THERE’S an ancient city near Rome, an amusement park in Copenhagen and gardens in France, Japan and Slovenia. There are theatres, music halls, hotels, a restaurant, a river, towns and housing complexes in Europe, Asia, Australia and North America. Even computer software and audio equipment bear the name Tivoli.

But just how did the infamous community in Kingston, Jamaica get its name?

Edward Seaga, the man who is credited with building Tivoli Gardens in the West Kingston constituency which he served for over 40 years, said it was simple.

“There was once a movie house there, that was called Tivoli. It was later renamed Queen’s and it was operated up to the 1930s by the Twari family,” Seaga — who also served as prime minister from 1980 to 1989 — told the Sunday Observer.

And, according to the elder statesman, who was minister of development at the time the community was built in the 1960s, seven parks once existed there. Hence the name, Tivoli Gardens.

The number of parks or recreational areas were in tandem with Seaga’s focus on social development.

“The community was designed to provide a better quality of life for the people. It was not just a housing scheme. It was developed to provide for the social needs of the people,” he said.

“There was a pre-natal clinic, a maternity centre, a crèche, an infant school, a primary and secondary school. Then there was the community centre where we did sculpting, choral singing and drama. We also had a steel band which was the first in the island. We had it even before the University of the West Indies had theirs. We had a drum corps, and a popular music band that went on to do very well abroad.”

That band was called Double Barrel.

“Old people also had social programmes,” said Seaga. “There was a golden age club where they did craft and embroidery. The community centre had a computer centre and we did photography and secretarial courses. The centre was alive back then because all the kids would come out and participate. We had sports programmes too. We produced some excellent people.”

That focus on social development, Seaga said, is what is missing from the community today.

The community, which was built by the then Ministry of Housing and the West Kingston Trust which financed the social and cultural facilities, came out of a demolition of the squalid Back-O-Wall in the early 1960s.

“It thrived for about four years,” according to Seaga’s calculation, but by the mid-seventies, everything started to change as a result of politically motivated violence.

“The name of Tivoli Gardens was used to demean me and to demonise the community so everything started to go down. You can’t run social programmes that way,” he rued. “There was all this violence and once the situation became dangerous outside, the kids didn’t come out as much as they used to, so the programmes lapsed badly in the ’70s.

“It picked up a little in the ’80s, but in the ’90s it started to taper off again.”

This time, Seaga said the downturn was a direct result of gangs inside the community itself.

“In the latter part of the ’90s gang activities started to take hold in there. I reported it to the police. I gave the names of 13 gang members to the police and ‘Dudus’ was at the head of that list. I even offered $25,000 for his head,” Seaga said. “Once they saw how serious I was they scattered.”

Fast forward more than a decade later and the same name — ‘Dudus’ — sits at the top of a list of alleged gunmen in Tivoli. He is wanted by the US on gun- and drug-running charges but has so far eluded local police who have been trying to serve him with an arrest warrant.

In spite of it all, Seaga still has a vision for the community he developed.

“The elements in there that used to be the cause of crime are no longer there. They have all fled,” he said in reference to the violent clashes between gunmen and the security forces in the community late last month.

“But I do wish it could return to the days we enjoyed in the beginning, when we didn’t have any problems with excessive politics and the presence of crime because those are what created the problems that made it difficult to operate,” he said.

Seaga retired from politics in 2005 and was succeeded by Bruce Golding as Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) leader and MP for Kingston western. Golding went on to lead the JLP to victory in the 2007 parliamentary elections, ending the 18-year reign of the People’s National Party.