The Manley Memoirs

When I came across the Manley Memoirs at the Cave Shepherd Book store I took it up immediately. It is the life story of Beverley Manley, the wife of Michael Manley. At that time my interest was in knowing more about Michael and I felt that getting it from the mouth of a former wife would provide a different perspective. I have always been fascinated with Michael Manley. I first listened to him at a lecture in Canada when he had become deeply involved in the Trade Union Movement and before he entered parliament.{{more}} In 1983 I had the opportunity, as President of the African Caribbean Forum at the University of Western Ontario, to invite him to deliver a lecture at that University. This followed the American invasion of Grenada. A lot of West Indians in Canada felt angry and betrayed. Eugenia Charles stood on the steps of the White House as our Caribbean governments had invited President Reagan to invade Grenada and restore normalcy. Many of us felt that there were other options. Michael’s appeared to be the only sane political voice with his criticism of the invasion. I would never forget the occasion. I introduced him to an audience of hundreds, many of whom could not have been accommodated in the hall. We had to provide a PA system outside so that others could hear. What a performance! Many Canadians in the audience had never seen anything like it. It was sheer theatre, as he constantly interrupted his lecture to make comments and respond to shouts and greetings. This was the Michael Manley I knew. I followed his involvement in the non-aligned movement and gloried in his discussions with black conservative economist Thomas Sowell. How disappointed was I when in his last term in office 1989- 1992 he seemed to have gone back on many things he had previously stood for. I hoped to learn something from Beverley’s memoirs about this turning point in his political life.

The Manley Memoirs is a must read. It is a fascinating book that I could not put down. It is primarily about the liberation of Beverley Manley, about the challenges she faced and her efforts at surviving in a different world. It provides information about Jamaican society and politics, about the interplay of class, race and politics. Beverley’s life was dominated by two remarkable persons, her mother Esmine Anderson and Michael Manley. Up to the time of her marriage in 1972 she was under the strict discipline of her mother Esmine, who came from a near white middle class family on her father’s side and who married Eric Hugh Anderson who was a manager with the railways. They lived what Beverley considered a lower middle class life, but made the point that her mother adopted a working class style of behaviour as she struggled to cope with her husband’s drinking and womanising. Her mother ‘worked morning, noon and night’, cooking and baking and cleaning. Her nagging was constant and she had difficulty coping with it.

The issue of colour was always a dominant factor in Beverley’s life, although she did not at first fully understand what it meant. She was the darkest of the family and, therefore, had to do the house work while her sisters relaxed. She spoke of having to haul the 25lbs block of ice from the truck to the ice box in the kitchen. She at first accepted this as a way of life, as how it was supposed to be. Even at school the teachers preferred the high brown and white girls. She had an early introduction to politics through her father who was an ardent supporter of Norman Manley’s People’s National Party and took her to political meetings. Her relationship with Michael Manley introduced her to another world, to a different social class. She felt at first intimidated by Manley’s upper class company and what she considered their peculiar ways. Her first encounter with Edna Manley, the mother of Michael, was near traumatic. “The girl from the flat above the railroad was about to dine with the Mother of the Nation.” She was exposed to classical music, to Greek philosophy, biographies of outstanding political women and to entertaining. She was told by Michael that when classical music was being played at his mother’s home she was not supposed to talk until the music was finished. In coping with the two worlds, the one in which she was born and the one she was about to enter, she had to develop ‘the capacity to compartmentalise.’ Her marriage to Michael was kept secret, except to a few friends, but their relationship underwent severe scrutiny with his colleagues and some businessmen asking who was this lady, who was her father- really from which social class did she come? After a honeymoon in the Bahamas they arrived to a grand welcome at the National Hero’s Park. She had set off on a journey ‘far from her roots’. The Manley Memoirs tells a lot about the politics of Michael Manley and the forces at play in Jamaican society. It provides interesting information about some of the leaders they met. She was particularly impressed with Fidel Castro. She said she ‘had never met anyone who had the kind of impact on me that he did’. At an official reception in Cuba, Castro had asked her to wash her hands after the reception indicating to her that attempts were made on his life with poison being transferred through a hand shake. They both washed their hands. Then there was the case of his unexpected visit to meet with her at Protocol House at 10 pm, talking through the night until dawn. He had indicated to her that Cuba’s path was not an easy one and should only be taken as a last resort.

Her relationship socially and politically with Michael was the obvious highlight of the book. She was married at age 31 to a man who was 17 years her senior. They taught each other how their different classes lived. We get a different understanding of the political life of Michael, a man whose life was for the masses but who knew little about them at an individual level and ‘was uncomfortable around them’. She had become actively involved in the Peoples’ National Movement and did a tremendous amount of political work but eventually fell in with the left wing of the party, creating some difficulties for Manley, especially with his upper class friends and business supporters. The Manley Memoirs provides for me some understanding of what I call Manley’s betrayal in his last term in office from 1989 to 1992. He had taken the 1980 defeat very badly. She argued that he yearned to be loved once more by his social class. He was, she said, like a zombie. “I think it was important to him to be remembered highly by members of his own social class, many of whom he felt had deserted him” Between 1980 and 1989 he put everything into repairing his image with the U.S administration. When he returned to power in 1989 President Senior Bush sent a plane for him to attend a dinner in his honour at the White House. A remarkable turn around after the adversities of 1976 and 1980! Beverley and Michael drifted apart socially and politically after the 1980 defeat. Beverley who had entered University and studied Marxism had begun to develop different perspectives on Jamaican politics. As Michael withdrew unto himself she even began to question their personal relationship, especially armed with information about his continued infidelity. They were later divorced and Michael married again, his fifth marriage.

Really a fascinating book! It is Beverley’s perspective, an effort to find a ‘room’ of her own and to mark out a place for herself in Jamaican society.

Dr Adrian Fraser is a historian and social commentator.