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Return to Jamaica: 1927–1935

In Kingston, Garvey was greeted by supporters. UNIA members had raised $10,000 to help him settle in Jamaica, with which he bought a large house in an elite neighbourhood, which he called the "Somali Court". His wife shipped over his belongings—which included 18,000 books and hundreds of antiques—before joining him. In Jamaica, he continued giving speeches, including at a building in Kingston he had also named "Liberty Hall". He urged Afro-Jamaicans to raise their standards of living and rally against Chinese and Syrian migrants who had moved to the island. Meanwhile, the U.S. UNIA had been taken over by E. B. Knox; the latter was summoned to Jamaica for a meeting with Garvey after Laura Kofey, the leader of a group that had broken from UNIA, was killed, bringing the organization into further disrepute.

Garvey attempted to travel across Central America but found his hopes blocked by the region's various administrations, who regarded him as disruptive. Instead, he travelled to England in April, where he rented a house in London's West Kensington area for four months. On 6th June 1928 he spoke at the Royal Albert Hall. Later that year, he and his wife visited Paris, where he had his office at the black newspapers La Dépêche Africaine headquarter and spoke at the Club du Fauborg, before traveling to Switzerland. They then travelled to Canada, where Garvey was detained for one night before being barred from making speeches.

Back in Kingston, UNIA obtained Edelweiss Park in Cross Roads, which it established as its new headquarters. They held a conference there, opened by a parade through the city which attracted tens of thousands of onlookers. At Edelweiss Park, UNIA also began putting on plays. One of these, Coronation of an African King, was written by Garvey and performed in August 1930. Its plot revolved around the crowning of Prince Cudjoe of Sudan, although it anticipated the crowning of Haile Selassie of Ethiopia later that year. In Jamaica, Garvey became a de facto surrogate father to his niece, Ruth, whose father had recently died. In September 1930, his first son, Marcus Garvey III, was born; three years later a second son, Julius, followed.

In Kingston, Garvey was elected a city councillor and established the country's first political party, the People's Political Party (PPP), through which he intended to contest the forthcoming legislative council election. In September 1929 he addressed a crowd of 1,500 supporters, launching the PPP's manifesto, which included land reform to benefit tenant farmers, the addition of a minimum wage to the constitution, pledges to build Jamaica's first university and opera house, and a proposed law to impeach and imprison corrupt judges. The latter policy led to Garvey being charged with demeaning the judiciary and undermining public confidence in it. He pled guilty, and was sentenced to three months in a Spanish Town prison and a £100 fine.

While imprisoned, Garvey was removed from the Kingston council by other councillors. Garvey was furious and wrote an editorial against them, published in the Blackman journal. This resulted in his being charged with seditious libel, for which he was convicted and sentenced to six months in prison. His conviction was then overturned on appeal. He then campaigned as the PPP's candidate for the legislative assembly in Saint Andrew Parish, in which he secured 915 votes, being defeated by George Seymour-Jones.

In increasingly strained finances amid the Great Depression, Garvey began working as an auctioneer, and by 1935 was supplementing this with his wife's savings. He re-mortgaged his house and personal properties and in 1934 Edelweiss Park was foreclosed and auctioned off. Dissatisfied with life in Jamaica, Garvey decided to move to London, sailing aboard the SS Tilapa in March 1935. Once in London, he told his friend Amy Bailey that he had "left Jamaica a broken man, broken in spirit, broken in health and broken in pocket... and I will never, never, never go back."