Quarterly Jamaica Diaspora & Returnee Update — Q2 1997

Quarterly Update | Q2 1997 | April–June 1997 | Jamaica Homes News

Key Takeaways: Q2 1997 in Six Lines

• Blair wins landslide May 1; eighteen years of Conservative rule ends in a single night
• Labour majority of 179: the largest since 1935 and a transformation of the political landscape
• IRA resumes ceasefire May 20; Sinn Féin invited to all-party talks for the first time
• Hong Kong handover six weeks away; Britain prepares to lower the flag on its last major colony
• Caribbean community in UK greets new government with hope earned through long experience
• Jamaica property market: north coast corridor sees strong enquiries from diaspora buyers

Blair’s Landslide: The Night Everything Changed

On May 1, 1997, the United Kingdom went to the polls and produced one of the most decisive electoral results in its modern history. The Labour Party, led by Tony Blair and running on a platform that had been carefully repositioned toward the centre of the political spectrum over the preceding three years, won 418 seats — a majority of 179 over all other parties combined. The Conservatives, who had governed continuously since May 1979, were reduced to 165 seats, their worst result since 1906. Eighteen years of Conservative government — the Thatcher era, the Major years, the poll tax, the miners’ strike, the pit closures, the recession of 1990–92 — ended in a single night.

For the Caribbean community in the United Kingdom, May 1 was a night of extraordinary emotional significance. The community’s relationship with the Conservative governments of the 1980s and 1990s had been, in the most polite framing, difficult. The Thatcher government’s response to the Brixton riots of 1981, the stop-and-search policing that preceded them, the hostile immigration policies, the reduction of public services on which working-class communities depended, the rhetoric about “swamping’ — these were not abstractions. They were lived experiences of a community that had come to Britain as invited workers and been told, in various ways and at various volumes, that it was not fully welcome. The Major years had moderated some of the rhetorical temperature but not the underlying policy direction. The election result felt, to many community members, like a national verdict on those eighteen years.

The particular symbolism of election night was also felt: the sight of senior Conservative ministers — Michael Portillo most memorably — losing their seats was received in Caribbean community venues across the country with a feeling that combined satisfaction with the caution that experience had taught. Hope, yes. Certainty, no. The community knew, from hard experience, that political change at the top does not automatically translate into change on the streets and in the institutions that shape everyday life. But the hope was genuine, and the night was celebrated with a warmth that was proportionate to what eighteen years of the alternative had felt like.

The IRA Ceasefire: A Second Chance for Peace

On May 20, 1997, the Provisional IRA announced the resumption of its ceasefire, which had broken down in February 1996 with the Canary Wharf bomb. The restoration of the ceasefire opened the way for Sinn Féin to enter all-party talks on the future of Northern Ireland for the first time — a development that the new Blair government had moved quickly to facilitate, signalling a change of emphasis from its predecessor’s more cautious approach to the republican movement. The all-party talks, chaired by former US Senator George Mitchell, were now set to include all the significant political parties in Northern Ireland for the first time.

The Caribbean community in the UK had watched the Northern Ireland peace process with an interest that reflected both civic engagement with a defining British political issue and the community’s own experience of the costs of political violence. The IRA’s bombing campaigns had touched the cities where Caribbean community members lived and worked: the Manchester bomb of 1996, which devastated the city centre, had affected Caribbean-owned businesses and community institutions as well as the broader commercial fabric. The resumption of the ceasefire, and the inclusion of Sinn Féin in talks, was received as a cautiously hopeful development — the beginning, perhaps, of the end of a conflict that had run for a generation and a half.

Hong Kong: The Countdown Begins

As June draws to a close, the handover of Hong Kong to China is six weeks away. On July 1, 1997, Britain will lower the Union Jack over Government House for the last time, and the People’s Republic of China will assume sovereignty over the territory it has called a “humiliation” since the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. Chris Patten, the last Governor of Hong Kong, has spent his tenure attempting to accelerate democratic reform in the territory in ways that have infuriated Beijing and generated debate about Britain’s obligations to Hong Kong people after the handover. The framework of “one country, two systems,” agreed between Britain and China, is supposed to preserve Hong Kong’s distinct legal and economic character for fifty years — until 2047. Whether that framework will hold, and whether China will honour its commitments, will only be tested over time.

For the Caribbean diaspora, Hong Kong’s handover is an occasion for reflection on the arc of British colonial history. The empire that brought the ancestors of the Caribbean community to Britain as subjects — and later as migrants responding to the labour needs of the mother country — is, in the handover of Hong Kong, releasing what may be its last significant territorial holding. The process is not without its complications and contradictions, as the campaign for the right of abode for British nationals in Hong Kong illustrates: the question of which holders of British passports have the right to live in Britain has been answered differently for different communities, in ways that Caribbean community members remember with particular clarity.

Jamaica: An Election Year, a Changing Economy

Jamaica is approaching a general election — which must be held by early 1998 — against the backdrop of a domestic financial sector that is showing the first signs of serious stress. The rapid expansion of indigenous financial institutions through the early 1990s — banks, insurance companies, and building societies that grew quickly in a liberalised environment with inadequate regulatory oversight — has produced a sector that is now confronting the consequences of over-extension. The government’s response, and the role of the Financial Sector Adjustment Company, will be among the defining economic stories of the next year.

For the diaspora, the Jamaica election is followed with the attentiveness of people who have a direct stake in the island’s governance — not the stake of voters, since most diaspora members cannot vote in Jamaican elections, but the stake of people with family, property, and investment interests on the island, and a deep emotional investment in Jamaica’s trajectory. The campaign between the PNP and the JLP will be contested, as always, on questions of economic management, public safety, and the kind of Jamaica that the parties respectively propose to build. The diaspora will be watching, and the results will shape investment and return decisions in the community abroad.

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

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