His first being from Mato November 4, 1980, and his second being from Februto March 30, 1992. We have, thus, a volume that oscillates between the public and the private in a manner that sometimes informs, and sometimes discomfits the reader.For his outstanding contribution to the Caribbean as a political leader and social reformer, the OCC was conferred on Jamaicas fourth Prime Minister.Michael Manley He is The Most Honourable Michael Norman Manley, ON, OM, OCC Michael was named the fourth Prime Minister of Jamaica. Nonetheless, he falls into a different trap by seeking to contrast ManleyвЂ™s public virtue with his private matrimonial failings, not to mention those of his parents. Godfrey Smith neatly navigates between those pitfalls with his thorough, well-researched, warts-and-all tale of Manley as both public and private figure. Doubly so when the subject remains as controversial nearly two decades after his death, as during his lifetime, which is the case with the late Jamaican prime minister Michael Manley.

However, he is absolutely spot on in noting ManleyвЂ™s deep commitment to democracy and egalitarianism. Although Smith reports on it in detail, he cannot help but noting that the initial meeting between Manley and the elder Bush lasted all of fifteen minutes. Smith wants us to note a distinction between the democratic socialist Manley of the 1970s, and the pro-business, pro-American Manley of his last government (1989 to 1992), when relations with the George H.W.В Bush administration in the United States were cordial. Michael Manley and his Government embarked on the most profound and wide-ranging program.Public Manley was also a man of contrasts. A private Manley, we need to note, whose relationships with his children, frequently characterized by distance, were far from simple.He was sworn in two days later as Jamaicas fourth Prime Minister. Readers suffer a sort of mental whiplash as they are swung between the heroic public Manley, battling for the rights of workers, attempting to transform JamaicaвЂ™s social and political life in the 1970s, and seeking to adapt to the post-Cold War world, and the amoral private Manley for whom the bonds of matrimonyвЂ”his own and other peopleвЂ™sвЂ”appeared to have little meaning.

Manley, as a private individual, this biography makes clear, enjoyed music, dance, art, and literature. Nettleford, academic and choreographer, was one of the people who encouraged Manley as both a politician and an intellectual. This will read rather queerly to those who did not know either man fairly well.

For example, writer and journalist John HearneвЂ™s surname is spelled correctly on pageВ 300, but given (twice) on the next page as вЂњHerne.вЂќ There are quite a few such errors, annoying in a book of this significance. ManleyвЂ™s children collaborated actively with the biographer, and provided many of the bookвЂ™s details, including acknowledgment of their own faults.Smith was not well served by his proofreader. Not to mention the clash between their similarly anti-authoritarian personalities. Smith reports this, just as he reports on the way that Michael Manley moved out of his fatherвЂ™s shadow (and how he was conscious of being in the shadow of a man, Norman Washington Manley, who was not only his father but the Father of his Country) to become a major political figure in his own right.ManleyвЂ™s own role as a father emerges from time to time in this book as we are exposed to his relationships with each of his five children, and the manner in which he strove to connect with them over the barriers of career and divorce. ManleyвЂ™s conscious choice to study political economy and thought at the LSE, at the feet of Harold Laski, set him on a path, shared with such men as Burnham and Barrow, that would culminate in Caribbean political leadership. But also enjoyed the time he spent with young West Indian political aspirants like Forbes Burnham and Errol Barrow when he was a student at the London School of Economics in the late 1940s.

Manley Jamaica Prime Minister