9 “From This Era of Passionate Self-Discovery”

Norman Manley, Human Rights, and the End

of Colonial Rule in Jamaica

Steven L. B. Jensen

Introduction
The Caribbean region is not unknown to human rights historiography.
The Haitian slave revolution led by Toussaint L’Ouverture in the 1790s
has been featured occasionally and rightly belongs among the three
Atlantic revolutions of the era – the American, the French, and the
Haitian – with the latter more firmly making anti-slavery, anti-racism,
and anti-colonialism a significant companion to this story.1 In the context
of twentieth-century human rights, the Caribbean has been consigned to
the periphery in this as well as other transnational histories until recently.
The realities of the global economy and the distribution of political power
and influence have helped determine this fate. For all that, Jamaica
emerged as a global leader in international human rights diplomacy after
the island’s independence in 1962, with its government immediately
moving to energize the international human rights project.2 By 1964,
the country was recognized at the United Nations as a leader in the

1
Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). See also Laurent Dubois, “Why
Haiti Should Be at the Center of the Age of Revolutions,” Aeon Magazine (2016),
[Link] haiti should be at the centre of the age of revolution
2
Steven L. B. Jensen, The Making of International Human Rights: The 1960s, Decolonization
and the Reconstruction of Global Values (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
2016). This chapter expands on my book but is based on new archival research conducted
at the National Archives of Jamaica in Spanish Town, the National Library of Jamaica and
the Library of the University of the West Indies (MONA Campus) in Kingston, the
British National Archives in Kew, and the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
I would like to thank former Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Jamaican Civil Service
the Hon. Carlton E. Davis for providing me with valuable insights into the background
history of Jamaica’s Central Planning Unit and Michelle Neita for invaluable assistance
during my research visits to Jamaica. Senior Lecturer in Law Tracy Robinson and
Professor of History Matthew Smith both from the University of West Indies gave
particular valuable advice and suggestions in connection with a seminar organized at
UWI on a draft version of this chapter in November 2017. I would also like to give special
thanks to Heidi Betts for her extensive and insightful comments on several draft versions
of this chapter.

236
 Manley, Human Rights, and the End of Colonial Rule in Jamaica 237

field – a role it maintained until the end of the decade.3 The same year,
Jamaica launched its first foreign policy strategy – most likely the first such
strategy to integrate human rights as a key priority herein.
This role and dedicated emphasis, which by the end of 1968 had
achieved a string of noteworthy results, did not emerge out of nowhere.
It may appear obvious to look at international developments – such as
apartheid in South Africa or racial discrimination more broadly – to
explain Jamaica’s focus on human rights. This however is too narrow a
lens to provide a comprehensive understanding of what guided their
efforts. What was thought to be one of many countries on the periphery
of human rights appears, in fact, to be at its center. So what happens
when the periphery proves to be the center?
This chapter explores the domestic political history behind the ambi-
tious legal and political agenda that Jamaica laid out at the United
Nations during the 1960s.4 Its focus is mainly on the final years of
colonialism in Jamaica from 1955 to 1962 and on the leading politician
Norman Manley, his vision and the intellectual networks he nurtured.
The following account traces how domestic political developments
during this period shaped Jamaica’s international human rights diplo-
macy immediately after independence, exploring the policy space
between colonialism and independence that gradual self-governing
entailed. Jamaican public policymaking at this time must be situated in
the history of Jamaican constitutionalism, development planning and the
tradition of domestic social and economic research that emerged in
Jamaica from the 1950s and associated with the renowned Caribbean
economist Arthur W. Lewis. A policy synthesis emerged in 1960–1961 as
a result of a convergence of three different policy strands characterizing
Jamaican decolonization, namely development planning, human rights,
and nation-building. The chapter is structured to illustrate this conver-
gence. Though the story concludes with the human rights policy synthe-
sis at the twilight of empire in Jamaica, the language of human rights is
not always the main protagonist but instead appears as a supporting act –
or a component part of a larger historical process.
In January 1961, the Manley government announced that human
rights should become guiding principles in the country’s national devel-
opment planning. The intention was to produce “a Ministry Paper
containing a declaration of Government policy in respect of Human
Rights” and place it before the Jamaican parliament for debate and
adoption. In the preceding months, human rights had been a topic in

3 4
Ibid., 85 7. Ibid.
238 Steven L. B. Jensen

cabinet discussions and had featured in a review of “Government

Policies for Long Term Development.”5 The policy represented both a
vision for Jamaican statehood and a form of economic crisis manage-
ment, illustrating how an emphasis on human rights was nurtured with
increasing depth by domestic political actors in response to local political
realities. In tracing the mid-twentieth-century Caribbean roots of what
would become a prominent feature of global politics, I argue that the
emergence of international human rights was more closely entangled
with nation- and state-building processes, with national development
planning and debates over inequality and the standard of living than
previously understood. The end of empire in the Caribbean was to have
a formative influence on universal human rights.
The significant challenge in assessing decolonization in Jamaica and
the wider Caribbean has been accurately captured by Spencer Mawby:
At the end of empire, democratically elected politicians were expected to rectify
problems which had been left wholly unaddressed by generations of imperial
policymakers; they took on the remedial task of diversifying economic activity and
achieving a measure of social progress in an international environment over
which they had almost no influence. Any attempt to tell the story of the
transition to political independence in the Anglophone Caribbean which does
not take account of these factors is incomplete.6
Mawby’s critique of the historiography is that it is biased in that, to a
considerable extent, it blames the shortcomings of effective self-
government on the politicians in the region while downplaying or even
ignoring the responsibility of the British colonial government in produ-
cing political failures. Mawby has emphasized the colonial power’s
stalling tactics, condescension, failure to commit to solutions, and
unwillingness to fully put political and economic weight behind the West
Indies Federation – as undermining the support and legitimacy of the
Federation itself.
Three temporal dimensions have defined the historiography of decol-
onization in Jamaica – one that is often interwoven with the wider British
Caribbean. However, viewing it through Mawby’s lens should inspire us
to take a fresh look at the historical record.
The first temporal dimension bridges the full decolonization story
from the 1930s to the 1960s. It could be labeled, “The Making of

5
“Cabinet Submission: Declaration on Human Rights,” Note by N. W. Manley, Premier,
January 6, 1961, Box 1B/31/27, Norman Manley Papers, National Archives of Jamaica,
Spanish Town.
6
See Spencer Mawby, Ordering Independence: The End of Empire in the British Caribbean,
1947 1969 (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
 Manley, Human Rights, and the End of Colonial Rule in Jamaica 239

Modern Jamaica/the Modern West Indies.” Labor protests across the

islands in the late 1930s changed the political dynamics in the region and
started the long process toward independence which came in the 1960s.
This timeframe is well acknowledged in the historiography.7 The inter-
ests of Great Britain as the colonial ruler and the United States as the new
superpower added a larger geopolitical context for Caribbean politics
during this period.
The second temporal dimension operates with a shorter timeframe
and focuses on the ill-fated West Indies Federation that existed from
1958 to 1962. Federation was for a long period seen as the viable option
for independence despite constant tensions between the political entities.
These tensions would decide the fate of the West Indies Federation. The
process, however, provides the explanatory framework for the final out-
come of decolonization in the region. The Federation is well studied but
remains so central that it still stimulates new insightful works.8
The third temporal dimension focuses on Jamaica’s independence in
1962. This covers the short, intense political process from the autumn of
1961 until August 1962 when independence was finally achieved. The
drafting of the independence constitution was a vital part of this process.
Jamaica decided to include a “Bill of Rights” in the independence consti-
tution after a significant debate on human rights.9

7
The classical work is Gordon K. Lewis, The Growth of the Modern West Indies (London:
MacGibbon & Kee, 1968). See also Jessie Harris Proctor, Jr., “British West Indian
Society and Government in Transition 1920 1960,” in The Aftermath of Sovereignty:
West Indian Perspectives, ed. David Lowenthal and Lambros Comitas (Garden City,
NY: Anchor Books, 1973), 31 65. See also Jason Parker, Brother’s Keeper. The United
States, Race and Empire in the British Caribbean, 1937 1962 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2008). Recent contributions focusing specifically on Jamaica include Colin A.
Palmer, Freedom’s Children: The 1938 Labor Rebellion and the Birth of Modern Jamaica
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014); Birte Timm, Nationalists Abroad:
The Jamaica Progressive League and the Foundations of Jamaican Independence (Kingston:
Ian Randle, 2016). The novelty of Timm’s book is the centrality of the diaspora element
which provides a revision to the traditional focus on actors representing the two party
political system that emerged in Jamaica after 1938.
8
See Mawby, Ordering Independence; Eric D. Duke, Building a Nation: Caribbean Federation
in the Black Diaspora (Gainesville, FA: University of Florida Press, 2015); Adom
Getachew, Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self Determination (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019).
9
Classical works are James B. Kelly, “The Jamaican Independence Constitution of 1962,”
Caribbean Studies 3, no. 1 (1963): 18 83; Trevor Munroe, The Politics of Constitutional
Decolonization: Jamaica 1944 62 (Kingston: Institute of Economic and Social Research,
University of West Indies, 1972); Lloyd G. Barnett, The Constitutional Law of Jamaica
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). For more recent studies, see Simeon McIntosh,
Caribbean Constitutional Reform: Rethinking the West Indian Polity (Kingston: Ian Randle,
2002); Tracy Robinson, “Gender, Nation and the Common Law Constitution,” Oxford
Journal of Legal Studies 28, no. 4 (2008): 735 62.
240 Steven L. B. Jensen

Norman Manley and the Birth of Modern Jamaica: 1938

In 1963, the Jamaican government launched its Five Year Independence
Plan 1963–1968. In the introduction, Edward Seaga, the recently
appointed Minister for Development and Welfare, reflected on the coun-
try’s journey since 1938 toward its newfound independence:
An urgent need for new definitions seemed to seize Jamaicans of every sort after
1938. In every aspect of life, from social relationships to artistic expression, new
voyages of discovery were made. It was as if Jamaica realized, for the first time,
that it did not know its own face nor the sound of its own voice. From this era of
passionate self discovery the Jamaica of today has emerged.10

Decolonization in Jamaica had been a process of becoming, a process of

assertion and of facing “a profound cultural crisis”11 related to both the
development of a national political identity and the prospects of ensuring
functioning governance. Jamaica had faced these questions with increas-
ing intensity over a period of twenty-five years. On the cusp of independ-
ence, this was the self-image that was articulated:
Present day Jamaica is a microcosm of the world, mixing many of its peoples,
having many of its problems, some of its misfortunes, and endeavoring to answer
the question that must concern every country today, large or small, namely, can a
small country achieve and maintain at once, parliamentary democracy, economic
viability and social justice.12
This was not merely political rhetoric, but a reflection of deeper
ingrained experiences linked to ending colonialism in Jamaica – experi-
ences in which human rights played an interesting role.
What was set in motion following widespread labor riots in 1938 was a
process of nation- and state-building. The historical trajectories were
never that straightforward, however, despite what often appears to be
the evolutionary nature of the transition toward greater self-rule, consti-
tutional reform, and eventual independence. Understanding what shaped
the road to 1962 requires understanding both the political visions and the
specific political priorities advocated by the main Jamaican actors.
In domestic political discourse, 1938 became a constant reference as
the turning point for the ensuing developments and subject of continued
contestations over who best represented its meaning and its legacies.

10
Five Year Independence Plan 1963 1968: A Long Term Development Programme for Jamaica
(Kingston, July 1963), 4 (emphasis added). The national development plan launched in
1963 was presented by the JLP government but in reality it was a plan developed by the
Manley government while still in office.
11 12
Ibid., 4. Ibid., 6.
 Manley, Human Rights, and the End of Colonial Rule in Jamaica 241

A century after emancipation, with poverty, squalor, and the remnants of

a plantation economy still too dominant, something needed to change.
Out of the 1938 labor riots, where fourteen people were killed and many
more injured, two political parties emerged both with strong trade union
and social movement affiliations. Norman Manley’s People’s National
Party (PNP) would compete for political influence with the Jamaican
Labour Party led by Alexander Bustamente.
While the Jamaican Labour Party would perform well and win the first
national elections after their introduction in 1944, there can be little
doubt that the most influential person in this story is Norman Manley.
A lawyer by profession and a World War I veteran, he emerged in 1938 as
an important voice in the national movement, defending the rights of
protesters and issuing refined critiques of the failures of the British
colonial administration.13 He would be at the vanguard of political
developments for the next three decades due to his vision for Jamaican
society, its governance and its engagement with the wider world, as well
as because of his remarkable ability to snatch principled victories –
enhancing the democratic functioning of Jamaican politics – from the
jaws of his own and his party’s political defeats. Known as “the Man with
the Plan,” Manley led Jamaica during the years that saw the end of
empire from 1955 to 1962, a period in which he ensured vital consti-
tutional and institutional reforms and in which his emphasis on advan-
cing societal planning and a strong legislative record laid the groundwork
for post-independence Jamaica.
The 1938 riots led to calls for widespread political change. In their
immediate aftermath, Manley was a key player in the creation of the
PNP that called for full adult suffrage and self-government. This was an
ambitious agenda compared to the usual staleness of Jamaican politics
and the conservatism of British colonial rule. Manley advocated dis-
creetly for it in a series of confidential conversations with the British
governor of Jamaica. He focused on the need for constitutional reform
because the existing constitution ensured that “no training for future
Self-Government is possible,” and he called for a “positive policy for the
advancement of a people as distinct from the casual administration that
has no bigger aim than preserving the fictitious equilibrium of the status
quo.”14 The analysis was echoed by Governor Arthur Richards who
provided his own even harsher analysis of the situation. The Governor

13
Arnold Bertram, N. W. Manley and the Making of Modern Jamaica (Kingston: Arawak
Publications, 2016), 149 62.
14
“Memorandum on Constitutional Change for Jamaica,” N. W. Manley, February 8,
1939. British National Archives, CO 137/834/7.
242 Steven L. B. Jensen

wrote that “there is no administrative service” and that “the adminis-

tration of Jamaica is, and always had been, a sham.”15 Self-reflection
or even self-criticism appeared to have little currency in the Colonial
Office in London so the finger was never pointed at the British colonial
administration itself when it came to assigning responsibility for the
dire situation. The Colonial Office was more focused on identifying
political risks and this may have spurred an initial willingness to consider
Manley’s proposals for reform as they did resonate with those of
Governor Richards.
Norman Manley had emerged as the “ablest” and most insightful
conversation partner when it came to the constitutional reforms needed
in Jamaica but hopes for a constructive relationship soon turned sour as
Governor Richards began to arrest critics of the regime.16 World War II
could have stalled developments but political change had been set in
motion, local political actors were positioning themselves and by the
early 1940s what would become the future party system had begun to
emerge. The demands for reform had not disappeared. The debates over
constitutional reform would turn increasingly bitter and the negative
approach of the governor and the Colonial Office back in the UK was
indisputably a contributing factor.
The debates on a new constitution involved a range of issues con-
nected to the project of increased self-government in Jamaica. The
debates brought forward an issue that Norman Manley and his party
had been promoting with increasing conviction, namely the introduction
of universal suffrage in forthcoming elections once the new constitution
was in place. This proposal prevailed in the Jamaican constitution that
was pronounced in November 1944. With the December 1944 elections,
Jamaica became only the third member of the British Commonwealth –
after New Zealand and the United Kingdom – to introduce universal
adult suffrage that included women’s right to vote. This was a marked
change from the old model where voting rights for the small Legislative
Council had only been granted to men with a certain level of property
and wealth. The number of eligible voters increased by 1,000 percent
with the introduction of universal adult suffrage in 1944.17 Norman
Manley had by no means been the only political actor pushing for these
changes but he was the most prominent and influential advocate who

15
Memo from Governor Arthur Richards, Kingston to Malcolm MacDonald, Secretary of
State for the Colonies, London, April 22, 1939, 3. British National Archives, CO 137/
834/7.
16
Palmer, Freedom’s Children, 281.
17
Tracy Robinson, Arif Bulkan, and Adrian Saunders, Fundamentals of Caribbean
Constitutional Law (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 2015), 32.
 Manley, Human Rights, and the End of Colonial Rule in Jamaica 243

emerged from the process – a reality that was apparent when the crowds
cheered him on the occasion of the public announcement of the consti-
tution in Kingston on November 20, 1944.
From 1938 to 1944, the decisive role of the PNP in brokering these
political changes in Jamaica did not bring them a majority in the House of
Representatives. The Jamaican Labour Party led by Alexander Busta-
mente was able to directly mobilize a large part of the electorate through
their very strong trade union affiliation. The PNP served as the oppos-
ition from 1944 to 1955, a period when there was only a slow movement
toward more self-government. Its various political programs were
informed by human rights thinking such as their Plan for Progress from
1949 that declared as the party’s political goal “to afford to every man,
women and child in Jamaica the human dignity, the rights of freedom,
knowledge and opportunity which should repose in every human
being.”18 The inspiration for this could have had several sources. There
was the Universal Declaration on Human Rights adopted at the UN in
1948 but equally likely is the fact that Norman Manley and key PNP
persons were part of a transnational political debate that from the 1940s
included human rights. There had been suggestions in 1946 and 1948 as
part of the West Indies Conference of the Caribbean Commission to
develop a “Bill of Human Rights and Obligations” for the Caribbean.
This could have influenced the PNP program. During these years
Norman Manley played a significant role as the leader of the opposition
and as a political thinker, planner, and practical hands-on politician he
would wield significant political influence.19 The PNP, however, could
not fully realize the potential of their more carefully considered and
planned approach to the project of self-government until they obtained
full political power. By the time they achieved this theirs would soon
become a project of ending empire in Jamaica.

The PNP Government and Democratic Planning

as “Self-Discovery”: 1955–1960
The PNP led by Norman Manley were finally able to form a government
after the parliamentary elections of January 1955. The party had been
preparing for this moment for many years and came to power with a

18
Peoples National Party: Plan for Progress, 1949, National Library of Jamaica, Richard
Hart Collection, MST 126a b, Pamphlets Jamaica, vol. 2, 1945 9.
19
For an insightful elaboration on this, see Stuart Hall, “Norman Manley Memorial
Lecture 1984,” Norman Manley Memorial Lectures 1984 & 1986 (London: Norman
Manley Memorial Lecture Committee, 1986), 7 20.
244 Steven L. B. Jensen

strong political platform which also included references to human

rights.20 The PNP embarked on an ambitious agenda aimed at modern-
izing the economy, combining a broad range of industrial and social
reform policies, institution building as well as ambitious arts and culture
policies producing a remarkable legislative record in the process. The
core of the modernization project was a new and more ambitious
approach to the whole question of societal planning. Manley identified
poor planning as the cause of the poor performance of the previous
Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) administration. Two days after his election
victory in a national broadcast he announced the creation of a Central
Planning Unit.21 By April 1955, the Unit was established and became
vital to the work of the government. The Unit became a separate entity
situated between Manley’s office and the Ministry of Finance and repre-
sented a revolution in the development of government planning capacity
in Jamaica.22
Two important developments came about as a result of the Central
Planning Unit. The first related to the intellectual, scholarly, and political
networks that provided a fertile community of discussion partners that in
various ways could support the aims of the Unit and the journey of “self-
discovery” that Jamaica had embarked upon. The creation of the
Jamaica-based Caribbean scholarly journal Social and Economic Studies
in 1953 was one significant illustration of the “domestication” of quality
social science expertise from the 1950s. The Central Planning Unit
brought new forms of expertise into play and further professionalized
what public administration entailed. The second feature was a conver-
gence of policy thinking and approaches that were applied in an innova-
tive and experimental manner and made this small island in the
Caribbean an intellectual force in development practice worldwide.23

20
See Peoples National Party: Plan for Progress, 1954, National Library of Jamaica,
Richard Hart Collection, MST 126a b, Pamphlets Jamaica, vol. 3, 1950 6.
21
Bertram, Manley and the Making of Modern Jamaica, 252. Norman Manley was also
Minister for Development. From 1957 his main title was that of Premier Minister.
22
As late as the 1940s, literature researching or investigating economic questions was
dominated by official reports prepared for or by the UK government. See Adlith
Brown and Havelock Brewster, “A Review of the Study of Economics in the English
Speaking Caribbean,” Social and Economic Studies 23, no. 1 (1974): 48.
23
This fertile environment would lead to international recognition for a number of the
persons involved. The Head of the Central Planning Unit was G. Arthur Brown who
became UNDP Deputy Administrator in the 1970s. The Permanent Secretary of the
Ministry of Finance Egerton Richardson who was closely involved with the Central
Planning Unit became Jamaica’s UN ambassador in 1962 and was the mastermind
behind Jamaica’s remarkable human rights diplomacy. Arthur W. Lewis, Vice
Chancellor of the University of West Indies (1958 62), won the Nobel Prize in
 Manley, Human Rights, and the End of Colonial Rule in Jamaica 245

It was out of this convergence of policy thinking that the government’s

1961 human rights policy grew.
However, with large-scale unemployment and an ever-expanding
population base, the economic situation was challenging. There was
private sector-led growth in the 1950s mainly because of bauxite mining
that became an important source of export earnings. Demographic
trends showed that large youth generations would continue to rapidly
expand the population size, but it was clear that the economy could not
absorb new generations into the workforce as employment was in severe
shortage. With the lack of land reform to expand access to farming
combined with high levels of unemployment, the workforce migration
out of Jamaica to the UK, Canada, and the United States became a
desperately needed lever to alleviate the situation. The task was how to
manage an impoverished, underdeveloped country with the colonial
legacies still ever present.
The PNP government framed a significant part of its response to this
dilemma by trying to link an advanced philosophy of societal planning
with a practical adaptation of the theoretical lessons from the emerging
field of development economics – the latter represented especially by the
Caribbean economist Arthur W. Lewis. It was this response that was
nested in the Central Planning Unit. Norman Manley wanted the most
advanced expertise to inform the functioning of the Unit. He traveled to
New York to meet with UN experts to identify an international adviser
on planning. The person identified was George Cadbury who had strong
experience from British wartime planning before he joined the UN in the
1950s. Cadbury and Manley became close during the former’s period in
Jamaica which lasted from 1955 to 1959.
The Soviet Union was at this point seen by many – especially in the
developing world – as being the vanguard of state planning and an
example to follow. However, Manley and Cadbury represented a distinct
anti-Soviet philosophy of democratic planning. They found Soviet plan-
ning too mechanical, too dogmatic, and lacking the reflective qualities
that a more dialogue-oriented approach offered. Their anti-Soviet
philosophy was coherent with a refined anti-colonial philosophy of
enhancing scientific planning and this defined their government’s
approach. During his time as adviser to the Central Planning Unit,

Economics in 1979. Another Jamaica based university academic, and occasional adviser
to the Manley government from 1960, the development economist Alister MacIntyre
became a senior director at UNCTAD the UN Conference on Trade and
Development in the 1970s. Interview with Sir Alister McIntyre, Kingston, Jamaica,
June 27, 2013.
246 Steven L. B. Jensen

George Cadbury elaborated on the planning philosophy and practice that

was being applied in Jamaica. In a paper prepared for a conference of the
Inter-American Society of Planners in Lima, Peru in November 1958 he
laid out the following vision:
There is, I believe, a need to recognize that no one approach to planning whether
by an economist, a sociologist, an architect, a doctor or an educationist is
enough; they must all rely on one another. Each of them will probably find
themselves in competition for the limited revenues of a government so that they
must in the end conform to some wider discipline. It is this concept of planning
on as wide a basis as the physical and the political jurisdiction of the government
concerned, and as sensitive to democratic demands by recognizing the politician
as an essential fellow craftsman, that is emerging under the title of comprehensive
planning.24
This was a remarkably precise articulation of the planning vision that
informed Manley’s government. It represented a broad-ranging approach
to societal planning well beyond the traditional focus on physical plan-
ning that was mainly concerned with infrastructure. It also suggested a
unique role for the responsible politician to tie different forms of expert-
ise into a larger whole in decision-making processes. In the colonial
setting of late-1950s Jamaica, the elected politician was assigned an
important role in bringing democratic accountability and scientific
endeavor together. It made a subtle but clear argument; namely that
government could not rule from London but needed a solid foundation
and authority based in Jamaica itself. The implication was that colonial
rule was an archaic and outdated form of governance. The thinking was
rather eloquent in the way it positioned itself both in the context of the
East–West Cold War dynamics and North–South colonial dynamics. It
also illustrated how planning was a nation- and state-building project
in itself.
The second part of the PNP response was the engagement with the
newest thinking in the field of economics relevant to poor and under-
developed settings. In 1954, the St. Lucian-born economist Arthur
W. Lewis published an article still regarded as a seminal piece in the

24
“Comprehensive Democratic Planning in Practice,” Draft Paper by George Cadbury
sent to Norman Manley September 23, 1958, Box 4/60/2A/24, Norman Manley Papers,
National Archives of Jamaica, Spanish Town. Cadbury’s job title in Jamaica was UN
Economic and Social Advisor. The draft paper was later published in a revised version,
see George Cadbury, “How to Plan in a Democracy,” Democratic Planning a
Symposium. Ontario Woodsworth Memorial Foundation, Toronto, 1962, 3, 4 5. For
more on the planning debate in the West Indies context, see Rudolph Knight, “Progress
and Democracy A Concept of Modern Planning,” West Indian Economist 2, no. 1 (July
1959): 26 8.
 Manley, Human Rights, and the End of Colonial Rule in Jamaica 247

founding of development economics.25 The article entitled “Economic

Development with Unlimited Supply of Labour” presented a two-sector
model – focusing on the agricultural and industrial sectors in the under-
developed world – and argued that the unlimited supply of laborers in the
traditional agricultural sector would be absorbed in the urban industrial
sector as this sector expanded. The theory was highly influential in
development thinking during the 1950s and the 1960s and was part of
the reason that Lewis was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in
1979.26 Lewis’s influence on the Central Planning Unit as well as the
wider political debate in Jamaica in the late 1950s was due both to his
intellectual influence and his physical presence in Jamaica as he served as
Principal for the University of the West Indies from 1958 to 1962 and on
the board of the influential magazine the West Indian Economist.
In the debates on national development planning in Jamaica the
relationship between agriculture and industry was a central topic but
the transfer model that Lewis had outlined was not straightforward as
large parts of both sectors were inefficient and the necessary investment
capital was in too short a supply.27 The 1957 National Development
Plan for Jamaica, prepared by the Central Planning Unit and launched
by the Manley government, identified education as a major priority to
help ensure social and economic development and to serve as an inter-
mediary between agriculture and industrialization to secure growth.
This policy innovation was an interesting and strategic adaptation of
Lewis’s model that also challenged its basic premise.28 The Manley
government’s version of the two-sector model consisted then of agri-
culture and education. Agriculture and education were Jamaica’s two
main national development priorities in the national development plan
launched in 1957.
The government had realized that it could not force industrialization in
a way that would solve the many economic challenges that Jamaica faced.
Improvement in the educational level across the island was regarded as a
prerequisite for development and for eventually achieving a diversifica-
tion of the economy. The 1957 National Development Plan also applied
rights language as it talked about ending discrimination in access to
education, that the educational opportunities “provided by Government

25
Hamid Hosseini, “Arthur Lewis’ Dualism, the Literature of Development Economics,
and the Less Developed Economies,” Review of European Studies 4, no. 4 (2012): 132.
26
For a recent study illustrating this political significance, see Getachew, Worldmaking after
Empire, 146.
27
For a perspective on Jamaica’s agricultural sector, see editorial, “Is Jamaica the Model?,”
West Indian Economist 1, no. 5 (November 1958), 7 10.
28
A National Plan for Jamaica, 1957 1967.
248 Steven L. B. Jensen

should be open and available to allow a basis of genuine equality” and in

a section on health for the rural population it was stated that the govern-
ment would aspire to ensure that Jamaicans would have “equal oppor-
tunity to enjoy good health regardless of where he or she lives.”29
The creative application of a philosophy and practice of planning, the
remarkable intellectual work that went into a much more refined national
development plan than had ever existed before in Jamaica30 and the short
distance from plan to legislative program served as an excellent base for
taking the project of self-government forward but it was not sufficient to
overcome the realities of social and economic distress in Jamaica. This
became a widely debated topic in the newspapers as well as influential
magazines such as Public Opinion. It also featured prominently in another
media outlet – the monthly magazine the West Indian Economist, a Carib-
bean affiliate to the London-based The Economist. From 1958 onwards
the West Indian Economist served as a seismograph for some of the most
important social and economic debates in the Caribbean. In particular,
its discussion of the rule of law and social conditions in the region
reflected in a series of editorials throughout 1960 seem to have influ-
enced the Jamaican cabinet to initiate the debate on a human rights
policy in the late autumn of 1960 which in turn led to the PNP govern-
ment’s human rights policy announcement in January 1961.
The starting point for the magazine’s discussion was an observation
that the West Indies had never operated as a society governed by the rule
of law.31 This reflected a colonial legacy but now in its retreat the editors
asked: what did people want in its stead?32 The point argued was that the
economic advancement the region had witnessed especially since the
mid-1950s was insufficient to build viable and independent societies.
The question the editors felt needed to be asked was: “Does the West
Indies as a growing nation really value its citizens?”33

29
Ibid., 5, 40, 45.
30
This is clear when comparing the 1957 development plan with its predecessor, see Report
on the Revision of the Ten Year Plan of Development for Jamaica as Approved by the House of
Representatives on 28 November 1951.
31
It is worth noting that at exactly this time the International Commission of Jurists
embarked on work worldwide to elaborate conceptually and practically the linkages
between human rights and the rule of law. This was done through a series of country
reports and international conferences. See International Commission of Jurists, The Rule
of Law in a Free Society: A Report on the International Congress of Jurists, New Delhi, India,
January 5 10, 1959 (Geneva: ICJ, 1959). The West Indies Bar Association had sent a
representative to the New Delhi meeting.
32
Editorial, “The Case for Law Reform (1): Return to the Rule of Law,” West Indian
Economist 2, no. 9 (March 1960): 7.
33
Editorial, “The Case for Law Reform (2), The Conditions Affecting Demand,” West
Indian Economist 2, no. 10 (April 1960): 7.
 Manley, Human Rights, and the End of Colonial Rule in Jamaica 249

This went to the heart of the West Indian Economist’s concern that the
region’s governments were overly concerned with economic and political
development and did not pay sufficient attention to the social well-being
of citizens and societies at large. The governments were “preoccupied
with measures that act as mere palliatives to the pressures for social change
that are building up in the community” but were doing too little to change
“the status quo of social structure.”34 The editors of the magazine accused
the governments in the West Indies of ducking their political responsi-
bilities since they always focused on providing economic opportunities as
avenues of social mobility and made no real attempts “to install into the
society at large objective values of social justice.”35 The West Indian
Economist was arguing that there was a fundamental balance between the
social, the economic, and the political that needed to be struck but which
was actually being ignored. This failing would have a profound effect on
the region’s future. The social fabric in the West Indies needed particular
attention for the larger project of independence to succeed.
It appears that the PNP heeded this call because it was exactly at this
juncture that Manley’s cabinet started their debate on making human
rights a government response to this well-articulated critique of the West
Indies’ situation and challenge to its record while in office. Around this
time, human rights were making their presence felt in Jamaican political
life also in other ways. In 1958, British colonial officials were struck by
the vibrancy by which Jamaicans had celebrated the tenth anniversary of
the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.36 Furthermore, from
1958 and over the next years the US sociologist Wendell Bell conducted
a series of surveys and interviews with Jamaican politicians and civil
servants to study their values and attitudes. Bell was struck by their focus
on equality and on human rights which he argued seemed to “reflect
some underlying principle of change.”37

The Human Rights Policy and Its Trajectory: 1961

In 1961, Jamaica was a British colony and one of ten island states that
formed the West Indies Federation established in 1958. Throughout the
year, Jamaican politics balanced on a knife’s edge on issues that went to
the core of its future governance and what it meant to be a political entity

34 35
Ibid., 7 8. Ibid., 8.
36
See correspondence on Jamaica in the file “Celebrations in colonies on tenth anniversary
of adoption of Declaration of Human Rights,” British National Archives, FO 371/
145426.
37
Wendell Bell, Jamaican Leaders: Political Attitudes in a New Nation (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1964), 49.
250 Steven L. B. Jensen

in a rapidly changing world. The political contestations were over colo-

nial status versus independence; over the choice of regional federation
versus national sovereignty; and over who would be in power and what
type of politics would dominate. This balancing was also highly visible
due to the existing social and economic tensions that found expression in
the public debates on inequality and on living standards.
Beneath these contestations lay competing visions for national
development linked to disagreements over Jamaica’s and the West
Indies’ place in a decolonized world. These contestations would shape
a controversial political year and change Jamaica’s political trajectory
with enduring legacies that influence Caribbean politics to this day.
The year started with the announcement of the Manley government’s
human rights policy on January 6, 1961. It was based on several rounds
of cabinet discussions in the final months of 1960 and early January
1961. The background documents for the cabinet debate on human
rights had been prepared by the Central Planning Unit and in a policy
paper the Unit had laid out the basis for the discussions. The first
problem identified was that neither the constitution of the West Indies
Federation nor any of the constitutions of its member units included a
statement on the ideals and objectives of the West Indies populations or
of the principles on which their multiracial societies should be founded.
The urgency for such an articulation was felt strongly to help propel the
political projects toward independence in the Caribbean:
The necessity for a clear statement on our national goals is more pressing than
ever at this time, when, in the absence of any declared social ends (other than the
maximization of national production), materialism as a national creed, has
undoubtedly captured the popular imagination thus awakening aspirations
which are obviously incapable of solution in the present circumstances. This
gives rise to unhealthy feelings of frustration among the “have nots” and
manifests itself in class and race antagonisms.38
This was an accurate reflection of the debates that had taken place and
the tensions that had shaped recent political developments. The situ-
ation, it was argued, required that the state acknowledge a set of obliga-
tions to its citizens:
It is the duty of the Government first to make it clear to the people of this country
that they enjoy intangible rights and privileges of far greater value than material
things and secondly, to make those rights and privileges as real as possible to the
average man.39

38
“Human Rights,” Memorandum by Central Planning Unit, November 15, 1960,
Box 1B/31/27, Norman Manley Papers, National Archives of Jamaica, Spanish Town.
39
Ibid.
 Manley, Human Rights, and the End of Colonial Rule in Jamaica 251

It was recommended that the government not wait for action at the
federal level but “take immediate action by local legislation” and make
official declarations of its human rights policies. The starting point
proposed by the Central Planning Unit was an anti-discrimination law
that would make it “an offence for any person to be discriminated
against in a public place or in employment on the grounds of his race,
colour, political belief or religion.”40 Also on their radar was discrimin-
ation against women in the workplace and the Central Planning Unit
made “equal pay for equal work” one of the guiding rights principles.
The Central Planning Unit had drafted “a prototype” for a local bill of
rights that laid out these principles combining civil, political, economic,
social, and cultural rights with inspiration from the 1948 Universal
Declaration on Human Rights and the Bill of Rights from the 1960
Nigerian constitution.41
Anti-discrimination measures featured prominently in the policy paper
as the government realized it was up against pervasive values and struc-
tures in Jamaican society that continued to have a negative influence on
people’s lives. This led the Planning Unit to place an increased emphasis
on employment practices and on investments in education – the latter an
issue that was already a central priority in the country’s national develop-
ment plan. Education was part of an economic policy but also a com-
ponent of the nation-building project that had so occupied Norman
Manley’s work as leader of the PNP. “The right to education and cultural
development” was defined as one of the rights that deserved either
constitutional or other formal policy status because education was one
of the main priorities around which the government was balancing public
demands for social improvements with the political realization that such
improvements could only be realistically achieved at a much slower pace
than demanded – a dilemma well known to developing countries. The
Central Planning Unit explained it as: “Complete social integration is a
process which cannot be rushed, but improved economic and educa-
tional opportunities will work insidiously towards this end.”42
The Manley government had made a commitment with the National
Plan for Jamaica, 1957–1967 to ensure universal primary education for
children between 7 and 11 years of age and had as part of these reforms

40 41
Ibid. Ibid.
42
Ibid. There does not appear to exist any intellectual histories of the Central Planning
Unit’s work. There are some more general accounts, including Roderick Rainford,
Central Planning Unit to Planning Institute of Jamaica: Anchoring 50 Years of Development
Planning in Jamaica (Kingston: Planning Institute of Jamaica, 2006); Gladstone Mills,
“Planning in Jamaica The Early Years,” Planning Institute of Jamaica 50th Anniversary
(Kingston: Planning Institute of Jamaica, 2005), 32 44.
252 Steven L. B. Jensen

also invested in securing 2,000 free places annually to secondary schools

to help children of poor parents to secure the opportunity of a good
grammar school education.43 In this context, the human rights policy
was an attempt to underpin an existing policy framework with the
acknowledgment of individual rights as state obligations and thereby
add a stronger human rights dimension to the government’s national
plan for development. This was intended to be a work in progress in the
relationship between government and citizens or as it was explained:
Having set itself and the country at large, these worthy social objectives, the
government in co operation with the general public could then set about the
task of making these rights a more tangible reality than at the present moment.44

Put differently, the interface between the “Government policy in respect

of Human Rights,”45 as Norman Manley described it, and national
development planning was part of the nation- and state-building project
of the PNP government. The question was: how would this play out?
It was clear that 1961 would be a decisive and complicated political
year because the Jamaican referendum on continued participation in the
West Indies Federation was on the calendar later in the year. The British
Caribbean was on the verge of independence but exactly which political
structures would gain independence was uncertain as long as Jamaica
was rethinking the decision of whether or not to stay in the Federation.
Without Jamaica – one of the larger territories in the Federation along-
side Trinidad and Tobago – it was unlikely that the federation had any
future and the different islands would have to achieve independence
as separate island states causing regional integration to be severely
weakened.46
Jamaica was holding the future of the British Caribbean in the balance.
Norman Manley was a strong proponent of the Federation. He viewed it
as being in both Jamaica and the West Indies’ interest because of the
benefits for the internal development of the Federation’s different Units
but also to ensure a stronger voice to promote and protect the interests of
the West Indies globally. The leader of the opposition Alexander

43
Bertram, Manley and the Making of Modern Jamaica, 260. This was a significant
expansion of education that would benefit generations of young Jamaicans in the
decades that ensued.
44
“Human Rights,” Memorandum by Central Planning Unit, November 15, 1960,
Box 1B/31/27, Norman Manley Papers, National Archives of Jamaica, Spanish Town.
45
Ibid.
46
For a helpful account of the importance of Federation during this period of the process
toward decolonization, see Michael Collins, “Decolonization and the ‘Federal
Moment,’” Diplomacy and Statecraft 24, no. 1 (2013): 21 40. See also Getachew,
Worldmaking after Empire, 125 31.
 Manley, Human Rights, and the End of Colonial Rule in Jamaica 253

Bustamente had decided to turn against the federation, partly as a

populist means to try and undermine the Manley government after its
second election victory in 1959 that had left the JLP weakened. Because
of the divisive stance, Bustamente and the Jamaican Labour Party had
taken, Manley decided to call a referendum to bring clarity to the
political situation. He would have to face the populist brand of Busta-
mente later in the year in order to secure the federation project, a
foreboding sign given their history and the dynamics of Jamaican politics
in the previous two decades. It would lead to a major clash later in
1961 and force a clarification of Jamaica’s postcolonial status.
In the meantime, the Manley government had the human rights
agenda to take forward. The cabinet discussions had highlighted a major
gap with the constitutional developments taking place in the Caribbean
since the 1940s. The constitutional reforms toward greater self-
government had neither for the Federation nor for Jamaica included
the adoption of a bill of rights. This was now placed more firmly on the
political agenda and would become an important part of the negotiations
building up to the 1962 Independence Conference in London.
In April 1961, Manley spoke before a gathering of some of the most
important figures in the local communities across Jamaica, namely the
Union of Teachers. In this major speech, he talked about the same
issues that had influenced the government’s decision to adopt a human
rights policy a few months earlier. Manley acknowledged the “tension
and stresses and strains” that had been disclosed recently while
defending the government’s record of trying to increase the speed of
development. As he often did, Manley placed current issues in histor-
ical context.
The more you progress in an underdeveloped country the sharper the demands
grow for betterment. Because when nothing is happening people stagnate. For
decades in this country literally for decades nobody agitated about anything.
Nobody clamoured about anything. People were taught to believe that what
happened to them in life was some whim of Providence who had called them to
belong to the station where they found themselves. But when you start moving,
movement becomes visible to everybody, and people are no longer prepared to
stand still or to wait forever.47
Manley defended the government’s record when it came to securing
increases in the real incomes of workers despite the claims of increasing
inequality being part of the criticisms leveled against his government’s
management of the economy. He believed that they had moved “a large

47
Norman Manley, “Address by the Premier Hon. Norman Manley, Q.C. to the Jamaica
Union of Teachers Conference,” April 12, 1961, Kingston, Jamaica, 2 3.
254 Steven L. B. Jensen

number of the have-nots” into the category of “haves” and expanded the
tax base in the process. Manley called for calm, reason, and a recognition
of efforts taking place in Jamaica to try and improve living conditions.
While not a surprising statement from a politician holding power it was
noteworthy that he employed rights language to elaborate his argument.
The economic tensions in Jamaica had ignited the risk of racial tensions48
and here Manley tried to place the Caribbean experience in both a global
and an American context with which his audience was familiar. Seeing
the US civil rights movement’s mobilization as an interesting model from
which to draw inspiration, Manley idealistically explained that the “great
Negro leaders”:
have denounced with the utmost vigour, discrimination and intolerance wherever
it is to be found . . . And I who have constantly gone there, and I daresay, many of
you have constantly gone there and talked to their leaders, must have been
astonished to find how they fight for their rights. Many of them would die for
their rights for equal citizenship, but do not denounce the white majority nor
create a state of hatred, race against race. They denounced the thinking that will
allow people to rebel against being asked to share a school with a coloured child.
They will denounce the thinking, they will fight against it, but the one thing they
are working for is the day when equality before the law, and equality in society
shall come in the land.49
Manley was echoing the emphasis on anti-discrimination measures
reflected in the government’s human rights policy proposals. He used
the comparison to make an argument about the lessons for domestic
politics once again using Jamaica’s journey since 1938 as a baseline. In
doing this he articulated the national project, as he saw it, drawing on
history by contrasting the centuries-long history of colonialism and
slavery with the short, intense period in which steps toward ending
empire had had the chance to be nurtured:
I don’t pretend we have put an end to all forms of colour discrimination in
Jamaica. You don’t wipe out three hundred years in twenty years. But I know
that from 1938 those of us who saw what was ahead, bent ourselves to the task of
putting power in the hands of the ordinary men and women of this country,
knowing that the only way to end discrimination is on two fields the field of
power where your own people control your institutions, political and otherwise;
and the field of education where their growth in skill and quality fits them to take
charge of everything for themselves.50

48
This became a theme in contemporary Jamaican fiction of the 1950s; see for example
John Hearne’s 1955 novel Voices under the Window.
49
Manley, Address, 5 6.
50
Ibid., 7. See also Kingsley Martin, “The Jamaican Volcano,” New Statesman, 61,
no. 1566 (March 17, 1961), 416 18.
 Manley, Human Rights, and the End of Colonial Rule in Jamaica 255

His statement illustrates why education had achieved such prominence

both as a key priority in national development planning and as a specific
right in the bill of rights proposed by the Central Planning Unit and
submitted to the cabinet. Manley paraphrased this recent document by
returning to the theme of social integration. Education’s primary task,
Manley believed, was to remedy the damning legacies of the past and
ensure “the integration of the people of the country” and help develop
“an integrated society that believes in itself.” Once again, development
policy, rights, and nation-building were closely interwoven in Manley’s
vision. His statement also revealed the less than solid ground that existed
for a politician building a new polity in the midst of brokering the end of
empire. The PNP government had been criticized for its record on the
economy, especially over questions on standards of living, but Manley’s
main policy response to economic criticism appeared to be the long-term
prospects offered by educational policies where the benefits often only
become tangible with time (at the least a generation’s perspective) and
not the short-term gains that parts of the Jamaican electorate were now
demanding. The politics of decolonization proved again to be the politics
of balancing on a knife’s edge. The social divisions and the lack of
cohesion in the country were ever pervasive and forced the technical
exercise of development planning toward a much larger ambition of
deliberate nation-building. Manley talked about the need for laying down
“a national tradition” for everybody in the country. In grappling with the
very real legacy of societal incohesion the political system was forced to
lay down the tracks while the train toward decolonization was moving
ever faster toward an uncertain future. As Manley explained to the Union
of Teachers, a group that was placed at the forefront of his national
project, tradition was important to broker social and political cohesion
and to shore up resilience to face the challenges ahead:
Tradition in the sense in which I talk means that there is a set of values equally
shared, by and large, by everybody, and that those values are understood in the
same sense and interpreted in the same way . . . It is all those shared values, those
shared beliefs, those shared responsibilities that bind a society together so that in
the months of crisis and difficulty the voice of cohesion is stronger than the voice
of division. It is tradition in that sense of which I speak.51

This was a fair reflection of the political vision that Manley had
promoted ever since his intervention in 1939 when he had laid out the
need for constitutional change in Jamaica. However, it would not be
long before the PNP government’s whole project – and its hold on

51
Manley, Address, 10.
256 Steven L. B. Jensen

power – would be seriously challenged. In the process the trajectory for

the human rights policy endorsed by the PNP government in January
1961 would change.
The West Indies Federation had come into existence in 1958. It was
still in the nascent stages of efforts to develop closer regional cooperation
and integration. There was a federal parliament based in Trinidad that
had come into operation. There were challenges with the large geograph-
ical distance between the federal units – a fact that did not help instill a
sense of cohesion. However, the federation did look like the vehicle to
secure independence for the islands of the British Caribbean and the
quickly approaching date for independence in the West Indies was
expected to be May 31, 1962. The problem was that Jamaica was holding
up the process due to the referendum. As it was explained in the
Jamaican House of Representatives during a major debate on the Feder-
ation, no law to secure independence for the West Indies could be
enacted in the British parliament until the Jamaican referendum had
taken place.52
This debate crystallized more than ever the question of the future of
Jamaica’s self-governing project. Was federation or national sovereignty
to Jamaica’s best advantage? The debate was partly a heated exchange on
the political journey since 1938, partly about the social conditions of the
people in Jamaica and the West Indies and partly about the nature of
independence in a decolonizing world. Manley argued strongly for the
economic and political advantages that federation provided. The West
Indies needed a strong voice in the midst of changing international
trading patterns. With the United Kingdom hoping to join the
European Common Market, this left the Caribbean at risk of being left
behind and further isolated. The Jamaican Labour Party argued for the
benefits of the Jamaican people going it alone claiming that they would
otherwise end up subsidizing the smaller islands of the Federation. It was
a house divided.
The referendum on September 19, 1961 was a defeat for Norman
Manley. He had invested all his energy and a significant amount of
political capital in securing a vote in favor of Federation. The country
had gone with Bustamente and the JLP. It would mean the collapse of
the West Indies Federation and that Jamaica would have to secure
independence on its own. The end of colonial rule in Jamaica was fast
approaching and the post-referendum debate in the House of

52
Norman Manley, July 10, 1961, Jamaica Hansard, Proceedings of the House of
Representatives, Session 1961 2 (April 12 July 26, 1961), National Library of
Jamaica, Kingston, 359.
 Manley, Human Rights, and the End of Colonial Rule in Jamaica 257

Representatives naturally had to address the changed situation. A large

part of the debate, however, went back to the years of 1938 to 1944 and
onwards from there. It was a historical contestation over the legitimacy of
who should lead the process toward national independence: a defeated
Norman Manley who was head of government and still had the parlia-
mentary majority or a victorious Alexander Bustamente who nevertheless
only had a minority in the House of Representatives. The post-
referendum debate also focused on the specific task of preparing a
Jamaican constitution which would be one of the most important tasks
in the months ahead. To a significant extent the debate focused on the
freedoms, civil liberties, and individual rights to be included in the new
founding document. Norman Manley would get the final word in this
debate. He reflected both on the work on human rights carried out by his
own government and drew up the larger global context that Jamaica
would have to navigate:
There is a lot of talk about the problem of preserving certain principles,
constitutionally by enshrining in the Constitution basic human rights. Mr.
Speaker that is a matter that has been studied intensively in the last few years
all over the world. The Declaration on Human Rights made by the United
Nations, as followed not long afterwards by a European Declaration [sic] of
Fundamental Rights. And since then a number of Constitutions have tried one
way or another, write into their Constitutions the fundamental human rights and
entrench them in the Constitution in such a way as to ensure that they may last
for all time even against the most evil intentions of rulers . . . We have here in
Jamaica quite extensive literature on the subject because it has been under intense
study for over a year and it is not only a number of Constitutions on it [sic] but we
have elaborate analyses and reports by distinguished legal persons on the
difficulties and problems involved.53
During the last months of colonial rule it was this foundation Manley
believed was necessary to consolidate in the independence constitution
because the fate of Jamaica was being decided exactly in these processes
that now lay before the politicians of the two parties. The divisions
created by the Federation referendum needed – as the election result
had become clear – to be substituted with a sense of common purpose:
I think it is so vital and important to restore that sense of inner unity in the life of
this country because the first few years of Independence, as have been proved all
over the world, and more proved with every passing year as new nations come
into the world, the first few years of Independence create special problems,

53
Norman Manley, October 17, 1961, Jamaica Hansard, Proceedings of the House of
Representatives, Session 1961 2 (October 12 December 13, 1961), National Library of
Jamaica, Kingston, 528. This is quoted correctly from the source despite the awkward
language.
258 Steven L. B. Jensen

special strains, special stresses, special difficulties of their own. And it is in those
years that one must strive to create once and for all the pattern of life on which
your future will rest.54

Despite the bitter referendum campaign the two parties were able to
quickly close ranks and work together on a new constitution.55 It was
agreed that a bill of rights would form part of this foundational docu-
ment. This followed the precedent – as Manley had indicated in his
speech to the House of Representatives quoted above – of a number of
other newly independent states that had made such a bill part of their
constitutions.56 The proposal also had public backing judging from the
newspaper debate.57 However, there was a caveat.
The bill of rights was an important step forward for constitutional
designs in the Caribbean but also represented one significant shortcom-
ing: the Jamaican constitution focused only on civil and political rights. It
did not feature the right to education which had otherwise been part of
the draft bill of rights that the Central Planning Unit had presented to the
government in late 1960 and which furthermore was recognized as one of
the two main priorities in the national development plan that had empha-
sized enhancing equality in educational opportunities and which Manley
had promoted as a key sector for the “national project.” Instead, there
was significant pressure to entrench the right to property in the consti-
tution. This was pushed especially from members of the business com-
munity, including the wealthy JLP politician Neville Ashenheim.58 The
proposed formula had the potential to seriously curtail the government’s
decision-making authority when it came to large-scale projects to
strengthen social and economic development. It posed a significant
dilemma for the politicians both regarding its inclusion but especially
on the question of the status of the “bill of rights” in the constitution.
Were the politicians about to grant decision-making authority over vital
parts of socioeconomic development planning to the judiciary where
property owners would have a much stronger legal hand? These types
of questions shifted the nature of the human rights debate from the
discussions that had emerged from the cabinet and the Central Planning

54 55
Ibid. Kelly, “Jamaican Independence Constitution,” 36.
56
Charles O. H. Parkinson, Bills of Rights and Decolonization: The Emergence of Domestic
Human Rights Instruments in Britain’s Overseas Territories (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2017); S. A. de Smith, The New Commonwealth and Its Constitutions (London:
Stevens & Sons, 1964).
57
See e.g. Patrick Leach, “A Bill of Rights a Necessity,” Sunday Gleaner, October 22, 1961,
6; editorial, “The People’s Rights,” Daily Gleaner, January 10, 1962, 10; Douglas Judah,
“Human Rights Now or Then,” Daily Gleaner, January 10, 1962, 10.
58
N. N. Ashenheim, “Bill of Rights Is a Must,” Daily Gleaner, September 28, 1961.
 Manley, Human Rights, and the End of Colonial Rule in Jamaica 259

Unit one year earlier. Parallel to this process, the right to protection
against slavery, a sensitive issue in Jamaica, was dropped from the consti-
tution.59 “Freedom from slavery and forced labour” was one of the issues
that the Central Planning Unit had suggested the government give ser-
ious consideration to, but protection from it was not to be part of the
Jamaican constitution.60
There seems to be a valid lesson in contrasting the two processes – that
is the Central Planning Unit memo to the cabinet and the constitution –
that produced a human rights framework. From a human rights perspec-
tive, constitutionalization, while embedding a range of highly important
protections, was too conservative an approach to state-building to fully
address the needs of this developing country. Leaving out education was
a serious omission compared to the political vision and national develop-
ment planning that had nurtured a highly advanced level of human rights
thinking in Jamaica during that “era of passionate self-discovery” that
preceded Jamaican independence in August 1962. Nevertheless, the
human rights principles in the Jamaican constitution were not imposed.
It was rather that they chose to follow the “Westminster model” for the
constitution. This meant a focus on fundamental rights provisions that
did not consider social and economic rights. Lloyd Barnett, a leading
Jamaican constitutional scholar, made a special point out of this when
arguing that the human rights provisions in the constitution, “protects
the individual against arbitrary government but does nothing to protect
him from many insidious forms of oppression, or to stimulate and
encourage his material or moral advancement.”61
It was a combination of the two approaches that informed Jamaica’s
human rights diplomacy at the United Nations led by their first ambas-
sador there, Egerton Richardson, who came from the post of Permanent
Secretary in the Ministry of Finance and in this capacity had been closely
connected to both the cabinet and the Central Planning Unit. As an
independent country Jamaica would immediately raise the importance of
human rights during its first participation in a United Nations General
Assembly Session in the autumn of 1962. They immediately suggested
making 1968 a UN international year for human rights which would
include a five-year process by which the international community could
get its house in order on human rights and plan accordingly for the
occasion. This would require finalizing the floundering project of turning

59
Kelly, “Jamaican Independence Constitution,” 48.
60
“Human Rights,” Memorandum by Central Planning Unit, November 15, 1960,
Box 1B/31/27, Norman Manley Papers, National Archives of Jamaica, Spanish Town.
61
Barnett, Constitutional Law of Jamaica, 434.
260 Steven L. B. Jensen

human rights into international binding law and agreeing on implemen-

tation mechanisms. This process received renewed momentum at least in
part due to Jamaica’s human rights year project. Jamaica subsequently
proposed and fought to secure backing for the organization of the First
World Conference on Human Rights that would take place in 1968.
Throughout the 1960s, the impact of their initiative was profound as
they worked to enhance international human rights diplomacy by e.g.
expanding NGO involvement in UN human rights processes, brokering
international acceptance that international humanitarian law and inter-
national human rights law were linked, inspiring Soviet dissidents in the
way they adopted the international language of human rights from
1968 alongside a number of other achievements.62

Conclusion
A significant body of human rights research focuses on the normative
dimensions of human rights while studies of anti-colonialism have often
focused on the ideological contents of these movements. Both
approaches are too narrow when it comes to analyzing the historical roles
played by human rights in the post-1945 world. Anti-colonial move-
ments had many iterations and deserve a nuanced historical treatment.
The Jamaica case illustrates that the experiential and experimental
dimensions of human rights politics are also historical factors that we
need to contend with, analyze, and understand. Human rights was a
meaningful set of principles for the Jamaican actors who were challenging
the shortcomings – and increasingly the outdated nature – of British
colonial rule and who were looking toward developing self-government
that was more responsive to the needs of the population on the island.
Social and political experiences made human rights appear as a mean-
ingful political language to manage the challenges of building a nation
and a viable state from the weak foundations of empire.
The experimental nature of the political responses stands out as the
most striking feature of postcolonial politics. The Manley government
operated with the broad human rights framework but placed special
emphasis on some of its component parts, such as the right to education,
nondiscrimination measures and in the early stages of the story the right
to vote. These responses were attempts to solve major social, economic,
and political challenges. They were not necessarily perfect or highly
effective responses in and of themselves; the challenges for securing

62
See Jensen, Making of International Human Rights, 69 101, 174 208.
 Manley, Human Rights, and the End of Colonial Rule in Jamaica 261

socioeconomic development for Jamaica proved massive. To attempt to

quantify “success” by a standard means of measurement is not only
inappropriate but unfairly simplistic. However, their considered
responses to their country’s formation had significant influence on
shaping the complex nature of Jamaican political culture that developed
from “the process of self-discovery” en route to independence – and on
the global trajectories for international human rights after the 1960s.
The initial question then remains: what happens when the periphery
proves to be the center? Ultimately, and inevitably, our historical
accounts must change. First, the traditional mold of narrating human
rights history requires a rethink. This rethinking must welcome a revisit-
ing and a reinterpretation of previously overlooked historical processes in
order to capture and explain how central roles and contributions came
into existence. Second, it must also accommodate an expansion of a
source base beyond what has typically been part of human rights
scholarship. Here, in this context, all evidence begins to point toward
the nexus between human rights and decolonization – and more specif-
ically with the end of empire in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean.
The Caribbean came into existence as part of the crossroads of empire.
Independent Jamaica emerged during the twilight of empire as part of a
different crossroads, namely one consisting of a nation- and state-building
project, a remarkable political vision, constitutional advancements, the
economics of poverty (also known as development economics), a refined
articulated philosophy of planning and the evolving notion of human
rights principles and laws. Norman Manley wryly observed, “History is
history.” His vision and outlook on the world – both local and global in its
scope – became an important part of Jamaican history. And that history –
through its remarkable emphasis and promotion of human rights –
became part of our global history.63

63
See the chapter “From Jamaica with Law: The Rekindling of International Human
Rights, 1962 1967,” ibid., 69 101.