1967
SHANTY TOWN * PRINCE BUSTER * BLUE BEAT 370 * UK
In contrast to the political classes, whatever name or rhetoric they hide behind, Prince Buster shows his commitment to the people in this his epitaph to the demolition of the squatter camps and shanty towns that were, I believe, situated in West Kingston between the railway tracks and and Spanish Town Road - Back-A-Wall, Ackee Walk and Forshore Road; a place called 'home' by country folk, the abject poor and The Rastafarians who lived there. In his first-rate book Bass Culture Lloyd Bradley informs us that this area had become a Peoples National Party (PNP) stronghold, and a emblem of all that was wrong with post colonial government, causing the ruling Jamaican Labour Party (JLP) - through the agency of Edward Seaga, the then Housing Minister - to, "Under the grandiose title of 'slum clearance' and with the army in great evidence" send "demolition crews in to bulldoze the shanties. Without prior warning to the inhabitants."
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