Quarterly Update | Q1 1999 | January–March 1999 | Jamaica Homes News
Key Takeaways: Q1 1999 in Six Lines
- Euro launches January 1 as accounting currency across eleven European nations
- Clinton acquitted by Senate February 12; impeachment saga ends without conviction
- King Hussein of Jordan dies February 7; Middle East loses a voice for moderation
- Macpherson Report published February 24; “institutional racism” enters British public life
- Kosovo crisis deepens; NATO prepares military action as Serbian forces advance
- Jamaica PNP wins third term; Patterson consolidates grip on Jamaican politics
The Euro: A New Currency for a New Europe
On January 1, 1999, the euro came into existence as an accounting currency, replacing the national currencies of eleven European Union member states — Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria, Finland, and Ireland — for financial and business transactions. Physical euro notes and coins would not enter circulation until January 2002, but from this date the exchange rates of the participating currencies were irrevocably fixed to the euro, and the European Central Bank assumed responsibility for monetary policy across the eurozone. It was the most significant act of economic integration in European history, and its implications — for trade, for monetary sovereignty, for the political future of the continent — will take decades to work through.
For the Jamaican diaspora in the United Kingdom, the euro’s launch was followed with the particular interest of a community that lives at the intersection of British and European life. Britain had chosen not to join the single currency at launch — a decision that reflected both economic reservations about convergence criteria and a political reluctance that ran deeper than economics — and the debate about whether and when Britain might eventually join remained live. For diaspora members who travel regularly between the UK and Europe, or who conduct business across the Channel, the practical implications of the euro were immediate: a simpler currency environment in most of Continental Europe, but a continued exchange rate relationship between sterling and the euro that added friction to UK-European commerce.
Clinton Acquitted: The Impeachment Ends
On February 12, 1999, the United States Senate voted on two articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton — perjury before a grand jury and obstruction of justice — that had been passed by the House of Representatives in December 1998. Neither article received the two-thirds majority required for conviction. The perjury article failed 45–55; the obstruction article failed 50–50. Clinton remained in office, the first President to be impeached since Andrew Johnson in 1868, and the Senate’s failure to convict was widely interpreted as a reflection of the public’s disinclination to remove a President whose job approval ratings had, paradoxically, risen through the impeachment process.
The saga — which had begun with independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s investigation and culminated in the publication of the Starr Report and the House impeachment vote in the final months of 1998 — had consumed American political life for more than a year. For the Jamaican and Caribbean diaspora in the United States, Clinton’s survival reflected a political judgment that was broadly shared in the community: that whatever his personal failings, the substance of the charges against him did not rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanours that the Constitution specifies for removal, and that the impeachment was as much a political enterprise as a constitutional one. The community’s relationship with Clinton — a President who had made genuine efforts to engage with Caribbean and African-American concerns — was sufficiently positive that the acquittal was received with some relief.
Macpherson: Naming the Disease
On February 24, 1999, Sir William Macpherson published his report into the Metropolitan Police’s investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, the Black British teenager stabbed to death by a group of white youths in Eltham, south-east London in April 1993. The report’s findings were, for the Caribbean community, both shocking in their explicitness and unsurprising in their substance. The Metropolitan Police’s investigation had been characterised by “a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership by senior officers.” The phrase “institutional racism” — defined by Macpherson as “the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin” — entered British public discourse with the force of an official verdict.
For the Caribbean community, the Macpherson Report was the culmination of a six-year campaign by Doreen and Neville Lawrence — Stephen’s parents — that had refused to accept the original investigation’s failures and had pushed, through the courts, through the media, and through political lobbying, for a proper public accounting. Their dignity, their persistence, and their refusal to be either silenced or embittered had made them figures of extraordinary moral authority in the community and beyond. The report was their vindication, and the community’s reception of it reflected the depth of that connection: this was not an abstract policy report but the outcome of a struggle that the Caribbean community had lived alongside for six years.
King Hussein: The Loss of a Peacemaker
King Hussein of Jordan died on February 7, 1999, after a battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He had reigned for 46 years, navigating the extraordinary pressures of Jordan’s position — a small country bordered by Israel, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, with a large Palestinian population and no oil wealth — with a combination of personal charm, political pragmatism, and genuine commitment to regional stability that made him one of the most respected leaders in the Middle East. He had signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 and had been, in the years since, a consistent voice for negotiation rather than confrontation. His son Abdullah II succeeded him.
The loss of Hussein was mourned across the region and the world as the passing of a rare figure: a leader who had survived in one of the world’s most difficult political environments for nearly half a century while maintaining the confidence of parties on multiple sides of multiple conflicts. For the diaspora community, his death was a reminder of how dependent the fragile architecture of Middle Eastern diplomacy is on individual relationships and individual leadership, and how quickly a peace process can lose momentum when a key figure is removed from it.
Jamaica: PJ Patterson’s Third Term
Prime Minister P.J. Patterson’s People’s National Party won a third consecutive term in the December 1997 general election, consolidating its position as the dominant force in Jamaican politics and giving Patterson the mandate to pursue the economic stabilisation programme that the FINSAC crisis had made unavoidable. As the first quarter of 1999 draws to a close, the government’s management of the economy continues to be the central preoccupation of domestic politics, and the diaspora community watches with a direct personal stake in the outcome.
The remittance flows from the diaspora have been, in this period, one of Jamaica’s most reliable sources of foreign exchange, and the Bank of Jamaica’s monitoring of those flows reflects their importance to the island’s balance of payments. For diaspora members considering a return to Jamaica, the economic environment is a primary consideration: not only the state of the property market and the cost of living, but the quality of the public services — health, education, infrastructure — that a returning resident will depend upon. The honest assessment is that those services remain under significant stress, and that the returnee who plans carefully and maintains realistic expectations will fare better than one who expects the Jamaica of memory to match the Jamaica of the present.
Jamaica Diaspora & Returnee Quarterly Update — covering January to March 1999. Published by Jamaica Homes News on 2 April 1999.
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