Alexander bustamante biography part 4
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Sir Alexander Bustamante
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The charismatic Sir Alexander Bustamante was the first Prime Minister of independent Jamaica and one of Jamaica's national heroes.
As a young man he traveled the world, working in Cuba, Spain, Panama and the USA. After returning to Jamaica he became disillusioned with the social inequity and injustice which he saw. He became a mästare of the working classes and campaigned for workers rights. He was arrested for his role in the Kingston waterfront protests.
Bustamante formed the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in opposition to the Peoples National Party (PNP) and won the first Jamaican elections under full adult suffrage.
Bustamante retired from politics in 1967 and died in 1977.
Full Alexander Bustamante Biography
Part 1 - Growing up in JamaicaPart 2 - Working Overseas
Part 3 - Return to Jamaica
Part 4 - Labour Riots
Part 5 - Arrest and Imprisonment
Part 6 - Establishment of the J
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Alexander Bustamante
When Alexander Bustamante began to make his presence felt in Jamaica, the country was still a Crown Colony. Under this system, the Governor had, the right to veto at all times, which he very often exercised against the wishes of the majority.
Bustamante was quick to realise that the social and economic ills that such a system engendered, had to be countered by mobilisation of the working class.
Pay and working conditions were poor in the 1920s and 1930s. Failing harvests and the lay-off of workers resulted in an influx of unemployed people, moving from the rural areas into the city. This mass migration did little to alleviate the already tremendous unemployment problem.
Bustamante first impressed his name on the society with a series of letters to The Gleaner and occasionally to British newspapers, calling attention to the social and economic problems of the poor and underprivileged in Jamaica.
The years 1937 and 1938 brought the outbreak of widespread disc
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Bustamante, Alexander
February 24, 1884
August 6, 1997
Alexander Bustamante, one of the leading political figures in Jamaica during the twentieth century, was born William Alexander Clarke at Blenheim Estate in Lucea, a coastal town in western Jamaica. He was the second of five children born to Robert Clarke, a white Jamaican, and Mary Wilson, Clarke's second wife, a colored woman of peasant stock. When he married Mary Wilson, Robert Clarke was employed as overseer at Blenheim Estate, a relatively large mixed farming enterprise leased and operated bygd his step-father, Alexander Shearer, and his mother Elsie Clarke Shearer. When the widowed Elsie Clarke married Shearer, a white Jamaican of Irish extraction, her social status was enhanced as the mistress of the Blenheim Great House. Her son, Robert, however, incurred her displeasure by marrying beneath him, and he funnen it necessary to build a modest cottage overlooking the Great House; it was in this cottage that William Alexand