Thatcher Shields Apartheid, the Commonwealth Splinters, and the Edinburgh Games Turn Political

Quarterly Jamaica Windrush & Diaspora Update | Published: 3 January 1987 | Period covered: July–December 1986

Key Developments at a Glance

• Commonwealth Games Edinburgh 1986: 32 of 59 nations boycott; Jamaica among those who stay away; protest at Thatcher’s refusal to sanction apartheid South Africa.
• Thatcher stands alone in refusing to impose South African sanctions; calls ANC a ‘terrorist organisation’; splits Commonwealth at Nassau and Marlborough House summits.
• City of London Big Bang deregulation October 27, 1986; financial restructuring reshapes London’s economy with mixed effects on Caribbean employment in service sector.
• Wapping print dispute continues; Murdoch dismisses 5,500 print workers; trade union solidarity across Black and white working-class communities remains a point of contact.
• Edward Seaga PM Jamaica; JLP government enters election cycle; IMF structural adjustment continues to bear down on ordinary Jamaicans.
• Community organisations press for Race Relations Act enforcement; documented evidence of discrimination in housing and employment submitted to CRE.

The second half of 1986 is defined, for the Caribbean community in Britain, by a political confrontation that reaches from Edinburgh to Nassau to Johannesburg. The Commonwealth Games take place in Edinburgh in July and August 1986. They are supposed to celebrate the games’ return to the United Kingdom, the diversity of the Commonwealth, and the athletic achievements of nations that span every continent. Instead, they become a demonstration of the consequences of Thatcher’s refusal to impose economic sanctions on the apartheid government of South Africa. Thirty-two of the fifty-nine nations invited to compete decline to come. Jamaica is among the boycotting nations. The Caribbean athletes who might have competed on British soil, and whose participation would have meant something specific and personal to the Caribbean community watching in the stands and on television, are absent. The Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh are notable for who is not there.

The Sanctions Dispute: Thatcher and the Commonwealth

The dispute over South Africa sanctions has been building for years. The Commonwealth, as an institution, is united in its condemnation of apartheid; the African, Caribbean, and Asian member states have made sanctions a central demand of their engagement with the organisation. At the Nassau Commonwealth summit in October 1985, a compromise package of limited measures was agreed, with Thatcher accepting them under pressure. But Thatcher has made her position clear: she regards economic sanctions as counterproductive, she has described the ANC as a ‘terrorist organisation’, and she has no intention of allowing the Commonwealth to dictate British foreign policy toward one of Britain’s significant trading partners.

For the Caribbean community in Britain, Thatcher’s position on South Africa is not merely an abstract foreign policy disagreement. Apartheid is a system of racial hierarchy that the Caribbean community understands, from lived experience, as a variant of the racial hierarchy it has encountered and resisted in Britain. The argument that apartheid is acceptable, or that its victims should wait for change through dialogue rather than pressure, is an argument the community hears as a statement about the value of Black lives and the urgency of Black freedom. Thatcher’s isolation within the Commonwealth — even from her closest allies such as Australia and Canada, who align with the majority on sanctions — produces a specific quality of discomfort in a community that came to Britain in part because it was told it was part of the Commonwealth family.

Big Bang and the Changing Economy

The deregulation of the City of London on 27 October 1986 — known as the Big Bang — transforms the structure of the British financial services industry. Electronic trading replaces face-to-face dealing; American investment banks enter the British market on terms they could not previously obtain; and the City of London begins the process of becoming the global financial centre it will eventually be. The Caribbean community’s relationship to these changes is complex. The City’s expansion creates employment in the service sector — cleaning, catering, security, transport — where the community is disproportionately represented; but it creates virtually no employment at the professional level for community members, who face documented discrimination in the recruitment processes of the large financial institutions. The economic story of Big Bang for the Caribbean community in Britain is a story of expansion from which the community is, largely, excluded at the level of benefit while included at the level of labour.

Jamaica and the Diaspora

In Jamaica, Edward Seaga’s JLP government is approaching a general election that must be held by the end of 1988. The economic programme of structural adjustment has produced the macroeconomic stability that the IMF required but at a social cost that is visible in the daily lives of ordinary Jamaicans. The diaspora in Britain watches the Jamaican political cycle with close attention, understanding that the outcome of the next Jamaican election will determine the policy environment within which families and communities on the island will live. Remittances from Britain remain an important buffer against the economic pressures of structural adjustment, and the community in Britain maintains the dual consciousness — of life in Britain and of life in Jamaica — that has characterised the community since the first generation arrived.

Sources: Jamaica Information Service; The Gleaner; Jamaica Observer; Caribbean National Weekly; New Nation; The Voice; BBC News; Reuters; AP; The Guardian; Commission for Racial Equality; CARICOM Secretariat; Jamaica High Commission London; Commonwealth Secretariat; Home Office (UK).

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