Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming's Jamaica (39 page)

The British government immediately agreed to start negotiations with Jamaica for separate independent statehood. An independence constitution was drafted and approved by the Jamaica Legislature by January the following year. On 1 February 1962, talks began at Lancaster House in London. By the 9th, an agreement had been signed and the date of independence set for 6 August. An election in April to decide who would lead the new country saw Bustamante capitalise on his referendum victory, winning by twenty-six seats to nineteen.

The larger post-imperial ‘federation’, the British Commonwealth, was also looking increasingly stillborn. The
Gleaner
reported that as the number of members increased, with colonies becoming independent at a fast rate, ‘the bonds uniting the Commonwealth have been substantially weakened’. In Jamaica, there was still considerable loyalty and affection towards what had been planned as the Commonwealth’s glue – the British royal family. The same article reported local delight that the sister of the monarch, Princess Margaret, was set to ‘be the centrepiece’ of the independence ceremonies. But there were concerns that Britain would join the European Common Market, threatening preferential deals on importing tropical produce. The issue of free
movement of labour that had bedevilled the West Indies Federation also struck a blow at the Commonwealth. After years of trying, in April 1962 the Conservative Party in Britain passed the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, effectively ending mass Jamaican immigration to the United Kingdom. (Immigration to America had been restricted back in 1952.) The image of Britain as the ‘mother country’ had depended to a considerable extent on free entry. As one historian of the Commonwealth has written: ‘a mother who shuts the door is no mother’.

Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell called the Act ‘cruel and blatant anti-colour legislation’ (although many Labour MPs supported it). Fleming’s golfing companion Sir Jock Campbell, the boss of Booker’s, which had huge sugar interests in Guyana and elsewhere in the Caribbean, responded with a letter to
The Times:
‘More than anywhere else in the old colonial empire, the West Indies are what we made them. Consciences cannot be cleared by a judicious and tidy withdrawal from sovereignty. We brought the Negro slave and the indentured Indian to the West Indies, and it was we who started the West Indies on their present course. Already, to the great majority of West Indians, the Commonwealth Immigrants Act has seemed like a repudiation of the consequences of our actions.’

Preparations in Jamaica for independence continued nonetheless. On 21 April, at the Queen’s Official Birthday Parade at Up Park Camp, the men of the Royal Hampshire Regiment, the last of a long line of British troops garrisoned in Jamaica, marched symbolically through the ranks of the newly formed Jamaica Regiment and left the island.

Two days before the set date of midnight on 5 August 1962, the
Gleaner
reported: ‘All over the island there is now tip-toe expectancy, a breathlessness that will increase with each passing moment until the appointed hour is reached and Jamaica shall at last call her soul her own.’ The following day, the paper, noting that there had been ‘a virtual explosion of new nations in Africa in the past two years’,
concluded that ‘the era of colonialism is coming to an end’. By now, Trinidad and Tobago had a date for independence as well: 31 August.

On 1 August, in London, Ann Fleming was entertaining the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire (the Duchess was the youngest of the Mitford sisters). In his capacity as Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Commonwealth Relations, the Duke was flying out the next day to ‘celebrate the independence of Jamaica’. He was grumbling that Margaret’s consort Armstrong-Jones ‘had twelve attendants and he was not allowed a valet’ and that ‘the Joneses had two thirds of the airplane private’. Ann warned them that ‘five white tie occasions in the hurricane season will not be much fun’, but she ‘cheered them all up with dazzling descriptions of Charles da Costa and Ian’s black wife’.

After an eighteen-hour flight via the Azores, the royal party arrived on the morning of 3 August and drove, the
Gleaner
reported, into ‘a Kingston gaily bedecked with flags and bunting in the national colours
of black, gold and green and resplendent in coats of paint that have been splashed on public buildings, commercial houses and private homes in a clean-up and paint-up campaign actively carried out over the past months’.

At a string of public events, the Princess was cheered by huge crowds. Pathé News reported: ‘They rejoiced, not that they were parting from Britain – they are firm adherents of the crown – but because Jamaica stood on the threshold of independence.’

Lady Fiona Aird, who was the Princess’s lady-in-waiting, remembers ‘the most amazing, tremendous reception’. Margaret, she says, loved Jamaica for its ‘sun, sea, and the joyfulness of their spirit’, but adds that the royal party was largely protected from any dealings with ordinary Jamaicans. There was a certain amount of sadness within the royal party that Jamaica was becoming independent – it felt like ‘the end of an era’ – but the Princess was ‘very pragmatic about what had to happen’. Apart from the heat, the only irritating factor was the US Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who as the representative of the US President thought himself the most important person there. In addition, there were several occasions when his motorcade passed along the streets about half a mile ahead of that of the Princess. According to Lady Aird, to the royal party’s annoyance he was announcing through a loudspeaker: ‘Now you’re going to be free at last! The colonial oppressor is vanquished!’

Meanwhile, celebrations were occurring all over the island, including folk singing, dramatic presentations, regattas, bonfire parties, beauty pageants and donkey races. In Oracabessa, it was ‘Boat Races, Swimming Races, Dress Parade, Quadrille Dances, Grease Pole, Eating Race, Domino Tournament’. According to local resident Pearl Flynn, the ‘Eating Race’ involved watermelons and flour dumplings. She remembers ‘Street dancing, dancing all over, parties. Church bells were ringing.’ In the national stadium on 5 August, there were speeches, march-pasts, songs and fireworks. Strangways actor Timothy Moxon,
in his Cessna crop-sprayer, was part of a fly-past in pouring rain. The climax came at midnight, when 20,000 people saw the Union flag lowered and the black, green and gold of independent Jamaica raised. For Pearl Flynn, watching on television, this was a great moment. ‘I felt good, elated,’ she says. ‘I always loved Jamaica, I was always fighting for my rights. So many promises were made, we all felt elated.’

On 7 August came the opening of the first session of the new Jamaica parliament, attended by dignitaries including Lyndon Johnson, a papal envoy and a number of leaders of the newly independent African nations. First came a message from the Queen, read by Princess Margaret, in which warm mention was made of Britain’s ‘bonds of friendship’ and ‘more than three hundred years of close association with the island and her people’. Some found the portrayal of British rule as benevolent somewhat extraordinary, and the failure of the speech to make any mention of Jamaica’s role in achieving its own independence was criticised. Leader of the Opposition Norman Manley, when he spoke, did acknowledge that Jamaicans had had a hand in their own freedom: the ‘men who in the past and through all our history strove to keep alight the torch of freedom in this country. No one will name them today but this House is in very deed their memorial.’

Timothy Moxon’s daughter, Judi Moxon Zakka, remembers that ‘at the time of Jamaican independence people were very excited and filled with anticipation. It was a huge step into the future, the shackles of colonialism would be finally thrown off. Jamaica would be free of its European oppressors.’ Before the end of the year, there was a new Governor-General – a black Jamaican, Sir Clifford Campbell – and Jamaica had become the 109th member of the United Nations.

Veteran journalist Morris Cargill, Fleming’s close friend, wrote two years later: ‘A people who have managed so successfully the transition to self-government from beginnings which were so corrupting and destructive to human decency are, it seems to me, capable of almost
anything if given even the smallest chance.’ At the same time, he noted that per capita income in Jamaica in 1963 was £140, more than most African and Asian countries, and higher even than Portugal. The greatest challenge, in his opinion, was population growth. Already at 370 people per square mile, density was among the highest in the western hemisphere.

Norman Manley had declared before independence that Jamaica would stay aligned to the West and look for even closer ties with the United States. Bustamante went further, announcing as he arrived at La Guardia airport in New York: ‘Jamaica stands between Castro and the Panama Canal.’ We are pro-American,’ he said later, ‘we are anti-communist. We have nothing to do with Cuba or any communist country. We belong to the West.’

From New York, Bustamante flew to London for meetings with British officials, and to ask for loans; not ‘as beggars’, but as the
Gleaner’s
correspondent reported: ‘In asking for economic aid Sir Alexander will back his case with moral and political reasons. He says that the Colonial Office has ruled Jamaica as a colony for 300 years and left a legacy of unemployment they have the duty to help clear up.’ In the event, Jamaica got a lot less from Britain than it asked for and felt entitled to.

The Jamaican coat of arms from imperial days was retained, but with a new motto: ‘Out of Many, One People’. As Norman Manley had declared in February 1962, ‘The right road will have us all walk together – black, white, and brown – in peace and harmony, united because we are citizens of one land.’ When British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had toured the Caribbean in March the previous year, he had praised the West Indies as an example to the rest of the Commonwealth as a place where multiracial society worked.

Nonetheless, soon after independence, some of the richer whites started moving themselves and their money out of the country. Among them, somewhat surprisingly, was Chris Blackwell, who relocated his
still-fledgling Island Records business to England. ‘I thought in 1962, in view of my complexion, ‘I’d be better off in England than in Jamaica,’ he says. ‘Jamaica had just become independent and every problem was considered to be associated with white folk and previous colonial oppression. It’s a changed situation. People who had no money, no influence, they say they were oppressed by the British … they want to get theirs now. Finally it’s their time.’

Just before independence, Ann and Ian had been invited by Terence Young to a private room at the Travellers’ Club for their first viewing of the new film. Other guests included the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, Lord and Lady Bessborough and Peter Quennell. The Flemings took along their staff – Mr and Mrs Crickmere – as well as ‘Nanny, old Caspar and all the Miss Lambtons’. ‘It was an abominable occasion,’ Ann reported to Evelyn Waugh. The children ‘were very restive, and I feared Mrs Crickmere might give notice and no more coconut soup; luckily she found the film “quite gripping”. I wish I had, for our fortune depends on it. There were howls of laughter when the tarantula walks up James Bond’s body: it was a close-up of a spider on a piece of anatomy too small to be an arm.’

The general public, however, was much less sniffy. Three days later, just two weeks before the Cuban missile crisis, the film went on general release in 110 cinemas across the UK. In all but seven, it broke box office records. It would go on to be one of the biggest hits of the 1962–3 season and gross £60 million worldwide.

Book sales went through the roof.
Dr No
sold 1.5 million copies within seven months of the release of the film. In 1961, the Bond books had sold a highly respectable 670,000 copies in paperback in Britain; by the end of 1963, the figure was 4,468,000. The same year saw the release of
From Russia, with Love
, with twice
Dr
No’s budget; the third film,
Goldfinger,
was also in production, with a £3 million budget. Bond seemed unstoppable.

1963–4 You Only Live Twice; The Man with the Golden Gun

I don’t want yachts, race-horses or a Rolls-Royce. I want my family and friends and good health and to have a small treadmill with a temperature of 80 degrees in the shade and in the sea to come to every year for two months. And to be able to work there and look at the flowers and fish, and somehow to give pleasure, whether innocent or illicit, to people in their millions.

Fleming on Goldeneye, 1964

A few weeks before the preview screening of
Dr No,
Ann and Ian had experienced one of their worst ever rows. On the surface it was about nine-year-old Caspar. Ian complained: ‘Watching his character deteriorate under your laissez-faire depresses me beyond words, because I see him not being casually spoiled now but spoilt when it comes to facing the world …’ Beneath this was Ian’s fury at Ann’s relationship with Hugh Gaitskell, who had suddenly fallen ill – Ann made little effort to hide her deep concern for him. Ian complained
that he was ‘jealous and lonely’ and, in case she had forgotten, he was ill too.