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 also served as attorney-general in Grenada under the People's Revolutionary Government in 1983. 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 . 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,[12] 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.
In 1954, Hart – who self-identified as a Marxist – was one of four PNP members who were expelled from the PNP for their (alleged) communist views. The other three members were Frank Hill, Ken Hill and Arthur Henry, and they were collectively referred to as "the four Hs". Hart was also very active in the trade union movement in Jamaica[18] in the 1940s and 1950s, and worked as a member of the Executive Committee of the Trade Union Council from 1946 to 1948.
He served as Assistant Secretary of the Caribbean Labour Congress from 1945 to 1946 and Assistant Secretary from 1947 to 1953. He played an important role in Jamaican politics in the years leading up to Independence in 1958. After being expelled from the PNP, Hart together with other radical thinkers and activists formed the People's Freedom Movement (which was later renamed the Socialist Party of Jamaica).The party disbanded in 1962.
Guyana
After the demise of the People's Freedom Movement, Hart moved to Guyana, where he worked as the editor of The Mirror newspaper, which supported the views of Cheddi Jagan, from 1963 to 1965. While in Guyana, he also undertook research into the history and culture of the Arawak people and worked to assist Canon John P. Bennett in the writing and publication of an Arawak-English Dictionary.
