A Brief History of Seven Killings

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence and death.

Key to James’s novel is an understanding of the political dynamic that dominated Jamaica in the decades after it gained full independence from the United Kingdom in 1962.

The long-standing rivalry between Jamaica’s two main political parties began in the pre-independence era, when Jamaica was still part of the British Empire. In the mid to late 1930s, as civil disturbances broke out across the British West Indies to protest socioeconomic inequality between British colonists and Caribbean laborers, Jamaican trade unions developed into modern political parties. Key labor figure Norman Manley organized the People’s National Party (PNP) in 1938, while labor leader Alexander Bustamante formed the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) in 1943. The 1944 election ushered the JLP into power, with Bustamante as prime minister. Bustamante served his constituency to the disadvantage of the pro-PNP demographic. He also painted the left-leaning PNP as a communist organization, prompting attacks between sympathizers of each party.

During the 1960s, the political parties started employing organized crime groups to advance their agenda. In one incident, the reigning JLP endorsed the demolition of a Rastafarian slum called Back-O-Wall, replacing it with a garrison for the Phoenix Gang (later, more famously, the Shower Posse) which was sympathetic to the government.