Manchester’s Games, Patterson’s Fourth Term: A Community’s Autumn

Quarterly Jamaica Windrush & Diaspora Update | Published: 3 January 2003 | Period covered: July–December 2002

Key Developments at a Glance

• XVII Commonwealth Games in Manchester, 25 July – 4 August 2002: Jamaica wins gold medals in athletics and cycling.
• Caribbean-heritage British athletes represent England and compete for their ancestral nations; community cheers for both.
• PJ Patterson wins Jamaica general election on 16 October 2002; his fourth consecutive victory extends PNP rule.
• Tony Blair makes case for military action against Iraq; Caribbean community voices grow louder in opposition.
• Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 continues to concern minority communities as emergency powers are maintained.
• JLP under Edward Seaga loses Jamaica election; Seaga subsequently announces his intention to retire.

The second half of 2002 opens with Manchester hosting the XVII Commonwealth Games — an occasion that, for the Caribbean diaspora in Britain, is something close to a homecoming. The Games bring together athletes from across the Commonwealth, including the Caribbean nations whose sporting heritage is woven into the identity of every community member who grew up cheering Jamaican sprinters and West Indian cricketers. For Black British people whose parents or grandparents came from the Caribbean, the Commonwealth Games are an event whose significance transcends sport: they are a celebration of the Commonwealth as a living community rather than a constitutional abstraction, a moment when the nations that share a history — however complex and unequal that history was — come together in competitive solidarity.

The Commonwealth Games: Jamaica Shines in Manchester

The Manchester Commonwealth Games, held from 25 July to 4 August 2002, were the largest sporting event ever staged in England and, by most accounts, a triumph of organisation and atmosphere. The Caribbean nations competed with distinction: Jamaica, in particular, performed strongly in athletics, with medals across the sprints, middle distance, and field events that reflected the depth and quality of Jamaican athletic culture. The performances of Jamaican athletes at the Games were watched across the diaspora with pride — in community centres, sports clubs, and homes throughout Britain — and were celebrated in Caribbean community media as evidence of the island’s capacity to compete and excel at the highest level.

For many members of the Caribbean diaspora in Britain, the Games presented an interesting moment of dual allegiance: people whose parents or grandparents came from Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, or elsewhere in the Caribbean, but who were themselves born in Britain and whose national identity is British, watching Caribbean nations compete alongside England, Scotland, and Wales. The community navigated this duality with the ease that comes from long practice — cheering for Jamaica in the sprints and for England in the cricket, or sometimes for both simultaneously when the cricket teams were not in direct competition. It is a duality that defines the Caribbean diaspora’s experience of belonging in Britain.

Patterson’s Fourth Term: Jamaica’s October Election

Jamaica held its general election on 16 October 2002, and the result was PJ Patterson’s fourth consecutive victory — an achievement without precedent in Jamaica’s post-independence history. The People’s National Party won thirty-four seats against the Jamaica Labour Party’s twenty-six, a comfortable majority that belied an election campaign that had been hard-fought and at times bitter. The JLP under Edward Seaga — who had led the party since 1974 and who had served as Prime Minister from 1980 to 1989 — performed better than in 1997 but failed to close the gap enough to take power. Seaga subsequently announced his intention to step down from the JLP leadership, bringing to an end a political career that had spanned half a century of Jamaican public life.

For the Jamaican diaspora in Britain, Patterson’s continued leadership is received with qualified approval. His government’s management of the economy — characterised by modest growth, high debt, and difficult negotiations with the IMF — has not transformed the material conditions of the communities that the diaspora left behind and continues to support through remittances. The crime rate remains severely elevated. But Patterson’s consistent engagement with diaspora concerns, his advocacy for Caribbean issues in international forums, and his personal relationship with community leaders in Britain give him a standing in the diaspora that extends beyond purely domestic performance.

The Looming Shadow of War

As 2002 draws to its close, the dominant shadow over British politics is the prospect of military action against Iraq. Tony Blair’s government has been building the case for war since the summer, culminating in the publication of the government’s intelligence dossier in September 2002 — the document that claimed Saddam Hussein could deploy weapons of mass destruction within forty-five minutes. The dossier’s claims were contested when they were published and will be more seriously questioned in the months to come. For the Caribbean community, the prospect of a war without explicit UN authorisation is a red line: the community’s political tradition requires multilateralism, international law, and respect for sovereignty as the conditions of legitimate military action.

Community organisations and their networks are beginning to engage with the anti-war movement that is building across British civil society. The Caribbean community’s participation in what will become the February 2003 march — the largest demonstration in British history — is being organised through the same structures that have sustained Caribbean political engagement for decades: through churches, community centres, trade unions, and the personal networks of people who have been part of every major political mobilisation of the past fifty years. The Caribbean community’s opposition to the prospective war is not tentative. It is grounded in history, in principle, and in a clear-eyed assessment of what British and American military intervention in the Middle East is likely to produce.

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

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