Hugh Shearer

Hugh Lawson Shearer , ON , OJ (born May 18, 1923 in Trelawny Parish , Jamaica - † July 5, 2004 in Kingston , Jamaica) was a Jamaican politician ( Jamaica Labor Party ) and Prime Minister of Jamaica .

School and career

Shearer was a graduate of St. Simon's College after receiving a fellowship from his native parish. He then became an employee of the union's weekly newspaper , The Jamaican Worker , in 1941 . After Alexander Bustamante became editor of the newspaper in 1943 , he also became his political foster father. With this support he received a grant from the trade union federation in 1947. In the course of time he was first elected as a manager and finally as Vice-President of the Bustamente Industrial Trade Union (BITU).

Political career

MP and Senator

Shearer began his political career in 1955 with the election to the House of Representatives from Jamaica. There he represented the interests of the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) of the constituency of Western Kingston until his electoral defeat in 1959 .

From 1962 to 1967 he was a member of the First Chamber of Parliament, the Senate . At the same time he was appointed Deputy Head of the Mission of Jamaica to the United Nations (UN) by the current Prime Minister Bustamente . In this function he was also chief foreign policy spokesman .

In 1967 he was re-elected to the House of Representatives for the Clarendon Parish constituency.

Prime Minister from 1967 to 1972

After Bustamente's successor as Prime Minister, Donald Sangster , died on April 11, 1967 after only six weeks in office, he became his successor as Prime Minister of Jamaica . At the same time he succeeded Sangster as chairman of the JLP.

Because of his origins, he managed to maintain good relations with the working class , which contributed to his popularity. However, there were public protests in October 1968 when his government forbade the Guyana- born Marxist history student Walter Rodney from re-entering Jamaica. On October 16, 1968, there was a series of violent outbreaks, the so-called "Rodney Riots", when police forces broke up peaceful student protests at the University of the West Indies . Shearer justified the entry ban with the fact that Rodney represented a threat to Jamaica, which had only gained independence a few years earlier, because of his travels to socialist states such as Cuba and the USSR as well as his relationships with radical nationalist black organizations .

From an economic point of view, the foundation stones for the two most important sources of income in the country were laid during his reign, in particular due to the construction of three aluminum plants and the establishment of three extensive tourist facilities . At the same time, he promoted school education through intensive education campaigns and the construction of fifty new schools. In addition, he campaigned for a competent authority under the Law of the Sea to be created in Kingston.

In the 1972 general election, Shearer and JLP were lost to the People's National Party (PNP) by Michael Manley , who succeeded him as Prime Minister on March 2, 1972. During his tenure as Prime Minister, he was also Foreign Minister from 1967 to 1972.

Later offices

In 1974 he passed the chairmanship of the JLP to the Treasury Secretary in his cabinet, Edward Seaga . After he succeeded Manley's Prime Minister in 1980, Shearer was named Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State. He held this office until the end of Seaga's tenure as Prime Minister on February 10, 1989.

Honors

In 2002 he was awarded the Order of the Nation, the second highest honor in the Jamaican state.

Web links

• Biographical information in rulers.org
• Obituary on the homepage of the Jamaican government
• Obituary in The Jamaica Observer, July 6, 2004

Individual evidence

1. ↑ PMs accept national honor with humility ( memento of the original from January 15, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Jamaica Observer, December 5, 2002. Retrieved May 7, 2011.  

predecessor	Office	successor
Donald Sangster	Prime Minister of Jamaica April 11, 1967–2. March 1972	Michael Manley