Richard Hugh Blackford

Top Rankings: a Chronicle of Jamaican Badness Richard Hugh Blackford Second edition

About The Book The end of the Second World War has signaled a growth in Britain and United States demand for Jamaican bauxite, agricultural and manufactured products as well as some categories of services. The result is in an expansion of the port facilities in Kingston and rapid growth in industrial activity, sending signals of job availability in the capital. In response, hundreds of thousands of rural folk begins the drift into the city, their thoughts riveted on the promise of a better life. Most discover that Kingston is far from the panacea promised, and apart from the non-availability of jobs, housing solutions are virtually non-existent leaving many to join the burgeoning throng of squatters in the city western belt. This is the environment that exists in Kingston, Jamaica at the beginning of 1950 and Top Rankings provides a gritty, edge of your seat look at life in "Inner City" of the island capital during this developmental period and beyond. It chronicles the birth of the ubiquitous bad man in socio economic and political Jamaica and provides a trail of the exploitation of factions within these communities, showing the nexus between the disparate groups that together makes up this melting pot of Out of Many, One People. The book traces many of the issues of a growing city population in the early years, largely neglected by the country policy makers whose only interest is ensuring that the island power structure remains in their hands. For this few, the concern is about preserving a status quo that only serves theirs and the interests of those above them while they exploit those below whose votes they need to keep them in power. Top Rankings; A Chronicle of Jamaican Badness chronicles the exploitation of those who live on the fringes of the society to keep their own numbers loyal and in check, and provides a ring- side look at how this sets neighbor against neighbor and becomes the mechanics of social our deconstruction which still haunts Jamaica to this very day