Jamaica Labour Party come out on top in the first ballot, with Shearer and Robert Lightbourne being the other candidates. Under Shearer, the JLP lost power for the first time to the People's National Party and Michael Manley in 1972. Shearer served as Opposition Leader until 1974. Bustamante finally gave up the post of party leader in 1974, and Edward Seaga was elected his successor. The party lost the 1976 elections, but Seaga became Prime Minister after victory in 1980 when the party won by a landslide, capturing 51 of the then 60 parliamentary seats. In 1983 with the JLP achieving a spike
Irish people in Jamaica and English servants departing the Atlantic ports at Kinsale, Cork, Galway and Bristol. By the late 17th century, some 10 percent of Jamaica's landowners were of Irish extraction and several, such as Teague Mackmarroe (Tadhg MacMorrough), who owned Irish slaves, attained the rank of "middling planter." Later, in the mid-eighteenth century, Presbyterian colonial settlers who were fleeing Ireland arrived in the Caribbean. Scottish Gaelic speaking highlanders exiled after the Jacobite rebellions also came to the island in the 18th century. In 1731, governor of Jamaica Robert Hunter said that the "servants and people of lower rank on the island chiefly