THIS DAY IN OUR PAST

The following events took place on September 19 in the years identified:

Points emerging

a Gleaner survey of opinion of the likely effects that devaluation of the English pound will have on the local economy are (1) that Jamaica will have to pay 30 per cent more for bread, rice, salt and canned fish (assuming the Canadian dollar is quoted at the same rate as the American dollar); (2) that the tourist trade will benefit; (3) that Jamaica will have to buy more from soft-currency areas and restrict her imports from hard-currency areas to the minimum. Informed circles say that as each component part of the sterling area has a direct interest in the stability and expansion of trade within the area, it must be obvious that were it necessary for Britain to have an even more austere standard of living, the effect would be widely felt within the sterling area and might have a serious effect on local economy, particularly in view of the permanent and growing importance to Jamaica of the United Kingdom market for basic exports. It is announced in

and Kingston that Jamaican Prime Minister Hugh Shearer accepts an invitation to pay an official visit to Washington after his foreign policy address at the 22nd General Assembly of the United Nations in New York. Shearer will meet with President Lyndon Johnson on Friday, October 13, 1967 at the White House.

members of parliament in Britain, Richard Body (Conservative) and Alfred Morris (Labour), arrive in the island on the first leg of a tour around the Commonwealth Caribbean to make on-the-spot contact with regional problems and the personalities concerned. In an interview at the Palisadoes Airport shortly after landing, Body, who heads an all-party group in Britain named Open Seas Forum, and having free-trade outlook and antiEuropean Common Market views, expresses dissatisfaction with the understanding on Commonwealth sugar reached between Britain and The Six during the negotiations in May and June.

– The Gleaner Archives