Michael Manley - former prime minister of Jamaica - Interview

'The only imperative in my life has been egalitarianism.'

For decades, Michael Manley, former prime minister of Jamaica, has represented progressive social and democratic change not only for the Caribbean but also throughout the world. Son of Norman Manley, nationalist leader under the British colonial regime and founder of the People's National Party, he first came to power in 1972, a few years after taking over PNP leadership following the death of his father.

We spoke at length last fall about Jamaican politics and history, Caribbean relations with the United States, world leaders he has known, his thoughts on the future of democratic socialism and the future of the world. In April, the Caribbean Community--the association of former British colonies in the region--named him its ambassador at large. We spoke again in May, after Manley had had a chance to watch the early days of a new Administration in Washington.

My conversations were based on a personal friendship with Michael and a close relationship with the politics and people of Jamaica. In September 1983, U.S. Representative Ron V. Dellums asked me to be his emergency substitute as "international speaker" at the PNP's annual convention. I arrived for the first time at the humid Kingston airport, conspicuously dressed in a suit and tie. Whisked to a smoke-filled stadium to address thousands of PNP loyalists, I was introduced to the former Prime Minister only moments before we walked to the stage. Characteristically charming and at ease, he introduced me to the audience. A decade later, the PNP is back in power in Jamaica, and Manley claims to be in semi-retirement. But his political imagination and charismatic grace remain as potent as ever.

He recalls a time in 1961, on the eve of independence. "My father made a rather profound speech," Manley says, "stating that the attempt to follow the Puerto Rican model of development had failed in all the social objectives that were valid for him. It was a tremendous speech about the widening gap between the rich and the poor, and all the things we know are classically associated with the Munoz Marin boot-strap model of industrialization by invitation."

But the elder Manley lost the election that would have made him the first prime minister of independent Jamaica, and the younger Manley became part of a group of young intellectuals who would transform their nation's politics.

Q: One of the similarities between U.S. and Jamaican politics was the emergence of black-power protests in the late 1960s. What was the impact of black nationalism and radicalism upon your party?

Michael Manley: Tremendous. The very forces that led my dad in the late 1950s to begin sensing the social failure of a strategy are the forces that were creating greater and greater mass resentment--at last spilling out into the black consciousness.

I was determined to pick up where my father left off and rethink the whole question of ideology. The thing that had changed profoundly was that Third World consciousness was now a reality. The nonaligned movement had come into existence.

When my father was an activist, these things were just barely surfacing. But I worked within that later atmosphere, very much more determined that Jamaica must realize it cannot solve its problems alone.

By now, Malcolm X is happening. Tremendous things are happening in the United States and the world. The African liberation process is now a reality; there are independent nations. And all those things converged in an explosion of consciousness among young black intellectuals. They are partly reflective of the dynamics and also themselves influences on the dynamics of the time.

Q: How did those events affect or influence your own political development?

Manley: The only imperative in my life has been egalitarianism. Nothing else has really ever driven me. How do you create a world of equal opportunity? How do you create empowerment? That is what I have been about, even when I didn't yet know the phrase.

Q: So let's jump to today. What is your preliminary assessment of Bill Clinton, especially as he relates to international issues. Do you perceive a fundamental change in U.S. policy under President Clinton's guidance, or is his Administration more an extension of the policies of Presidents Reagan and Bush?

Manley: I don't see any departure yet, and I don't say that critically because, obviously, it is an Administration under tremendous pressure in the domestic arena, and with some crises it can't avoid in the international arena, situations where one really has to act internationally--as in South Africa, or Bosnia, or Somalia, or Haiti.

Q: With the assassination of Chris Hani in South Africa and the rapid successes of Jonas Savimbi and UNITA over the last few months in Angola--which took everyone by surprise-I wonder what your take is.

Manley: What is taking place in Angola is not surprising; Jonas Savimbi is just as vicious as I expected him to be. He is an adventurer and as far as I am concerned a totally corrupt man. Obviously, he is driven by the ambition for power. I think it's an outrage. There's an election which he agrees to honor, and he loses in circumstances held by the international community as being reasonably fair, and he promptly throws it aside.