Dudley Thompson

Dudley Joseph Thompson was born on 19 January 1917 in Panama to Jamaican parents. His father was a teacher who had gone there for work and returned to Jamaica in 1927, and Dudley grew up in Westmoreland. After high school he won a scholarship to the Mico Teachers' College and trained as a teacher.

During the Second World War Thompson served in the Royal Air Force as a combat flier and finished the war as Jamaica's liaison officer to the Colonial Office. In 1946 he went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar to study jurisprudence, where he led the West Indian Students' Union and became a close associate of Pan-Africanists including Kwame Nkrumah and George Padmore.

After qualifying as a barrister he went to practise law in Africa, working in Tanganyika and Kenya. In 1952 he assembled the international legal team that defended Jomo Kenyatta after his arrest during the Mau Mau uprising, and the future first president of Kenya said of Thompson, 'This man saved my life.' The case brought the political situation in Kenya under international scrutiny.

Thompson returned to Jamaica in 1955 and began a long political career. He served in the Senate from 1962 to 1978 and the House of Representatives from 1978 to 1983, and in Michael Manley's governments held posts including Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Mining and Energy, and Minister of National Security. He helped renegotiate Jamaica's bauxite arrangements and negotiated for the island to host the International Seabed Authority.

Thompson was among the first politicians to call for reparations for slavery, remained a lifelong champion of Pan-Africanism, and was awarded the Order of Jamaica. Known as the Burning Spear, he died in New York on 20 January 2012, a day after his 95th birthday.