Dudley Thompson

Dudley Joseph Thompson, OJ, QC, (19 January 1917 – 20 January 2012) was a Jamaican Pan-Africanist, politician and diplomat, who made a contribution to jurisprudence and politics in the Caribbean, Africa and elsewhere internationally.

Born in Panama, to Daniel and Ruby Thompson, he was raised in Westmoreland, Jamaica, where he was a student at The Mico (now Mico University College) in the 1930s. After a short period as headmaster of a rural school, he joined the Royal Air Force during the Second World War - one of Britain's first black pilots - and saw active service (1941-5) as a flight lieutenant in RAF Bomber Command over Europe, being awarded several decorations.

Thompson married Genevieve Hannah Cezair in 1945; they had a son and two daughters.

In 1946, he went to England to attend Merton College, Oxford, where he studied jurisprudence, as a Rhodes Scholar, obtaining degrees as a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Civil Law. From his university days he was a close associate of pan-Africanists such as Kwame Nkrumah, George Padmore and C.L.R. James. After qualifying as a barrister at Gray's Inn in the early 1950s, and doing tutelage with Dingle Foot, QC, Thompson went on to practise law in Africa - in Tanganyika and Kenya, where he became involved in the nationalist movements. He assembled the international legal team that defended Jomo Kenyatta in his trial after he had been seized by the British colonialists in 1952 and subsequently charged with treason, accused of being an instigator of the Mau Mau rebellion. Later as President of Kenya, Kenyatta memorably placed his hand on Thompson sitting beside him and said: "This man saved my life." In Tanzania, where he was a friend of Julius Nyerere, Thompson is remembered as a founder of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU).

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