Bob Marley joins the hands of two enemies over his head

Jamaica in the late seventies was close to civil war. The gangs attached to Michael Manley's PNP and Edward Seaga's JLP fought gun battles in the streets of Kingston, and in December 1976 Marley, his wife Rita and his manager were wounded when armed men attacked his house on Hope Road two days before a concert. He left the island for London and Miami and stayed away for more than a year.

The One Love Peace Concert was the idea of two rival enforcers, Claudie Massop and Bucky Marshall, who had met in prison and agreed on a truce. They asked Marley to headline. On 22 April 1978, in front of around 32,000 people at the National Stadium, with Peter Tosh having already lectured the politicians from the same stage, Marley played a set that was building to something. In the middle of Jammin' he called Manley and Seaga up, took a hand of each, and raised them above his head while he kept singing.

The truce did not last. Massop and Marshall were both killed within two years, and the 1980 election was the bloodiest in the country's history. Marley was given the United Nations Peace Medal of the Third World that June and died in 1981. The photograph of the three men's hands remains the most reproduced image in Jamaican music.