Change at the Top: New Leaders in London and Kingston

Quarterly Jamaica Windrush & Diaspora Update | Published: 3 January 2008 | Period covered: July–December 2007

Key Developments at a Glance

• Gordon Brown becomes UK Prime Minister on 27 June 2007; Jacqui Smith is first female Home Secretary.
• Jamaica general election on 3 September 2007: JLP’s Bruce Golding defeats Portia Simpson Miller by one seat.
• UK Borders Act 2007 receives Royal Assent in October; automatic deportation for offenders sentenced to twelve months or more.
• Portia Simpson Miller steps down as Jamaica PM; eighteen years of PNP government ends.
• Caribbean community legal groups warn UK Borders Act will hit Black British residents hardest.
• Brown government announces points-based immigration system; Caribbean High Commissions brief on impact.

The latter half of 2007 is a period of political transition on both sides of the Atlantic that matters to Jamaica and its diaspora in Britain. In London, a new Prime Minister has taken office, ending a decade of Tony Blair’s leadership and beginning a period that will test the relationship between Caribbean communities and a Labour government they have supported consistently but not uncritically. In Kingston, a general election has produced the closest result in Jamaican political history, bringing to power a government whose constitutional and security agenda the diaspora is watching with particular care. And at Westminster, a piece of legislation has been passed that will have consequences for Caribbean-heritage people in Britain that will take years to work through the courts.

Gordon Brown’s Britain

Gordon Brown succeeded Tony Blair as Prime Minister on 27 June 2007 following Blair’s announcement of his resignation from the leadership of the Labour Party. Brown, who had served as Chancellor of the Exchequer for the entirety of the Blair government, was elected unopposed as Labour leader and took office without a general election — a constitutional arrangement that is entirely legitimate under the British parliamentary system, but which became a source of political criticism in the months that followed. Brown’s appointment of Jacqui Smith as Home Secretary — the first woman to hold that office — was widely welcomed, including in the Caribbean community.

The Brown government’s approach to immigration during its first months in office signals continuity with the restrictive trajectory of the Blair years rather than any significant liberalisation. The announcement of a points-based immigration system — modelled loosely on the Australian system and designed to make immigration explicitly skills-based — is presented as a rational and objective framework for managing entry. Caribbean community organisations have expressed concern that the points-based system, whatever its stated neutrality, will in practice restrict routes for Commonwealth nationals who do not fall neatly into the skilled-worker categories the system prioritises, and will make family reunification more difficult for established Caribbean communities in Britain.

The UK Borders Act 2007: A New Threat

The UK Borders Act 2007, which received Royal Assent on 30 October 2007, represents the most significant extension of immigration enforcement powers since the 1971 Immigration Act. Its most contentious provision is the introduction of automatic deportation for foreign nationals who receive custodial sentences of twelve months or more. Under this provision, any non-British national convicted of an offence serious enough to attract a sentence of a year or longer is subject to automatic deportation unless they can demonstrate that removal would breach their human rights — in practice, Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to family and private life.

Caribbean community legal organisations and civil liberties groups are deeply concerned about the application of this provision to people who came to Britain as children, grew up here, and whose family, social, and cultural life is entirely British. These individuals — often described in the community as “1.5 generation” migrants — hold no meaningful connection to the country of their birth, may not speak the language, and have no family remaining there. The Home Office’s position is that Article 8 provides an adequate safeguard and that the courts will protect genuine cases. Community organisations dispute whether this is correct in practice, and are already compiling case evidence to test that proposition in the courts.

Jamaica’s Historic Election

The Jamaica general election of 3 September 2007 produced a result that surprised even the most experienced observers of Jamaican politics. The Jamaica Labour Party, led by Bruce Golding, defeated the People’s National Party of incumbent Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller by a margin of thirty-two seats to thirty — a majority of two in a sixty-seat parliament, achieved on a swing of fewer than two percentage points in the popular vote. Portia Simpson Miller, who had led the PNP since 2006 and Jamaica since the retirement of PJ Patterson in 2006, conceded gracefully. Golding, who had left and then returned to the JLP, was sworn in as Prime Minister.

For the diaspora in Britain, the change of government carries both emotional and practical significance. The PNP had held office since 1989 — eighteen consecutive years that had seen Jamaica through structural adjustment, through the crime crisis of the 1990s and early 2000s, through the first terms of PJ Patterson and then the brief Portia Simpson Miller administration. Golding’s JLP comes to power with a commitment to constitutional reform — including the possibility of a republic — and to tackling the garrison communities and the criminal networks embedded within them. These are causes the diaspora strongly supports. Whether the new government has the political will and the institutional capacity to deliver on them is a question that the months ahead will begin to answer.

Sources: Jamaica Information Service; The Gleaner; Jamaica Observer; Caribbean National Weekly; BBC News; Reuters; AP; The Guardian; Runnymede Trust; Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants; CARICOM Secretariat; Jamaica High Commission London; Home Office (UK); UK Parliament Hansard.

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