THE EDITOR, Sir:
IN THE Sunday Gleaner of February 5 your columnist Orville Taylor has Norman Manley engaged in a knock-down fist fight with H.C. Buchanan and Stanley Vernon. This story, interesting but not entirely correct, should be clarified by the author.
Mr. Manley was no street brawler. He once came pretty close to that when, in a fit of temper he challenged Marcus Garvey to 'step outside'.
However, this engagement did not take place. As for the incident in front of his chambers, it was a man named Garrick, not Buchanan, who accompanied Vernon. There was some pushing but no fisticuffs; and Manley did have the two arrested and sent to prison.
H.C. Buchanan, a trade unionist, was well respected by Norman Manley who defended him when he and Stennett Kerr Coombs were charged with seditious libel arising out of a report published in the JAMAICA LABOUR WEEKLY in June 1938. Buchanan was the editor of this newspaper and Kerr Coombs was proprietor of the printery at which the newspaper was printed.
I am, etc.,
KEN JONES
alllerdyce@hotmail.com
Via Go-Jamaica
