Readers will expect me to write about Brixton. There is so much at stake that every line written or word said is likely to affect the community in one way or another. Only two facts are available. A young man lay dead on the Angell Town Estate with a gun-shaped cigarette lighter at his side. He was shot by SO19, the armed section of the Metropolitan Police.

Brixtonians are split down the middle in their attitudes to the police. Only a couple of weeks ago, my daughter and her friends were playing around with a replica nine-millimetre pistol. When the trigger was squeezed, a yellow ball popped out. Three or four others had identical guns.

They were bought on the high road in Brixton, perhaps from the same shop where the dead man got his lighter. I have known Brixtonians who have stared down the barrels of these fake weapons and then emptied their pockets and purses.

Mrs Howe exploded when I told her about our daughter's indulgent antics with the gun. She issued an immediate order: it was never again to be seen in the house in her lifetime.

Brixton is consumed by a gun culture imported from west Kingston, in Jamaica. It has cost many lives in cases where the guns were real. That has now extended, with an imitation gun, to a real life in Britain. And if we want to see where it could all lead, we have only to look at what has happened in Kingston in the past week or so.

Here is a simple account. One of the local gang leaders stung a Colombian for several kilos of cocaine. The Colombians put out a hit on him for millions of Jamaican dollars. He was executed. But he was not only a drug baron; he was also a local leader of one of the political parties. The leaders of the gangs attached to the opposing party sent a delegation to their rivals to say that they were not responsible for the execution. Dead bodies returned.

The war began, gunmen of the ruling People's National Party against gunmen of the Jamaica Labour Party. This blood feud is at the core of Jamaican politics. The educated middle classes rule, but beneath them are these murderous gunmen, who do their bidding. The party in power also has the army and the police at its disposal.

For decades now, the parties have been responsible for the importation and distribution of guns. Tivoli Gardens, the home of the JLP, has had the upper hand, and I have been told that the gunmen's weaponry is superior to that of the army and the police.

In this month's gun war, all businesses and all schools in downtown Kingston had to be closed down. The Red Cross had to deliver food to local residents. Nothing moved in these garrisons except executioners crawling in the dark. Edward Seaga, the Labour leader, was invited to peace talks. He refused.

The ruling party went on the offensive. It mobilised the police. Officers were told to attack Tivoli Gardens. But they were terrified to go in. So they did the next best thing: they shot up the neighbouring Coronation Market, occupied it, and pumped bullets willy-nilly into Seaga's garrison.

Old people were killed, and probably not a single gunman from Tivoli. It was barbarism of the worst kind. Rotting carcasses lay everywhere.

A Caribbean nation has sunk to depths previously unimaginable. But something similar could take place, right now, on every Caribbean island. They are all on the verge of violent upheaval. Recently, a Trinidadian citizen in Florida was caught attempting to export a huge quantity of guns to Muslim fundamentalists on the island. A few years ago, those very Muslims had attempted a coup.

Parliamentary democracy is not so much on its last legs as travelling along in a wheelchair. There are no plasters left for the sores on the body politic.

I understand Tony Blair is off to Jamaica. He will shake hands that are covered in blood, I tell you.

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