Sister P Takes the Helm: Jamaica Makes History

Quarterly Jamaica Windrush & Diaspora Update | Published: 3 July 2006 | Period covered: January–June 2006

Key Developments at a Glance

• Portia Simpson Miller sworn in as Jamaica’s 7th and first female Prime Minister on 30 March 2006.
• PJ Patterson retires after fourteen years; his tenure is the longest since independence.
• Diaspora celebrations across Britain mark Simpson Miller’s historic appointment with community events.
• Tony Blair’s tenth year in office sees mounting pressure on immigration and public service reform.
• Caribbean community presses for bicentenary of abolition (2007) to include apology and reparations discussion.
• Jamaica Independence 44th anniversary preparations begin; London Jamaica diaspora plans major events.

When Portia Simpson Miller was sworn in as Jamaica’s Prime Minister on 30 March 2006, she became not only the seventh person to hold that office since independence in 1962 but the first woman ever to do so. The response across the Caribbean diaspora in Britain was immediate, emotional, and profound. In community centres, churches, and living rooms from Brixton to Birmingham, from Nottingham to Hackney, people who had watched Jamaican politics for decades felt the weight and the joy of the moment. ‘Sister P’ — as Portia Simpson Miller is known to her followers — had risen through the trade union movement and the People’s National Party on the basis of her work among the poor and her unashamed identification with working-class Jamaica. Her ascent to the highest office was both a personal achievement and a collective one.

The End of the Patterson Era

Portia Simpson Miller’s accession followed the retirement of PJ Patterson, who had led the People’s National Party since 1992 and Jamaica since the same year, winning four successive general elections and serving for fourteen years — the longest continuous tenure of any Jamaican Prime Minister since independence. Patterson, a lawyer and a political operator of considerable skill, oversaw a period of significant economic difficulty — including the financial sector crisis of the late 1990s and the ongoing burden of structural adjustment — but also of political stability and democratic continuity. His legacy is contested: economic growth was limited and crime remained high throughout his tenure, but Jamaica maintained its democratic institutions and its place in the international community with consistency.

For the diaspora in Britain, Patterson’s tenure was marked by sustained engagement with diaspora issues. He visited the UK on multiple occasions, met with community organisations, and consistently emphasised the importance of the diaspora’s contribution to Jamaica’s economic and social development. His government pursued the Caribbean Single Market and Economy through CARICOM and placed Jamaica’s regional integration at the centre of its foreign policy. The final act of his premiership — the graceful handover to Simpson Miller — was widely praised as a model of political maturity.

Simpson Miller and the Diaspora

Portia Simpson Miller’s relationship with the Jamaican diaspora in Britain is warm and personal in ways that reflect her political roots. She has spoken at events in the UK, knows community leaders by name, and brings to the role of Prime Minister a style of engagement — direct, emotional, rooted in faith and in collective experience — that resonates powerfully with Jamaicans in Britain whose own political formation was shaped by labour movement traditions and by the churches that sustained Caribbean community life. Her stated priorities — addressing poverty, investing in health and education, tackling crime — are the priorities of the diaspora’s political imagination.

The diaspora is also watching closely the constitutional questions that Simpson Miller will face. The question of whether Jamaica should become a republic — replacing the British monarch as head of state — and whether the Caribbean Court of Justice should replace the Privy Council as the final court of appeal, have been on the political agenda for years without resolution. Simpson Miller has expressed support for both changes in principle. Whether the political will and the parliamentary arithmetic exist to deliver them during her tenure is a more open question. For many in the diaspora, these are not abstract constitutional matters: they are questions about Jamaica’s self-understanding and its capacity to define itself on its own terms.

Towards the Bicentenary: A Community Prepares

With the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act less than nine months away, the first half of 2006 sees the Caribbean community in Britain intensifying its engagement with the question of what Britain should say and do to mark the occasion. The formal government bicentenary planning, coordinated through a Cabinet Office committee and drawing on the BBC, national museums, and local authorities, is underway. But for the community, the key question is not what events will be held but what acknowledgements will be made.

Community organisations and scholars are pressing for three things. First, a formal government apology for Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade and the system of plantation slavery it sustained across the Caribbean. Second, engagement with the reparations question — not a refusal to discuss it, which has been the default governmental position, but a genuine process of dialogue with Caribbean governments and the descendants of enslaved people. Third, sustained commitment to including the history of slavery and its legacies as a core element of British history education, not a minority interest or an optional supplement. These demands are not new, but the bicentenary gives them renewed urgency and a deadline.

Sources: Jamaica Information Service; The Gleaner; Jamaica Observer; Caribbean National Weekly; New Nation; BBC News; Reuters; AP; The Guardian; Runnymede Trust; CARICOM Secretariat; Jamaica High Commission London; Home Office (UK); House of Commons Hansard; UCL Legacies of British Slavery project.

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