Given that black Jamaicans were shackled by Britain for 180 years in chattel slavery, many islanders felt a sense of deja vu with David Cameron’s announcement of a £25m gift towards the construction of a new prison here.
The decades-old campaign for reparations – historically led by Rastafarians but co-opted by academics and politicians more recently – has been increasing in decibels as Jamaica and other anglophone Caribbean nations try to make the case for compensation. That, though, seems wishful thinking, as it’s unlikely that the UK will flinch in a looming face-off with Caribbean governments who have signalled that they’ll be demanding debt forgiveness and more for nearly two centuries of terror and torture.
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The pro-compensation lobbyists waited for an apology for slavery this week. All they got was a tepid acknowledgement that slavery’s “wounds run very deep” and that “we can move on from this painful legacy”. They wanted billions, but were only promised a share of £360m worth of Caribbean-wide infrastructure projects. What has stirred up a hornet’s nest, however, is Cameron’s offer of free cash for a prison.
If Jamaicans let the steam out through their ears, they would understand that the country’s major penitentiaries are dingy, dungeon-like tributes to the 18th century that do more to harden potentially redeemable criminals and increase the likelihood of recidivism.
Of course, fuelling the protest is the perception that Britain is looking to dump its problems here. In other words, Britain is looking to divest itself of Jamaican prisoners in UK jails, many of whom were schooled in crime in Britain and have no real or tangible connections to Jamaica. The potential upshot being that unemployment and crime could worsen when Jamaicans in British prisons are deported to finish their sentences in the island and then released into a strange, new world.
The country’s major penitentiaries are dingy, dungeon-like tributes to the 18th century
Many are calling for the UK to fund school construction – a pitch that the opposition leader, Andrew Holness, has championed – but Jamaica has needed state-of-the-art correctional centres for decades; due to government inaction prisons have become overcrowded, filthy and inimical to rehabilitation. Of course, Jamaica will have to spend J$5.5bn (£30m) of its own revenue to complete construction of the Cameron prison.
Cameron’s real basis for the handouts is, naturally, not altruism or slavery guilt, but a bid to regain relevance and geopolitical capital in the Caribbean. Britain and the US have largely ignored the region, while China’s booming economy has driven its appetite for buying influence and power in America’s backyard.
British underdevelopment of Caribbean economies has certainly accounted for structural weakness and legacy deficiencies in these societies, but the monotonous whining by Jamaica’s reparations lobby perpetuates the sense of victimhood, mendicancy and entitlement. The truth is, British colonisers aren’t the only ones responsible for Jamaica’s developmental struggles and screw-ups.
The majority of Jamaicans said the country would have been better off if it had remained a UK colony
It’s a cheap shot to blame Jamaica’s economic malaise entirely on the evil white bogeyman when successive post-independence administrations have overseen an economy with annual growth of less than 1% for the past four decades and a currency in freefall. Social dysfunction is rife, with murders ballooning 20% so far this year and youth unemployment nearing 40%.
Jamaica – and the wider anglophone Caribbean – must come to terms with the inconvenient truth that, though the British slave masters were barbarous, when polled a couple of years ago the majority of Jamaicans said the country would have been better off if it had remained a UK colony. That indictment lies at the feet of Jamaica’s black governing class.