Author: Jamaica Homes News

On 22 June 1988, forty years pass since HMT Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury with its 492 Caribbean passengers. The anniversary falls in a Britain that has not yet fully reckoned with what those forty years have contained. The Caribbean community marks the moment with exhibitions, oral histories, and a political demand: that this anniversary be the beginning of honest acknowledgement, not a celebration that papers over the truth.

The second half of 1987 brings the Caribbean community in Britain a grief that belongs to the whole nation, a financial shock that rattles every household, and a political milestone that is specifically its own. The IRA bombs Enniskillen’s Remembrance Day service on 8 November 1987, killing eleven people. Black Monday on 19 October wipes a quarter from global stock market values in a single day. And four Black MPs — Diane Abbott, Paul Boateng, Bernie Grant, and Keith Vaz, elected in June — are in the House of Commons for their first full parliamentary term.

The general election of 11 June 1987 delivers two results that the Caribbean community in Britain will absorb simultaneously. Margaret Thatcher wins a third consecutive parliamentary majority, securing a mandate that will shape the social and immigration landscape for years to come. And for the first time in British history, four Black MPs enter the House of Commons: Diane Abbott, Paul Boateng, Bernie Grant, and Keith Vaz — elected on a Labour ticket in constituencies where the community’s political mobilisation has been decades in the making.

The Edinburgh Commonwealth Games of July and August 1986 take place under a cloud of political protest that is inseparable from the Caribbean community’s own concerns. Thirty-two of the fifty-nine invited nations boycott the games in protest at Thatcher’s refusal to impose economic sanctions on apartheid South Africa. The Caribbean community in Britain watches the spectacle — a British-hosted sporting event emptied of its Caribbean participants by British government policy — as a direct expression of where it stands in relation to both the Commonwealth and the Conservative government.

Edward Seaga’s Jamaica Labour Party government, in power since the October 1980 landslide, governs Jamaica in 1986 as the most trusted Caribbean ally of the Reagan administration. The US Caribbean Basin Initiative is reshaping Jamaican trade. Tourism reaches approximately 740,000 stopover visitors. Jamaica records approximately 383 murders — roughly 16 per 100,000 — a figure that, in retrospect, represents the last period before the violence of the garrison communities and the narcotics trade begins its dramatic escalation.

The first half of 1986 offers little respite. The Westland helicopter affair produces two Cabinet resignations in January, shaking Thatcher’s grip on government. On 15 April, United States Air Force bombers operating from British bases carry out airstrikes on Tripoli and Benghazi — a decision that Thatcher sanctioned alone, over the protests of European allies and much of her own public. Eleven days later, reactor number four at Chernobyl explodes, producing the worst nuclear accident in history. The Caribbean community in Britain, which has no special vulnerability to any of these events, watches a world that is producing large-scale dangers with remarkable frequency.

Three major riots in ten weeks constitute the most concentrated period of civil unrest the Caribbean community in Britain has witnessed since the summer of 1981. Handsworth, Birmingham erupts on the night of 9 September 1985; Brixton erupts on 28 September after Cherry Groce is shot by police in her own home; and Broadwater Farm, Tottenham erupts on 6 October after Cynthia Jarrett dies during a police search of her home. In the Broadwater Farm riot, PC Keith Blakelock is killed. The recommendations of the Scarman Report, published four years earlier, have not been implemented. The community has been telling authorities this would happen.

On 3 March 1985, the National Union of Mineworkers votes to return to work without a negotiated settlement. The miners’ strike, which began in March 1984, ends in defeat after twelve months on the picket line. Arthur Scargill is not present at the TUC conference that endorses the return to work. The Caribbean community in Britain has followed the strike with close attention, understanding that the outcome of the contest between Thatcher’s government and the NUM will shape the balance of power between capital and labour in Britain for a generation.

In the second half of 1984, the miners’ strike that began in March continues to dominate British political life. On 12 October, the IRA detonates a bomb concealed in the Grand Hotel, Brighton, during the Conservative Party conference; five people are killed, Norman Tebbit is pulled from the rubble with severe injuries, and Thatcher is unhurt but recognises how close the bomb came to ending her administration. In December, Bob Geldof organises the Band Aid recording session as Ethiopian famine images saturate British television. The Caribbean community navigates a period of intense national crisis while watching its own position continue to be shaped by policy decisions it had no part in making.

The most significant domestic event of the first half of 1984 begins in March: British Coal announces the closure of twenty pits, the National Union of Mineworkers calls a national strike without holding a ballot, and the most prolonged and politically decisive industrial dispute in post-war British history is underway. On 17 April, WPC Yvonne Fletcher is shot and killed outside the Libyan People’s Bureau in St James’s Square during a demonstration; the siege that follows lasts eleven days. The Caribbean community tracks both events and continues to live with the consequences of the British Nationality Act 1981, which has now been in force for eighteen months.

On 25 October 1983, United States forces invade the Commonwealth island of Grenada, overthrowing the Revolutionary Military Council that had seized power after the killing of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop six days earlier. The invasion is conducted without the knowledge or consent of Margaret Thatcher, who learns of the American operation only after it has begun. Grenada’s head of state is the Queen. For the Caribbean community in Britain, this is not an abstract foreign policy matter: Grenada is home, and the sight of an American army landing on a Commonwealth island without British agreement is a statement about the worth of Caribbean sovereignty in the eyes of those who claim to be the Caribbean’s protectors.

The general election of 9 June 1983 produces a Conservative landslide and a Labour catastrophe. Margaret Thatcher, riding the wave of the Falklands War, wins a majority of 144 seats — the largest since 1945. Michael Foot leads Labour to its worst defeat in more than fifty years. The Caribbean community in Britain faces a second Conservative term with the British Nationality Act 1981 in force since January and its full implications for citizenship rights beginning to be understood.

The Falklands War ended on 14 June 1982, with the Argentine garrison at Port Stanley surrendering to British forces. The victory transforms Thatcher’s political position: from a Prime Minister facing electoral defeat and a party in revolt, she becomes the dominant figure of post-war British politics. The Caribbean community in Britain welcomes the peace but takes stock of what the Falklands victory has done to the political landscape it must now navigate. In September, the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon kills up to 3,500 people. In January, the British Nationality Act 1981 comes into force. The second half of 1982 is the hinge on which a new political era turns.

On 2 April 1982, Argentine forces invade the Falkland Islands. Margaret Thatcher dispatches a naval task force to reclaim them. The conflict, which lasts until the Argentine surrender on 14 June, kills 255 British service personnel, 649 Argentinians, and three Falkland Islands civilians. The Caribbean community in Britain follows the Falklands War as British citizens whose community members serve in the armed forces, and as people whose geographic and cultural frame of reference includes the South Atlantic region in which it is being fought.

The riots that began in Brixton in April 1981 spread to Toxteth, Liverpool, in July, then to Handsworth in Birmingham, Moss Side in Manchester, and Chapeltown in Leeds. By the time the summer’s unrest subsides, the pattern is unmistakable: young Black Britons in the major cities have reached the end of their tolerance for the conditions they are living in. On 25 November 1981, Lord Scarman publishes his report into the Brixton riots. The report is thorough, serious, and largely accurate. The question now is whether anyone in government will implement it.