“… never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” (From Meditation 17 by John Donne)

When 17th century author John Donne wrote of the tolling bell, he was speaking of the funeral bell, which was traditionally rung three times for a man and two times for a woman followed by a pause and then a toll for every year of age for the deceased.

There been much debate over exactly what Donne meant in his classic lines -- whether he meant that the tolling bell was merely a reminder that all men are mortal; or it was a signal that this passing was like the whole world dying just a little bit.

The bell currently tolling for the Cayman Islands is the unspeakably troubling one of racism and could well represent a summons to the funeral of Cayman society, as we have known it in recent decades.

Our society has by and large always been an egalitarian one. We had no history of the so-called “plantocracy” that was present in other Caribbean Islands and racial discrimination has thankfully been largely unknown in modern times.

Regrettably, whatever divisions and resulting tensions that are beginning to creep into our society have not been helped, and in some cases created by the policies of successive governments, especially the rollover policy and the distinctions that has created between us and “the others.”

A class of transient workers has been created and, partly because of the temporary nature of their stay here, they will tend to stick together in their respective national communities. In fact, we understand that some, at least, of recent violence may have had its roots in tensions between ethnic groups.

We have called on previous occasions for urgent attention to be paid to this situation before it is too late and we end up with a society based on discrimination rather than equality.

As divisions between ethnic and economic groups become deeper, and people become disillusioned and disconnected from one another, they will inevitably fuel all kinds of extremism.

On top of all the other problems currently facing us, the last thing we need is to become a place of inequality, exclusion and isolation.

To return to the happy state of being a largely integrated country, specific attention has to be paid to fostering equality for all sections of society, interaction between and participation by all sections of society.

However, the positive and robust action required at a government level is not only non-existent but is now actively negated by new and disturbing comments made by the country’s leadership.

The last administration at the time mistakenly proffered disappointing statements of any that we could recall in using ethnic divisions as a political tool -- but we are beginning to wonder if the current government is going to take this reprehensible attitude one step further.

When government policy entails the “targeting” of large ethnic groups for effective expulsion on the grounds that they have become too large a component of our demographic base, this plays upon and exacerbates existing and perhaps hitherto dormant prejudices.

Of course, of the reasons for doing this (and perhaps the principle reason) is a hope and expectation on the part of the politicians that they will be seen as the “Caymanian-first” party and thus voted into (or back into) office.

However, this did not work at the last election and the new government would therefore be well advised to take that lesson to heart.

Racism led to the transfer of a tremendous amount of financial services business and personnel from the Bahamas in the 1970s (to Cayman’s benefit) and the same thing will happen here 40 years later if the financial professionals on which the industry depends start to get any inkling at all that we are heading towards racial discrimination, tensions and ultimately violent crimes such as we are witnessing of late.

This also began in Bermuda in the late 1960s, leading up to the assassination of the island’s governor, Sir Richard Sharples, and one of his aides at the then unguarded Government House.

In Bermuda, the issue of racial discrimination and resulting political agitation led the government to discuss independence. Is this now the hidden agenda of influential and professional and high net worth people living here?

Either way, racial stress or independence will sound the death knell of Cayman’s financial sector.

It is with this in mind we pose this statement: Cayman, ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee…