Peter Clegg

The UK Overseas Territories: a decade of progress and prosperity?

This article analyses the relationship between the UK and its Overseas Territories since the publication of the 1999 White Paper Partnership for Progress and Prosperity. The article considers the efforts by the UK government to improve links with the territories via a new partnership based on mutual obligations and responsibilities. It focuses on the two most important aspects of the White Paper – governance and economic growth and sustainability. Much has been achieved, but fundamental structural problems in the relationship remain unattended. The article concludes by recommending how the relationship can be improved over the coming years.

Independence movements in the Caribbean: withering on the vine?

Several countries in the Caribbean are not yet independent. However, none wish to become so, despite politicians in several of them initiating moves towards that end. This contribution evaluates these attempts and explains why they failed. The key factor is that most citizens feel that the present governance arrangements are preferable to independence. Nevertheless, many on the islands challenge the status quo, and thus there has been debate over the extent to which governing structures should be reformed. Interestingly, strong motivating factors for change have been inter-island antipathy and rivalry, and insular particularism, rather than any desire to break-away from the metropole.

The Commonwealth Caribbean and the Challenges of Institutional Exclusion

Abstract The paper evaluates the changes that have taken place in the political economy of global trade, particularly the growing influence of international organizations and their rules and norms, and the institutional exclusion of the Commonwealth Caribbean that has resulted. The work begins by assessing briefly the dynamics of one of the last successful trade negotiations undertaken by the Caribbean (the agreement on a single European banana market in 1993). Since then the international trading climate has altered dramatically with negative consequences for the Caribbeans economic performance. The paper evaluates recent events in the agricultural (banana) and service (cross-border gambling and betting) sectors, which have highlighted attention on the highly influential role of the World Trade Organization (WTO). There is also a consideration of the process of diplomacy within the WTO and an evaluation of the Caribbeans efforts to secure its voice in the organization. In addition, there is an analysis of the reform processes undertaken by the European Union and one of its member states (the United Kingdom) that have impacted on Caribbean interests. The paper asserts that the Caribbean has been largely excluded from the decision-making processes of the powerful organizations referred to above and despite attempts has not yet understood fully that past strategies are no longer appropriate if the regions economic interests are to be secured in the future.

Britain and the Commonwealth Caribbean: Policy under New Labour

Abstract The relationship between Britain and the countries of the Commonwealth Caribbean has been defined largely by declining interest and disengagement since the process of decolonization began in 1962. Occasionally Britain was obliged to re-engage with the region when its interests were challenged, but in general the process of withdrawal has been maintained. Nevertheless, it was hoped that a new chapter in British – Caribbean relations would come with the election of Tony Blairs New Labour government in 1997. At first Labour attempted to re-energize the relationship and undertook a number of institutional and policy reforms in relation to the Caribbean. But the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the subsequent ‘war on terror’, and the increasing pace of trade liberalization changed the priorities guiding UK foreign policy. The result was a stronger focus on Caribbean security, but a downgrading of other aspects of the relationship. This article analyses the nature of Britains links with the Commonwealth Caribbean at present, and argues that the issue of security barely sustains what was once referred to as a ‘special relationship’.

The Caribbean Reparations Claim: What Chance of Success?

In July 2013 Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders agreed to establish a Reparations Commission under the chairmanship of Hilary Beckles, pro vice-chancellor and principal of the Cave Hill Campus o...

Brexit and the Overseas Territories: Repercussions for the Periphery

Abstract There are 14 United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs), of which nine are associated with the European Union (EU) via the Overseas Association Decision adopted by the EU in 2013. Gibraltar, meanwhile, is part of the EU under Article 355(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU. Only the citizens of Gibraltar were able to vote in the referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU, but the consequences for all are potentially very significant. The UKOTs benefit currently from economic and environmental cooperation, as well as development assistance and policy dialogue. The article considers briefly the growth of the relationship between the UKOTs and the EU, before setting out the key aspects of the relationship which the territories are keen to maintain. The second half of the article focuses on the (minor) role the UKOTs played in the referendum debate, and what might happen to the present levels of cooperation as the UK disengages from the EU.

Ebola, Chikungunya, and the Caribbean: Struggling to Prepare and Respond

In recent months the Caribbean has faced an epidemic of the Chikungunya virus, which the region has found difficult to control. In May 2014 the Caribbean Health Agency (CARPHA) declared the virus had reached epidemic levels, and since then the number of cases has increased further. Also, the threat of the Ebola virus is growing. No cases have yet been reported in the region, but there are great concerns over what might happen if it does arrive, particularly with the failure to deal with Chikungunya effectively. These actual and potential public health crises are having a significant economic impact at a time when the regional economy is already slowing according to a recent report by the International Monetary Fund. This article considers these issues in turn.

The Commonwealth Caribbean and Europe: The End of the Affair?

Abstract The institutional relationship between the Commonwealth Caribbean and the European Union (EU) dates back to the mid-1970s, when the Lomé Convention was signed. The agreement was seen as a high water mark in First–Third World relations. However, since then the bond has come under concerted pressure. The consequence is that today the particularism that underpinned relations for so long has almost vanished and the EU is beginning to treat the Caribbean like any other relatively marginal region of the world. The article evaluates the reasons for this change, in particular: the scrapping of the trade protocols; the erosion of African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) preference due to free trade agreements signed by the EU; the refocusing of EU development policy towards the least developed countries; and the split in the ACP group with the creation of an ill-designed regional Economic Partnership Agreement. The article places these changes into starker relief by assessing briefly the deepening links between the United Kingdom Overseas Territories and the EU. However, as the article highlights, this link will neither reboot nor sustain the more important Commonwealth Caribbean–EU relationship.

Pathways from Preferential Trade: The Politics of Trade Adjustment in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific

Zambian scholars themselves have written. His history is one written by a businessman and a senior civil servant who wanted government to be able to do business. But governments do not simply ‘do’ business. They do business in the context of myriads of political demands that necessitate hundreds of political contradictions and mistakes. Curiously, for someone who was at times so very close to Zambian politics, Sardanis has not produced a true study of Zambian political history. Mlambo’s is a political history, but it does seek to cover too much too breathlessly. Both books need to be seen in the context that they have not been attempted before. No one has tried to do a complete Rhodesian through Zimbabwean history; and Zambian histories have usually been through the lenses of a study of Kenneth Kaunda’s years, policies and personality—and what is sometimes still called his philosophy. Both books are therefore welcome, but both books are partial—Mlambo’s for attempting too much in too little space, and Sardanis’s for attempting to reduce too much to his personal judgement.

Caribbean Political Activism: Essays in Honour of Richard Hart

his treatment of Qaddafi’s thought and truncated life, to do with Western perceptions of the threat to the Western-dominated global economic order implied in Qaddafi’s notion of a Libyan-based continental currency to rival the US dollar, and that this could just possibly explain the NATO assault on Libya, are just silly. In addition to the book’s being a compendium of a very large number of thinkers, what Martin does is to seek to order his thinkers into intellectual trajectories and categories. I disagree with some of his ordering, but the effort is very valuable as a first step in seeking to view African political thought as couched within a variety of ‘schools’ of thought. This allows the beginnings of an organised debate on the contents and value of thought. Are any particular political thinkers treated better than others? Yes. Claude Ake is very well represented in Martin’s book. Martin is clearly an admirer and, indeed, the book is dedicated to Ake. Martin’s sympathies are in this sort of direction—he depicts Africa as a continent of thinkers who sought to reject a colonial heritage, including a philosophical heritage, and chose radicalism. But this sets up a problematique that Martin does not have time or space to treat fully: what about the huge influence, nonetheless, of European Marxist thought and the European Christian legacy in African thought? And what about efforts at autarkic thought that ‘recreates’, sometimes sentimentally and quite falsely, an African past that sounds good but which simply was not there? Martin, possibly with collaborators, could have turned this book into one volume of 10. This is what needs to be done. It has not been. What Martin has done in a single book is to set a challenge for it to be done, and he has set out the evidence for the challenge very well.