Richard Hart (Jamaican historian and politician)
| Richard Hart | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Ansell Richard Hart 13 August 1917 Montego Bay, Jamaica |
| Died | 21 December 2013 (aged 96) Bristol, England, United Kingdom |
| Nationality | Jamaican |
| Occupation | Historian, politician and political activist, solicitor, lecturer and academic |
| Notable work | Slaves who Abolished Slavery: Blacks in Rebellion (2002), Towards Decolonisation: Political, Labour and Economic Developments in Jamaica 1939–1945 (1999) |
| Political party | People's National Party (1939–52), People's Freedom Movement (1952–62), New Jewel Movement, Grenada (1982–83) |
| Awards | Gold Musgrave Medal (2005) |
Richard Hart (13 August 1917 – 21 December 2013) was a Jamaican historian, solicitor and politician. He was a founding member of the People's National Party (PNP) and one of the pioneers of Marxism in Jamaica. He played an important role in Jamaican politics in the years leading up to Independence in 1958. He subsequently was based in Guyana for two years, before relocating to London in 1965, working as a solicitor and co-founding the campaigning organisation Caribbean Labour Solidarity. He went on to serve as attorney-general in Grenada under the People's Revolutionary Government in 1983. He spent the latter years of his life in the UK, where he died in Bristol.
Hart was the author of several notable books on Caribbean history – including Towards Decolonisation: Political, Labour and Economic Developments in Jamaica 1939–1945 (1999), Slaves who Abolished Slavery: Blacks in Rebellion (2002) and The Grenada Revolution: Setting the Record Straight (2005) – and he lectured on the subject at universities in the West Indies, the US, Canada and Europe. Rupert Lewis once called him "the most consistent Caribbean activist".
Richard Hart was born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, on 13 August 1917, of mixed heritage that included Sephardic Jewish and African. He was the son of Ansell Hart, a Jamaican solicitor and author of a 1972 historical study of George William Gordon. Hart was educated in Jamaica and in England, where he was sent to boarding-school at Denstone College in Staffordshire.
He returned to Jamaica in 1937, and became a founding member of the People's National Party (PNP) in 1938; he was on the party's Executive Committee from 1941 to 1952. He had the responsibility of drafting a model trade union constitution as a member of Norman Manley's 1938 Labour Committee assisting Alexander Bustamante in the formation of a trade union, and in 1940 was arrested for organising a demonstration demanding Bustamante's release from prison. Hart sat the English Law Society examinations in Jamaica, qualifying as a solicitor in 1941. In 1942 he was imprisoned without trial by the British colonial government for his political activities.
...
Wikipedia