Jamaica’s Beach Control Act is awesome evidence of the expansive, far-seeing vision of late National Hero Norman Washington Manley, co-founder of the now Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) and father of the late Prime Minister Michael Manley.

As chief minister in the late 1950s, the elder Manley piloted a Bill that established a statutory framework for the control, allocation and management of Jamaica’s foreshore, the floor of the sea and the use of beaches.

Importantly, the central tenet of the Bill was about the regulation of competing claims to coastal space and access, and not about beach ownership in the abstract.

Norman Manley had clearly foreseen the unseemly quarrel over beach access rights currently being played out in the media and the courts, with Portland’s iconic Blue Lagoon being used as political football and around which so much misinformation has been deliberately disseminated.

“We will have to find a balance between the people having access and the people enjoying and earning from the Blue Lagoon,” Culture Minister Olivia Grange was moved to say recently, amid the verbal tug-o-war about public use of one of Jamaica’s most treasured natural assets.

In moving the second reading of the Bill, which eventually became the Beach Control Act, Manley described the problem as one involving several interests that had to be reconciled: public recreation, fishermen’s access and livelihood, private ownership, hotel development, and the wider tourist industry.

As recorded in Hansard, the national hero’s concern was for all Jamaicans to enjoy the natural blessings of the island, not just for one segment of the population.

He, wisely, expected that there would be competing interests and presented the proposed Beach Control Authority as the mechanism through which potential conflicts could be resolved in an orderly way, without impeding the economic development of a modern nation.

The Beach Control Act reflects that approach by declaring rights in the foreshore and floor of the sea to be vested in the Crown, subject to preserved rights, while separately recognising private domestic use by adjoining owners and occupiers and providing for licensed commercial and public uses.

The Act, in creating the Beach Control Authority, gave it powers to grant licences, determine public needs, acquire land or rights of use, maintain and develop beaches, and assist in establishing rights of access.

For those needing clarity, the legislation is best understood as a coastal management and allocation statute seeking to secure lawful public and fishing access, while preserving private ownership of coastal land and providing a regulated basis for hotels, wharves and other commercial enterprises.

Sensibly, the Act did not create a universal right of free access to every privately owned beach, nor did it extinguish private ownership of coastal land. Rather, it distinguished between privately owned beach or adjoining land, on the one hand, and the Crown-controlled foreshore and seabed, on the other; and then regulated how each could be used.

Norman Manley foresaw that the immediate legal difficulty was the practical uncertainty surrounding the foreshore. Because the rise and fall of the tide in Jamaica is slight, the strip between high and low water marks is often narrow and barely perceptible. Adjoining owners therefore tended to treat the foreshore as part of their own beach and to exclude others from it, despite the Crown’s underlying rights. This uncertainty had direct consequences for public access.

Not surprisingly, Manley, often described as a man of the people, recognised that, if existing trends continued, members of the public would have progressively fewer places at which they could reach the sea for bathing and recreation, particularly where private claims were asserted over the beach frontage and the foreshore.

GRANGE…we will have to find a balance between the people having access and the people enjoying and earning from the Blue LagoonPhoto: Naphtali Junior

Fishermen were similarly affected. Hansard records concern that fishermen were being displaced from beaches they had traditionally used, while the legal proof of customary rights was difficult and precarious.

The Government therefore treated the protection of fishing access, the beaching of boats and the continued development of the fishing industry as a distinct legislative concern.

At the same time, beaches had become increasingly important to hotels, tourism and other commercial enterprises. He insisted that the problem was not simply one of preventing private use, but of ensuring that commercial development proceeded on a lawful and orderly basis while taking account of public recreation and fishing interests.

As good governance demands, the Administration also considered the existing law governing wharves, piers, jetties and other encroachments on the foreshore and seabed to be uncertain and outdated. The Bill was intended to replace that position with a clearer licensing regime for future structures, while preserving rights already granted by the Crown.

Notably, the Government regarded outright public purchase of beaches as financially impracticable. Coastal land was already highly valuable, and the sums required to acquire sufficient beaches and equip them with modern facilities for public use beyond the ordinary resources of the State.

The legislative scheme therefore had to include more flexible methods, including leases, annual payments, acquisition of rights of user and compulsory acquisition where agreement could not be reached.

Tomorrow in part two: The dilemma when voluntary agreement cannot be reached among competing interests