Editorial - Tony Blair comes calling

BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair's 10-hour visit may be too short for a lasting impact. But we are sure that he is well aware of several aspects of Jamaica's impact on the Commonwealth and the world in many guises, good and bad.

As the head of a Labour Government just starting a second successive term of office, Mr. Blair would be well aware of the Jamaican presence in the "Mother Country"; so much so that second-generation Anglo-Jamaicans may have begun to feel stronger ties to the land of their birth than to a former colonial outpost now struggling to carve its own independent niche in a global world.

Some of those young black Englishmen underline the irony in our notion of independence; for they have become Reggae Boyz and helped to write a proud chapter in our sporting history when we qualified for the last World Cup football tournament in France.

The Prime Minister will be reminded of this when he watches the Prince's Cup football final this afternoon at Sabina Park. Since this is a competition designed to promote peace in the inner-city communities of the Corporate Area it will be a fortuitous coincidence that this objective is pertinent to the timing of Mr. Blair's visit.

He would have been briefed about our current time of troubles as he must have been about the recent visit to the U.K. by Minister K.D. Knight seeking technical support for the Police Force.

We anticipate that in the closed-door meeting with our own Prime Minister such sensitive matters as our continuing relationship with the United Kingdom Privy Council will be aired.

This topic should also be part of the regional focus which will follow in the meeting with other CARICOM Heads of Government.

This snapshot of a visit, which is part of a three-nation Caribbean and Latin American tour, can hardly deal in-depth with the several problems that will be mentioned. But it is important for Jamaica and the region to develop relationships that will be useful in the largely uncharted power corridors of trade and diplomacy.

We welcome the Prime Minister and Mrs. Blair and hope that they will come again.

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