Quarterly Jamaica Diaspora & Returnee Update — Q1 1997

Quarterly Update | Q1 1997 | January–March 1997 | Jamaica Homes News

Key Takeaways: Q1 1997 in Six Lines

• Dolly the sheep announced February 22; cloning reshapes debate about science and ethics
• UK general election imminent; Labour leads by historic margins as Major era ends
• Mobutu’s Zaire collapsing; Laurent-Désiré Kabila’s forces sweep toward Kinshasa
• IRA Canary Wharf bomb aftermath: Northern Ireland peace process still fragile
• Jamaica election result confirmed; PJ Patterson wins historic third term for PNP
• Reggae Boyz World Cup qualification campaign gathers momentum across CONCACAF

Dolly: Science Crosses a Threshold

On February 22, 1997, scientists at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh announced that they had successfully cloned a sheep from an adult somatic cell — a technique that had previously been considered impossible. The sheep, named Dolly, had been born in July 1996 but the announcement had been held until the results could be published in the scientific journal Nature. The implications of the achievement — that genetic material from an adult organism could be used to create a genetically identical copy — were immediately understood to extend far beyond sheep farming and into territory that engaged the deepest questions about reproduction, identity, and what it means to be human.

The ethical debate that followed Dolly’s announcement was immediate and global. Governments, religious authorities, ethicists, and the public confronted the question of whether human cloning was possible and, more urgently, whether it should be permitted. President Clinton imposed a moratorium on federal funding for human cloning research within days of the announcement, and governments across the world moved to establish regulatory frameworks for research in this area. The Caribbean community’s response reflected the diversity of its religious and ethical traditions: the strong Christian faith of many community members led to deep unease about the prospect of human cloning, while the scientific education and professional backgrounds of others led to more nuanced engagement with the distinctions between reproductive cloning, therapeutic cloning, and the legitimate medical applications of cell research.

The UK Election: The Long Wait Nears Its End

As the first quarter of 1997 draws to a close, the United Kingdom is weeks away from a general election that the opinion polls have been predicting for the better part of two years will produce a Labour government with a large majority. The Conservatives, in government since May 1979, have exhausted their political credit through a succession of crises: Black Wednesday in September 1992, when the pound was forced out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism; the string of personal scandals that attached to individual ministers; and the slow accumulation of public fatigue with a party that had been in power for eighteen years. Tony Blair’s Labour Party, transformed through the modernisation programme that began after the 1992 defeat, is presenting itself as a party of competent economic management and progressive social reform.

For the Caribbean community in Britain, the approaching election carries the weight of eighteen years of expectation. The community has been, throughout the Thatcher and Major years, predominantly Labour in its voting behaviour, and the prospect of a Labour government is accompanied by hopes about race relations, public services, employment rights, and the institutional changes — in policing, in education, in the structures that shape everyday life — that the community has been advocating for throughout the Conservative era. The specific question of the Stephen Lawrence murder inquiry — which has been resisted by the Metropolitan Police and the Home Office through successive Conservative administrations — is one that a Labour government is expected to address. These are not small things, and the community’s anticipation is proportionate to the stakes.

Zaire: An Empire Falls in Africa

In the first months of 1997, the regime of President Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire — one of the longest-lasting and most corrupt dictatorships in African history — is in the final stages of collapse. Laurent-Désiré Kabila’s Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire has been sweeping westward across the vast country since late 1996, capturing city after city while Mobutu, sick with prostate cancer and largely absent from the country he has ruled for thirty-two years, has been unable to organise effective military resistance. The fall of Kinshasa, the capital, is now widely expected; when it comes, Zaire will become the Democratic Republic of Congo, and one of the Cold War’s most enduring proxy regimes will finally end.

For the Caribbean community, events in Africa are followed with the attentiveness of communities whose identity is, in part, rooted in an African heritage from which the slave trade severed the direct connection but did not eliminate the cultural and emotional link. The fall of Mobutu — a dictator whose relationship with his own people was defined by systematic kleptocracy and brutal repression — generates no mourning in communities that have long understood that Black solidarity is not the same as solidarity with Black authoritarian rulers. The question of what comes next in the Congo — a country of extraordinary natural wealth and extraordinary political complexity — is one that the community watches with hope tempered by the knowledge of how difficult the transition from dictatorship to stable governance can be.

Jamaica: PJ Patterson’s Third Term and the Reggae Boyz

Jamaica’s People’s National Party, led by Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, has won a third consecutive general election — the first time any party has achieved three consecutive terms since independence in 1962. The victory, while not entirely unexpected, was decisive and gives Patterson a mandate to continue the economic reform programme that he has been pursuing amid the difficult conditions created by the financial sector crisis. The diaspora community watches Jamaica’s governance with the close attention of people whose family welfare and investment decisions are directly affected by the island’s economic performance.

On the football front, the Jamaica national team’s CONCACAF World Cup qualification campaign is gathering momentum through the first quarter. Coach Rene Simoes has assembled a squad that blends island-based talent with diaspora players — many of them born and raised in England, eligible for Jamaica through parentage — in a combination that is itself a reflection of the diaspora’s relationship with the homeland. The prospect of Jamaica qualifying for a World Cup remains extraordinary to contemplate, but the campaign has produced results that sustain the dream, and the community abroad is following every match with an intensity that transcends the usual boundaries of football support.

Jamaica Diaspora & Returnee Quarterly Update — covering January to March 1997. Published by Jamaica Homes News on 2 April 1997.

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