The man who ruined Jamaica

Richard West

At the end of his Caribbean journey in 1961, V.S. Naipaul remarked: 'There was for instance, little concern about West Indian emigration to Britain. It was a lower-class thing; it was a black thing; it was a Jamaican thing. At another level, it was regarded with malicious pleasure as a means of embarrassing the British people. . .'. Many of the emigrants from the smaller islands were confident that 'once they made it clear that they were not Jamaicans, they would be treated with regard. Only Jamaicans were beaten up in race riots and deservedly, for they were uneducated and ungrateful and provoked the British people'. (The Middle Passage: Deutsch, 1962).

In the same year, 1961, the very good journalist Anne Sharpley wrote a series of articles on the immigrants for the Evening Standard in one of which she reported, in turn, a Jamaican view of the East Caribbean islanders: 'These little dunce breadfruit niggers. . . They're going to a dream in London, they don't know what they're going to, but when they ask them in London where them comes from, these yam and breadfruit little niggers, them's got to say Jamaica, cos nobody heard of dem islands'.

That was 20 years ago when Britain's West Indian population was nowhere as large as it is to day, nor so controversial. Yet in those days Andre Deutsch could commission a brilliant young novelist to tour the Caribbean, and one of the three London evening newspapers thought it worth while to send a journalist to the Caribbean to find out what sort of people the immigrants were.

The English public, in those days, took an interest in the special characteristics and problems of West Indian islands and mainland territories; it was shortly after the failure of federation. Nowadays all West Indians, including those of Indian or mixed race, are bundled togther as 'blacks'. Even Pakistanis, Indians, Bangla Deshis and Africans from Africa are lumped with West Indians under the label of 'blacks'. This arrogant and insulting label for all people not European, conforms to the prejudice of the xenophobic right; still more to that of the left, and of the Race Relations industry.

Strangest of all, when English people talk of the 'blacks' or 'black culture', they unconsciously speak of Jamaica, or of mainly Jamaican phenomena such as the Rastafarians, 'Back to Africa', reggae music, dope taking and violence. These things now exist on the other West Indian islands but all started and flourished in Jamaica. As the Jamaican prophesied to Anne Sharpley 20 years ago, 'the yam and breadfruit little niggers' and their families living in England, have been Jamaicanised. Their children, or some them, have adopted Jamaican cults like Rastafarianism. And few English people today know or care that Jamaica has little in common with other West Indian territories. Few English writers or journalists now know anything of the Caribbean; only the cricket reporters know it, and they are never invited to take part in the TV symposiums to discuss the racial problem.

'If we could', wrote Anthony Trollope in his book of West Indian travels, 'we would fain forget Jamaica altogether'. During the slavery period, in the aftermath of emancipation and up until independence, the island had a peculiar reputation for violence. Since transportation and slavery under the lash were not any worse in degree or in kind in Jamaica, as distinct from the other islands, people have long sought other explanations. The Jamaicans came from a warlike African tribe or were simply a 'bad batch of slaves'; the argument does not hold water, since over the years of transportation, slaves from all over Africa came to different islands at random. There is more sense in the geographical explanation: Jamaica's mountains offered a refuge to rebel slaves who therefore acquired a turbulent, warlike character. Also the size of the island meant there was room for free peasant villages after emancipation; the Jamaicans did not have to stay on the sugar and other plantations in order to earn a living. This, so the argument runs, encouraged a disinclination for regular work, for family life and marriage. A great manY Jamaican men have left a little girl in Kingston Town.' Whatever the cause, there grew up in Jamaica during the 20th century a discontent which found expression in cults such as the 'Back to Africa' movement; its sequel Rastafarianism, named after Ras Tafari, later the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie; addiction to marijuana or `ganja'; broken family life and outbursts of violence. These things were well described and explained in a recent Spectator article by Michael Humfrey, a former Deputy Commissioner of Jamaica Constabulary.

There was also considerable racial tension, as V.S. Naipaul remarked 20 years ago: 'Jamaica is eighty per cent black; and what cannot be denied is that just as in England the fascists frenziedly proclaim the racial attitudes of the majority, who are scandalised only by the exhibitionism, so in Jamaica the Rastafarians express the basic racial attitudes of the majority of the black population. Race — in the sense of black against brown, yellow and white, in that order — is the most important issue in Jamaica today'. It was largely the poor, therefore black Jamaicans who came to England as immigrants 20 years ago — bringing with them their racial prejudices, often mixed up with Rastafarianism. However the exodus helped to relieve the pressure of unemployment and discontent on the newly independeat country. Jamaica appeared to prosper, especially from bauxite mining, though both these sources of revenue had disadvantages: the ore was finite and could not offer permanent jobs, while tourism was aimed at the richer type of American whose ostentatious style of life provoked irritation and envy. Both industries lured workers away from the land.

It was not these inherent problems that brought Jamaica down into street-fighting and bankruptcy, but one politician, Michael Manley, who ruled from 1972 until his defeat in last year's general election. His People's National Party had been elected upon a prospectus scarcely discernible from of the rival Labour Party: both appeared committed to free enterprise modified by social security, workers' rights and the other benefits expected in western democratic countries.

But within two years, Mr Manley had changed to the pursuit of socialism, in which cause he nationalised most of the agriculture and industry, imposed swingeing taxes and levies on smaller businesses, and hugely expanded the civil servic:e , adding some 300 commissions or quangoes. He broke with the bauxite companies. The tourist industry withered in the state-run hotels. Jamaica became an importer not an exporter of food. When the International Monetary Fund refused help except on conditions which Manley thought insupportable, he turned more and more for help to the Soviet Union, and Cuba — its surrogate in the region. During the nine years of Manley's regime, some half million Jamaicans left for Canada and the United States. Most of the people who left came from the business, professional and skilled artisan classes, of whom a large proportion were light-skinned browns, yellows or whites. In the three years before the election, living standards had fallen 40 per cent; unemployment had risen to over 30 per cent: there was constant shortage of food. Although Manley liked to blame these disasters on the United States and its secret schemes for 'destabilisation', the livelihood of his country was only maintained by illegal shipments to the United States of marijuana, worth at least £100 million a year.

Much of the money earned from marijuana was spent on guns for the bully boys of the PNP and later the Labour Party. Political thugs, dope racketeers and ordinary criminals turned Jamaica into an island of terror. Hundreds of people were murdered because they had money or light skins or because they opposed the PNP. Arsonists burned down much of Kingston and shot at the fire brigade when it came to the rescue.

When I arrived in Kingston last year (Spectator 26 July), a battle was raging in which political gangsters were firing at doctors, nurses and patients in the main hospital. In all, 700 people were murdered in the election campaign. When in Jamaica, it strikes one as laughable to read how Brixton youths complain of police brutality racial prejudice and harassment. In Jamaica, the black police use pistols or sub-machine guns against the first sign of a violent attack. They search any suspicious persons at gun-point. They have killed dozens of known criminals in their homes 'while attempting escape'.

The man who presided over the agony of Jamaica is well described by the pseudonymous Christopher Arawak in his paperback book Michael Manley Messiah. . . Muddler. . . or Marionette (Sir Henry Morgan Press, Miami). Much was expected of Manley by those who voted him into power in 1972. The son of Norman Manley, one of the island's elder statesmen, Michael was so to speak born into the purple. He went to the London School of Economics. He is eloquent, tall, handsome, commanding. Light-skinned himself, he married a white American lady of formidable will-powerand, some consider, ambition. But Manley is weak and vain. He became infatuated with cutting a figure in the world, or rather the Third World of anti-apartheid, antiimperialistic conferences. Like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. like Bung Sukarno of Indonesia and other notable windbags today, Manley grew drunk with 'Third World' rhetoric.

At home, Manley became obsessed with his role as 'leader' — his word. His policies were at the same time liberationist and censorial. He and his intellectual followers spoke out for things like sex education and equal opportunities. But Manley disliked independent newspapers; he personally joined in a demonstration against the excellent Gleaner; whenever a newspaper quoted one of his more fatuous utterances, he said he had been 'misquoted', 'misrepresented' or 'quoted out of context'.

Almost everything said of Manley — including such details as the American wife _ might equally well be said of our own Wedgwood Benn; but perhaps Manley is best understood in terms of our local London bosses, like Ken Livingstone of the London Council, or better still Ted Knight, the former leader of Lambeth Borough (of which Brixton forms part). Such people appeal to the anti-white sentiment of the Rasta class; they believe in public spending including, in Lambeth's case, the salary of a resident poetess; above all they want to suppress or drive out the small shops and businesses which create wealth and provide employment. The rates and surcharges imposed by boroughs like Lambeth effectively drove out small businesses, thereby creating more unemployment, discontent and riot. Compare this with what Manley did to Jamaica, in 'Christopher Arawak's' words: 'I am talking about the backbone of Jamaica. . . the small business community . . . the furniture manufacturers; the hardware and lumber dealers; the suppliers of other building materials; the "one-one" housebuilders; the garment manufacturers; photographers; printers; in fact so to speak, "the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker". These are the people you have driven out of Jamaica'.

Those whom Manley has driven out are still reluctant to come back to the island. Jamaicans do well in Canada and the United States where there is no dole for immigrants, to cushion them from the need to earn a living; back in Jamaica, wages are low and unemployment still high. Foreign investors and tourists are shy of a country that still has a daunting level of violent crime and industrial unrest.

The visitor to Jamaica is still obliged to spend most of his time in the safety of one of the big hotels. Indeed social life is now mainly hotel life. In the basement there is an art exhibition of paintings with typical Kingston themes of mayhem and arson, and captions like: 'Political madness and crazi ness broke death toll history in Jamaica 1980'.Upstairs on the hotel's ground floor, a local repertory company perform Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw. Some of the London jokes seem inappropriate here: 'She's making white golliwogs for use in colour-conscious trouble spots'. Maybe it sounded funnier back in London. The play is about a psychiatrist and a girl who thinks she was raped by her father. The man next to me watched it all with his small daughter perched on his knee. The hotel dining-room is patronised by Cabinet Ministers and their civil servants. Most are browns, yellows or near-whites. and all look well fed. We meet a man from the tourism ministry who tells about a new campaign aimed at Britain as well as Amer ica. I tell him that I had heard from one of the British cricket reporters that during the last tour the English team enjoyed their stay in Jamaica most of all. This was widely acknowledged. But I doubt if tourists will start to come back to Jamaica as long as one still sees plain-clothes men with pistols an sub-machine guns darting about the hotel lobby.