this fact and to commit the resources necessary to do the job.

• …all sorts of things that don’t even look political got mixed up with the 1970s and the new politics. So, that was how, when I came here, how I viewed and Woodside. Anything that was out of the current order then was now possible. As if Mr. Manley had shattered some sort of glass globe and people could go inside and take what ideas they felt like having. It was really quite revolutionary, if unstructured.
  • Erna Brodber, interview (2015)

• the man...was a great guy, a formidable person!...As a matter of fact, I think that in law, Manley is much more interesting than in politics. Because as you know he was a great lawyer and a man of really brilliant mind.
  • Victor Stafford Reid in New World Adams: Conversations with Contemporary West Indian Writers (1992)

• [asked about similarities between a character in The Star-Apple Kingdom and Michael Manley] DW: I think what I was concerned about was that Michael does have a profound love of his country, Jamaica, and he's a fighter, and I wanted to catch the poise of anguish that comes from wishing for a kind of order that can only perhaps be imposed by a kind of discipline, 'heavy manners' if you want.
  • Derek Walcott, 1980 interview collected in Conversations with Derek Walcott edited by William Baer (1996)

• National Library of Jamaica page
• Goodreads page
• Trinity College Center for Caribbean Studies page