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Opening
Remarks by the Foundation Chairman The Most Hon. P.J. Patterson, Prime Minister; the Most Hon. Mrs Michael Manley; Joseph Manley, Douglas Manley, Rachel Manley and other members of the Manley family; Ministers of Government; Members of the House of Representatives and the Senate; members of the Diplomatic Corps; members of the Michael Manley Foundation; representatives of the Norman Manley and Edna Manley Foundations; colleagues and friends, good morning and special welcome. Today, we not only celebrate the 80th anniversary of the birth of our beloved leader, Michael Manley – former Prime Minister, trade unionist, advocate of the poor and devoted regionalist – but in his honour we will be officially opening the Michael Manley Centre to preserve and process in perpetuity the speeches, writings, audiovisual materials and artefacts of the Manley years. It is a task to which the Foundation is committed so as to ensure that present and future generations will be able to learn first-hand about the legacy of the man that has irrefutably lifted our collective conscience to a greater sense of egalitarianism and social justice. The Centre will allow Jamaicans and visitors from overseas to participate in a glorious period of our history, because it offers an analytical look at our past and provokes emotions that stimulate learning, reflections and a sense of purpose. The Centre will therefore set about to complete Michael Manley’s unfinished work and promote his timeless principles of self-reliance, equality, empowerment and human rights as an enduring message of hope and opportunity. This is just one of the many ways in which the Foundation will be carrying through on its mandate to preserve and promote the intellectual and philosophical ideas of Michael Manley. At a time when some of the glaring inequities and disparities are emerging in the new global economic arrangement, we are driven by a restless urge to pit the political thoughts of Michael Manley against the orthodoxies of the times in an effort to find that balance which provides the logic to our own survival as a people. The Centre is the first of its kind to be established for a former Prime Minister and we hope that it will not be the last. Visitors to the Centre will be able to follow a young Michael Manley on his rise from a journalist to a trade union advocate. His campaign to the Party leadership and his three terms as Prime Minister are revealed in documents, speeches, letters, Cabinet minutes and articles spanning four decades. The Michael Manley Centre is a work in progress, and those responsible for its remarkable success so far have done justice to the memory of Michael. I must therefore pay special tribute to Mrs Glynne Manley and Joseph Manley for the volumes of documents, personal items and the many artefacts which they have generously donated to the centre, to Louis Marriott for overseeing the work of the Centre; and to Miss Beverly Lashley, the Librarian Consultant, who provided unstinting service at no cost. The Foundation will ensure that the Michael Manley Centre serves the Jamaican people as a ‘classroom of democracy’. It must share in a past by advancing an understanding of our historical beginnings, masked in the balkanisation of regional politics and government; and a future, challenged to bring about a profound metamorphosis which defines a new Caribbean polity that must function primarily in the interest of its citizens. The Centre which bears Michael Manley’s name must set about to fulfill his dreams and aspirations. We are therefore committed to ensuring the preservation of the Centre, as we are committed to maintaining the highest standards of excellence for our annual projects, which include the Michael Manley Award for Community Self Reliance; the Michael Manley Lecture; and the Essay Competitions for secondary students in Jamaica and tertiary students throughout the CARICOM region. That is why we launched in March of this year an Endowment Fund to raise $20 million here in Jamaica, and U.S.$1.5m overseas to sustain the work of the Foundation, because, in the search for solutions, Manley’s thoughts and ideas must inform and inspire us as a people to climb up the down escalator to achieve, what Rousseau calls, a new ‘civil religion’ which brings a new sense of responsibility embodied in a new national spirit. This afternoon, we further our work with the holding of the third Annual Michael Manley Lecture to be delivered by Rachel Manley at the LOJ Auditorium. It was Franklin D. Roosevelt who once said that a “nation must believe three things. It must believe in the past. It must believe in the future. It must above all, believe in the capacity of its own people so to learn from the past that they can gain in judgement in creating their own future”.
It is in this spirit that I therefore
extend very special welcome to all of you, and hope that the Centre
will arouse a social re-awakening that impels us to carry on the
legacy of Michael Manley, which, in so many ways, is embodied in his
simple but profound peroration, indeed, "the word is love".
Danny Roberts
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