Gareth Manning, Gleaner Writer
In this May 1984 photograph church representatives made a walking tour of Wilton Gardens (Rema), talking with residents and looking at damage done in the community after a spate of deadly violence. - File
THIS IS the first of a five-part series on the findings of a commission of enquiry conducted by the late Puisne Judge of the Supreme Court Mr. Justice Ronald Small, into the forced eviction of residents from Wilton Gardens (Rema) in early 1977.
BACKGROUND
The day was February 2, 1977. It was a very eventful day for many residents of Rema. Armed men from neighbouring 'Jungle' in Arnett Gardens raided the community, forcibly evicting people from their houses, throwing and smashing their belongings on the streets and looting their homes.
This was done while the Housing Ministry carried out an eviction exercise on 1,000 residents who they said were not paying rent.
The security forces were rushed to the scene to quell the flare-up of violence, but at the end of the day, one man was shot dead by the security forces, while several were wounded by gunfire and knives. A 12-hour curfew was subsequently instituted at 6:00 p.m. that evening.
The violence triggered outcries from the people as well as the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), which heaped venomous criticisms on the Michael Manley- led government. Opposition Leader, Edward Seaga, issued a statement the next day condemning the incident and accusing the Government of orchestrating an illegal and violent eviction of JLP supporters.
POLITICAL PURPOSE
"The illegal operation was a purely political purpose of replacing 1,000 JLP supporters with 1,000 PNP supporters," said Mr. Seaga in a statement to The Gleaner on February 3. He continued: "In carrying out this act, the Government used both the police and the military to stand guard while PNP gangs dispos-sessed citizens, who are JLP supporters, of their legal rights and smashed private property and furnishings."
Subsequently, the same commission of inquiry established to investigate the circumstances leading to the Orange Street Fire and incidents of violence in Trench Town just one year earlier, was called on again by Governor- General Sir Florizel Glasspole to enquire into the circumstances leading to this eviction.
Robert Pickersgill led a team of attorneys representing the Ministry of Housing including L.H. McClean and G. Bartholomew, while the law firm Daley, Levy and Kandecore represented the Wilton Gardens Association. Some 113 witnesses testified: 24 in private sittings at the Hugh Sherlock All-Age School in Rema and Headquarters House at 79 Duke Street. The remaining 89 testimonies were heard in public at Headquarters House.
DAY OF VIOLENCE
Here, the commis-sioner paints a picture of the events leading up to the unforgettable day of violence.
"Having completed on the 25th of October, 1976, the interim report with special reference to the Orange Street Fire, I proceeded immediately thereafter to comply with paragraph (b) of the directions contained in the Commission of Enquiry ordered by his Excellency, the Governor-General on the 28th of May 1976 to enquire and report on the circumstances and causes of the incidents of violence and destruction which have been taking place in the parishes of Kingston and St. Andrew commencing with the fires that took place in Trench Town in January 1976.
"It should be noted that at the stage when the commission began this second phase of the investigation, a general election had been announced and the political arena was bristling with all forms of electioneering propaganda and armoury.
"Election day on the 15th of December, 1976 with over-whelming success for the People's National Party and consequential dark disappointment for the Jamaica Labour Party the one side jubilant and triumphant, the other side dejected with bitter despair. This atmosphere ran throughout the length and breath of our island home but with pronounced concentration in southern St. Andrew.
"Knowledge that a further election, the municipal general election, was to take place early in March, gave rise to greater heat in the southern St. Andrew area between the two major political parties involving the People's National Party adherents to the north oftentimes referred to as 'Junglists' and the Jamaica Labour Party adherents to the south, oftentimes referred to as 'Remaites', the great dividing line being Seventh Street that runs east to west across the area.
"Murder, arson, rape and shootings and bombings of all types were fast becoming the order of the day. This was the atmosphere that prevailed up to the 2nd of February 1977. Indeed it did not develop overnight, it had been festering long before and had become a matter of concern for both succeeding governments in this thickly-populated section of the Corporate Area of Kingston and St. Andrew where poverty and ghetto life walked hand in hand from year to year. The political father of each party made in turn their own efforts to clear slum aspects of the surroundings and to rehouse the people in better homes for a better order of life. The problems in achieving this were manifold and great, and none the least of them was the financial involvement both for the Government who had to find the funds to establish these new holdings and for the occupants to pay either the rent or the mortgage instalments.
POLITICAL RIVALRY
"In the wake of this political rivalry, the one side suspected the other of conspiring to withhold payments while the other suspected the one of using undue pressure to force them out of the area. And so it was whether it be by deliberately sinister or casually incidental arrangement those in charge of the Ministry of Housing decided in the last week of January 1977 to stage or mount what they call an eviction exercise. But this eviction exercise, it is said, was not calculated to evict or throw out every occupant who at the time owed rent or mortgage dues, but those occupants who had not submitted an application on prescribed forms supplied by the Ministry of Housing and accepted by the minister himself, because failing compliance with the prerequisite they appeared to him to have been unwanted squatters, whom it was his intention to put out. As a companion of this pattern employed by the Ministry of Housing, there was a pattern employed by these so-called squatters, by way of disapproval, they would suffer the eviction for the moment and then as soon as the eviction team would have nailed up the doors of the rooms and departed they, the evicted, would remove the barriers and re-enter peacefully and so in effect frustrate the efforts of the Minister of Housing.
TENANTS
"Apparently the time came when this practice would not be tolerated any longer and so it was that arrangements were made that a larger and stronger eviction team protected by a stronger detachment of the police force would on the morning of the 2nd of February at 9:00 o'clock descend on the once-evicted 40 families to put, them out and immediately after, cause the vacant apartments to be occupied by other would-be tenants who it was hoped would make better tenants in the area. This is how it appeared on the face of it.
"The events of the day sparked off considerable criticism on all sides. Some folk referred to the whole exercise as normal procedure in dealing with delinquent and recalcitrant capturers of real estate while others declared that the eviction exercise was unworthy of any government of any civilised country. In the wake of a tirade of unfavourable and vitriolic condemnation, His Excellency the Governor-General on the 21st of February 1997, directed me by way of a second commission to 'Enquire into the report on the circumstances causes and consequences of the events which took place at Rema in the parish of St. Andrew on the 2nd February, 1977, in connection with the removal of occupants from premises owned by the Ministry of Housing.'
"To this task I immediately addressed my complete and concentrated attention.
Arrangements were made to hold day-to-day sittings in public at the old Legislative Assembly Chambers at Headquarters House, 79 Duke Street, Kingston."
