Labour In, Holness Back: Two Elections and a Commonwealth Breakthrough

Quarterly Jamaica Windrush & Diaspora Update  |  Publication date: 3 January 2025  |  Period covered: July–December 2024

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Key Developments at a Glance

• Labour wins UK general election in July landslide, pledging Windrush Commissioner.
• Jamaica’s JLP secures historic third consecutive term under Andrew Holness in September.
• CHOGM in Apia, Samoa, endorses language recognising transatlantic slavery as crime against humanity.
• Windrush compensation surpasses £94 million in total payments as scheme enters sixth year.
• Jamaica’s Constitution (Amendment) (Republic of Jamaica) Bill advances in parliament.
• CARICOM Reparations Commission delegation visits UK for strategic advocacy engagements.

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LONDON / KINGSTON — The second half of 2024 was shaped by elections, diplomacy and a Commonwealth milestone that reparations advocates in Jamaica and across the Caribbean received as the most significant multilateral acknowledgement of the transatlantic slave trade in the Commonwealth’s history. For the Windrush Generation, a change of government in Britain brought renewed pledges — and renewed impatience — while in Kingston, an historic electoral victory set the scene for constitutional battles that would define the coming years.

Labour’s Landslide: What It Means for Windrush

The United Kingdom general election of 4 July 2024 delivered a sweeping Labour majority, ending fourteen years of Conservative government and bringing Keir Starmer to Downing Street. For Windrush survivors, their families and advocacy organisations, the result carried particular weight. Labour’s election manifesto had included explicit commitments to Windrush justice: ensuring that victims’ voices were heard, that the compensation scheme was run effectively, and — most significantly — that a Windrush Commissioner would be appointed to oversee delivery of the scheme and the full implementation of the Wendy Williams Lessons Learned Review.

The Conservatives had governed through the scandal’s exposure, the initial apologies and the creation of the compensation scheme in 2019 — but had never established the Commissioner role that Williams had recommended. The Labour victory was therefore greeted with cautious optimism by Windrush communities, tempered by the knowledge that the scheme had already paid out around £94 million of an estimated total liability that the Home Office suggested could exceed £165 million, and that thousands of cases remained in various stages of processing or appeal. By the end of 2024, the new government had been in office for six months. The Commissioner appointment had been announced but not yet formalised, and scheme reform remained a promise rather than a delivery.

The political context also matters for Jamaica’s broader relationship with the UK. A Labour government with a large majority is generally seen by Caribbean governments as more receptive to discussions about the Windrush legacy, reparations and the historical relationship between Britain and the Caribbean than its Conservative predecessor. Prime Minister Starmer moved quickly to signal a warmer approach to Commonwealth relationships, though the UK maintained its longstanding opposition to direct financial reparations for slavery.

Jamaica Votes: Holness Makes History

On 3 September 2024, Jamaicans went to the polls in a general election that produced an historic result. Prime Minister Andrew Holness and the Jamaica Labour Party won 34 seats in the 63-seat House of Representatives, giving them a third consecutive term — the first time in the JLP’s history that the party had won three back-to-back elections. The People’s National Party, led by Mark Golding, secured 29 seats in what was described by observers as a closely fought but ultimately clear-cut result.

The JLP’s third term victory was interpreted in different ways by different constituencies. For supporters of republican constitutional reform, it represented a mandate to complete the transition to a republic that Holness had promised would happen before or during this electoral cycle. For sceptics, the PNP’s strong showing — nearly half the seats on a reduced JLP majority compared with 2020 — underlined that the two-thirds parliamentary majority needed for constitutional amendment remained beyond the JLP’s unaided reach.

For Jamaica’s diaspora communities in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, the election was followed with close interest. Diaspora voting rights — a long-standing advocacy issue for Jamaicans overseas — remain restricted under Jamaican electoral law, which requires physical presence in Jamaica to vote. The question of whether Jamaicans abroad should be able to participate in elections that shape the constitutional future of their home country was raised again during the campaign period, without resolution.

CHOGM Apia: The Commonwealth’s Most Significant Slavery Statement

At the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting held in Apia, Samoa, in October 2024, Caribbean leaders secured what the CARICOM Reparations Commission described as a landmark diplomatic achievement. The meeting’s final communiqué included language that endorsed and recognised the transatlantic slave trade and the trafficking of enslaved Africans as crimes against humanity — a formulation that had been resisted in previous Commonwealth communiqués and which now provided advocates with a multilateral foundation for their legal and political arguments.

Jamaica’s government, along with other CARICOM member states, had pushed hard for the language in Apia. Its inclusion was seen as a direct consequence of years of coordinated Caribbean advocacy within the Commonwealth and of the growing international profile of the reparations debate, which had been amplified by the Black Lives Matter movement, academic reparations research and a series of high-profile public discussions about colonial legacies in Britain and across Europe.

The UK delegation in Apia endorsed the communiqué’s language, though British ministers continued to maintain that this acknowledgement did not create a legal obligation to pay financial reparations. Caribbean leaders took a different view, arguing that the recognition of crimes against humanity necessarily implied obligations of remedy under international law. The CARICOM Reparations Commission dispatched a delegation to the United Kingdom in the second half of 2024 for strategic advocacy engagements, building on the Apia momentum.

Jamaica’s Constitutional Reform Bill: Advancing Through Parliament

The Constitution (Amendment) (Republic of Jamaica) Bill, introduced to Jamaica’s parliament in 2024, continued to be debated and scrutinised in the second half of the year. The bill provided for the Jamaican constitution to be amended to replace the constitutional monarchy with a non-executive presidency, removing the British monarch as Jamaica’s head of state. The Ministry of Legal and Constitutional Affairs maintained its Road to Republic public information platform, designed to keep Jamaicans informed about the reform process and to solicit input from diaspora communities.

However, the passage of the bill through the two-thirds majority threshold required for constitutional amendment depended on cross-party support that the PNP had withheld. The opposition’s condition — that the Privy Council must be simultaneously replaced by the Caribbean Court of Justice as Jamaica’s final appellate court — meant that the bill’s progress remained stalled. Legal analysts argued that the two issues were constitutionally separable and that the linkage was a political rather than a legal necessity, but the political reality was determinative.

As 2024 drew to a close, the constitutional reform process remained a work in progress. The CARICOM Reparations Commission’s Apia success, Labour’s accession in the UK and Holness’s third mandate in Jamaica together created a diplomatic and political environment more propitious for change than had existed in years. Whether that environment would translate into concrete constitutional progress — and meaningful Windrush justice — remained the central question for 2025.

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Sources for this report include the Jamaica Information Service, Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, Caribbean National Weekly, CARICOM, the Commonwealth Secretariat, House of Commons Library, GOV.UK, the Ministry of Legal and Constitutional Affairs (Jamaica), constitutionnet.org, PBS NewsHour and the Conversation. This report was researched and published on 3 January 2025.