Martin Henry

After last week's column criticizing 'peacemaking' with criminals, I went in search of solutions for crime and 'The War'. This column, just one month away from the end of its 19th year, has always been an advocacy column in search of solutions. We who have the enormous privilege of influencing public opinion and public policy through media commentary shouldn't simply curse the darkness.

My search took me to the 2003 book edited by UWI lecturer Anthony Harriott [now professor], Understanding Crime in Jamaica: New Challenges for Public Policy. My memories took me back to the 1978 Bob Marley One Love peace concert when Bob got Prime Minister Michael Manley and Opposition Leader Edward Seaga on stage to shake hands and declare peace. The most bloody election campaign, 1980, followed.

I remembered the efforts of Claudius Massop and Aston Thompson for peace. Both of them were to die violently. I was in Greenwich Town that February afternoon in 1979 when Claudie, the Tivoli area leader, was shot down by the police on neighbouring Spanish Town Road with bullet wounds under his arm pits.

Nothing new

Both 'The War' and the peacemaking are nothing new. And while violent crime has morphed significantly, there is not likely to be any significant solution unless its roots are clearly recognised and severed.

The editor's overview would have been alarming had I not long ago arrived at and published the same conclusion myself: "This (the link between politics and crime)", Harriott wrote, " raises the issue of the political parties being criminal organisations ... The resort to criminal means of gaining office, and the alliances with criminals that are used for this purpose, give criminal networks considerable leverage over the parties and lead to the use of criminal means to systematically plunder the resources of the state once office is acquired."

"These activities of the political elite," the overview continued, "have profound implications for ordinary criminality, especially the normalisation of crime." And, as I argue, peacemaking which cancels penalty, makes its own contribution to the normalisation of crime as legitimate 'war'.

Reaping from seeds planted

"The seeds of the crime-politics phenomenon in Jamaica were planted and nurtured over decades of competitive party politics", Harriott's overview would have us know. The young warriors of today, many of whom despise 'politricks,' are avenging the deaths of fathers and grandfathers and the ravishing of their communities in a 'war' rooted in "competitive party politics."

On May 16, 1949, [when Portia was three and Bruce was one], Norman Manley and Alexander Bustamante signed the first of many peace pledges on behalf of their respective political parties, Amanda Sives informs us in her chapter on 'The Historical Roots of Violence in Jamaica: The Hearne Report, 1949.' For 57 years, 'let's study the matter,' like 'let's have a peace march and a peace treaty,' has been our preferred method of not dealing with the matter.

The two political leaders appealed to their supporters "not to use force in political campaigning.

But violence continued.

So who will disorganise violence with its deep roots in politics and instigate a lasting peace based on the enforcement of law and order and the provision of justice and opportunity to those most prone to violent crime?

Martin Henry is a communication specialist.