

Life will probably not return to normal in Jamaica for a few days yet. Princess Margaret and her husband have returned to England and most of the other special visitors for the independence celebrations – who were all royally entertained – have gone back to their various countries.

But many villages are still completing their programmes of dancing and games and there is still plenty of abnormal activity in Kingston, where the great new stadium, opened by Princess Margaret two days before independence became fact, is now the scene of the Caribbean and Central American Games. It will not be long, however, before the decorated archways disappear, together with the green, yellow and black bunting and the fairy lights which have been trying to compete with the vociferous flame-coloured blossom of the poinciana trees, the spectacular bougainvillaea or the lovely “shower of gold.”

Parliament, which adjourned after the Speech from the Throne was given by Princess Margaret last week, will reassemble with its new Ministers, and their decisions will soon begin to point the way Jamaica is going.

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Aid with strings?

Will its eyes still look as they have done for three centuries to England? Will they find, as many hope, a purely Jamaican target, or will they, as some fear, be forced to turn to America? Will the “big three” – agriculture and its offshoots, bauxite and tourism – be able to grow sufficiently to attract investment for new industries to add to those already established, or will Jamaica eventually have to seek aid with “strings”? The British way of life, apart from differences born of an idyllic climate, is deeply rooted in Jamaica, but will British democracy be able to survive the handicap of widespread poverty? A decade or less will see the answer to all these questions.

Poverty and soaring population – the two go hand in hand – are the island’s greatest problems. But poverty does not mean hunger in Jamaica where it is always summer, where bananas grow wild and a “stick” or stem could almost maintain a family for a week, where breadfruit and yams and mangoes and a host of other fruits crop abundantly all the year round and even shelter is scarcely needed except for the short rainy season.



I saw something of the country’s real problem when making a tour of the island a few days ago. I and my companions had motored along an excellent main road from the capital, on the south coast, to the north shore. It was a fascinating journey past sugar and banana and coconut plantations, and up over the hills and mountains by twisting roads and hairpin bends.

Every hundred yards or so in the areas where tourist traffic was likely to be frequent a thin column of blue smoke signalled a tiny fire burning at the roadside, each one tended by a man or a boy roasting corncobs to offer to the passing motorist; a woman or a girl would stand patiently offering oranges or mangoes, or a young man would have a dozen trimmed coconuts neatly piled against a rock, all ready to provide a cool and refreshing drink for the thirsty traveller.

After visiting some of the luxurious hotels which have been built to attract tourists (the voice of the dollar is powerful along Jamaica’s north shore), we started our return journey across the island, this time using the network of secondary roads, some surfaced and some in the “dirt road” class but all quite useable, which serve the interior.

We had made excellent progress and were perhaps a third of the way across when our appearance in a tiny village brought the entire population, it seemed, round the car. The road ahead was blocked, they said. Our driver was sceptical; there should have been an official notice on the road. But in face of the villagers’ complete unanimity we eventually agreed, with many misgivings, to take the track they pointed out to us as the only alternative although, as they admitted, it was a “bad road, man.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A British sailor joins Jamaicans at a dance in Kingston to celebrate after independence was granted to Jamaica, 6 August 1962. Photograph: Hulton Archive

“White man”

A “bad” road it turned out to be, if road it could be called at all. The rocks which form the foundation of any road were there sure enough, and loose stones had been spread to begin the levelling process, but that was as far as the road-making had gone. After the car had crawled and swayed and bumped along for two or three miles we began to feel infinitely remote, even from the civilisation of a levelled dirt road, and not a little worried, and when some of the children we saw began to cry “white man” we wondered whether any car had used this track before.

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There was no doubt that we were seeing Jamaican life at its most primitive. The scattered homes that we passed were tiny and flimsy in materials and construction, but there were never fewer than half a dozen children playing outside. In such regions as this it will need super-human efforts to bring schooling to such children. Here was one of Jamaica’s great problems; a democracy on the British pattern? Yes. An educated democracy? In this and similar areas, not yet.

Everyone we met on this unexpected essay into the interior was welcoming and friendly, from the happy laughing faces of the swarms of children to the graver salutes of their elders. There was poverty here; no one, as far as we could see, had any property whatsoever apart from the flimsy huts. But there was no misery. Near the end of the track which went on for about ten miles, we came across some men removing boulders and spreading stones, but there can have been few other ways of earning a living there, for we saw no signs of farms or plantations. And this showed us another handicap facing the Government in its task of raising the island’s living standards. In such isolated regions where you can be happy in the sunshine and have enough to eat whether work is available or not, why work?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Independence of Jamaica, August 1962. Photograph: Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images

Can work hard

This, however, was a remote and scattered and sleepy community. In rural areas nearer to better communications there was plenty of evidence, such as cultivations on incredibly steep hillsides, that the Jamaican peasant can work hard to improve his lot if he wants to, and the scale of the island’s achievement runs up from this level through the new industries which are springing up near such centres as Kingston to the great industrial climax of bauxite mining and refining. Building has been going on at a great pace, though a recent substantial wages award appears to have slowed it somewhat. “Low-cost housing” schemes in the towns and land settlement schemes in the country, luxury hotels (the elaborate Sheraton Hotel in Kingston was finished only a week before independence and coped highly successfully with a state ball and a state banquet on successive nights), industrial buildings, school, and, probably the biggest single scheme of all, the University of the West Indies, in a lovely setting framed by the foothills of the Blue Mountains just outside Kingston.

These are some of the material achievements, but Jamaica may easily become a world leader in something much more significant. There are said to be 18 races making up the island’s population and their colour ranges from white to the deepest black. They intermarry freely and there is not the slightest sign of any “colour bar.” Even to think of one in such a society would be ludicrous. Their young men are handsome and their young women beautiful and the new nation’s motto is “Out of many, one people.” Will that be the world’s motto in generations to come?

