Jamaica Diaspora Annual Roundup 2007

Annual Review | Published: 31 December 2007 | Jamaica Homes News

Key Takeaways: 2007 in Six Lines

• JLP’s Bruce Golding Wins Jamaica Election by One Seat on 3 September
• Blair Resigns After Ten Years; Gordon Brown Becomes UK Prime Minister
• Obama Announces Presidential Campaign in Springfield, Illinois
• UK Marks 200 Years Since Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
• London and Glasgow Survive Failed Car Bomb Attacks in Late June
• Nancy Pelosi Sworn in as First Female US House Speaker in January

The Year in Review

2007 brought Jamaica its most consequential political change in a generation. Bruce Golding’s Jamaica Labour Party defeated Portia Simpson Miller’s PNP in the September 3 general election by a margin of thirty-two seats to thirty — a one-seat majority that was both a historic JLP return to power and a test of the Biennial diaspora conference framework’s cross-party durability. For diaspora communities, the election carried the crucial question of whether the JLP administration would honour and build upon the diaspora engagement commitments established across the PNP’s two previous Biennial conferences. The new government’s endorsement of the framework — and its commitment to the 3rd Biennial approaching in 2008 — provided the reassurance that diaspora engagement had become a permanent feature of Jamaican governance rather than a partisan project.

In the United Kingdom, 2007 was a year of political transition and historical reckoning. Tony Blair’s resignation on 27 June after ten years as prime minister — handing over to Gordon Brown — closed the chapter of the government that had reshaped British public life since 1997. Two days before Blair’s departure, attempted car bomb attacks in central London and a burning vehicle attack on Glasgow Airport tested British counter-terrorism preparedness. The UK’s bicentenary commemoration of the 1807 abolition of the transatlantic slave trade — marked on 25 March 2007 — engaged Caribbean diaspora communities in a national historical reckoning that produced official acknowledgement of the trade’s horror alongside ongoing debate about whether acknowledgement was sufficient in the absence of reparative action. Barack Obama’s announcement of his presidential candidacy in Springfield, Illinois on 10 February — framed explicitly in Lincoln’s language of national renewal — began a campaign whose significance for African-heritage communities worldwide was immediately apparent. Annual remittances to Jamaica held at approximately US$2.0 billion, maintaining the flows that had made the diaspora Jamaica’s most reliable macroeconomic resource.

Jamaica Diaspora Annual Roundup 2007 | Jamaica Homes News. Compiled from four quarterly editions published April, July, October 2007, and January 2008.

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