Norman Washington Manley ONH MM QC (4 July 1893 – 2 September 1969) was a Jamaican statesman who served as the first and only Premier of Jamaica.

[2] He was a proponent of self-government but was persuaded to join nine other British colonies in the Caribbean territories in a Federation of the West Indies but called a referendum on the issue in 1961.

His father, Thomas Albert Samuel Manley, was a small businessman born in Porus, Manchester, Jamaica in 1852.

His paternal grandparents were Samuel Manley, a white English trader who had migrated from Yorkshire, and Susannah Patterson, a Black woman of the Comfort Hall plantation in Manchester.

[5] Thomas Manley initially succeeded in citrus farming but soon squandered his earnings through litigious activities.

In 1911, he won six medals in the Jamaican schoolboy championships, including the 100 yards in 10 seconds, setting a record unbroken until 1952.

"[8] Manley served in the Royal Field Artillery during World War I and was awarded the Military Medal for "acts of gallantry and devotion to duty under fire".

[9] After the war, Manley was admitted to the bar in England in 1921, and returned to Jamaica in 1922, continuing to practise law as a barrister.

[1] In the years of the Great Depression, and during the troubles of 1938, Manley identified with the workers, donating his time and advocacy to assist them.

After suffrage was approved in 1944, Manley had to wait ten years (two terms) before his party was elected to office.

The Facilities for Title Act of 1955 enabled people who occupy land for more than seven years to obtain credit for development.

[25] In 1958, the Common Entrance examination was introduced, which offered an unprecedented 2,000 free places in high schools each year (previously, most high-school students were the fee-paying children of the well-to-do, with only a handful of parish scholarships available through which the bright poor could gain access).

[26] As premier, Manley renegotiated a government contract with bauxite companies, leading to a sixfold increase in revenue.

[27] Industrialization, increased agricultural production, and agrarian reform figured large in the People's National Party's plan for a great leap forward.

According to Philip Sherlock, five years after he took office, Manley was able to claim that much had been done to correct the imbalance in the distribution of land in Jamaica.

Rather than giving subsidies, as the Jamaican Labour Party had done, incentives were offered and facilities for soft loans were provided.

"[30] Manley was a strong advocate of the Federation of the West Indies as a means of propelling Jamaica into self-government.

[31] This resulted in the independence of Jamaica on 6 August 1962, and several other British colonies in the West Indies followed suit in the next decade.

Bustamante had replaced Manley as premier between April and August, and on independence, he became Jamaica's first prime minister.

In his last public address to an annual conference of the PNP, he said: "I say that the mission of my generation was to win self-government for Jamaica.

Their second son, Michael Norman Manley, went into politics and rose to become the fourth Prime Minister of Jamaica.

Manley's speech entitled, To Unite in a Common Battle was delivered in 1945 at the fraternity's Thirty-first General Convention in Chicago, Illinois.