William Bramble was the son of J. T. Allen, a famous social activist, and Mary Ryan, a conventional lower-class woman.

As demand for the product increased the British established lime farms on Dominica in the early 1900s for which they hired labor from Montserrat and encouraged settlement.

[2][5] He challenged Robert Griffith for leadership of the organization and was backed by the influential teacher and unionist, Ellen Peters, who saw him as a man of action with a viable plan for development.

[6][7] Bramble became a local leader, against the alleged economic oppression of the planter owners and the political rulers; reportedly, by then the agricultural wages were well below the level of subsistence.

Instead, Bramble preferred the conventional financial support of a British colony, manifesting doubts that the so tiny Montserrat might survive as an independent territory; to share the government with the royal authorities it wasn't a practical problem for the national development.

[2] Bramble was invested as the first Chief Minister of Montserrat in 1960 after constitutional changes introduced ministerial government; by then the cotton production was in a decline, as the workers were rather emigrating to United Kingdom.

[3] During Bramble's tenure, the small Progressive Labour Party functioned as opposition, although it would never pose much hindrance to the official policies.

People agreed with the latter, providing a landslide triumph in the 1970 elections, and so William Henry Bramble lost the Chief Minister's office, while his MLP was left without representatives in the Legislative Council.

Another setback was due to the Canadian Leeward Islands Company Limited, which settled in 1960, eventually exploiting the tomato production almost without economic reward for the locals.