The debt not paid

At the “recommitment” commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the launch of the Caribbean Community (Caricom), the heads of government decided to establish a “Reparations Commission”. It will pursue compensation for the now acknowledged “crime against humanity” that was committed against millions snatched from Africa and enslaved by the colonial powers from the 16th to the 19th century. We believe that this move is long overdue.
Back in March 2007, as British Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed “deep regret and sorrow” for his country’s role in the African slave trade, then President Bharrat Jagdeo retorted to the resident British High Commissioner Fraser Wheeler: “Now that some members of the international community have recognised their active role in this despicable system, they need to go one step further and support reparations. Otherwise, their remarks about the horrors of the slave trade and slavery become meaningless and platitudinous, and such remarks may be expressed merely to absolve guilt.”
Blair’s statement during the lavish commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade was parsed very carefully to avoid any formal apology that could then be used by proponents of reparations to impute guilt in the crime. As they have done consistently about that event and the subsequent abolition of slavery in 1834, the British prefer to elide the horrors of what has been called the African Holocaust or “Maafa”, and stress their “humanitarian” motives.
But as one of the founding members of Caricom, former Trinidadian Prime Minister Eric Williams had shown in his Oxford PhD dissertation, later published as “Capitalism and Slavery”, they were economic decisions through and through. He and later scholars have demonstrated conclusively that the wealth that provided the wherewithal for many of the upper crust of British society to live in luxury, but more importantly enabled them to launch their “industrial revolution”, were accumulated from the blood, sweat, and tears of slavery.
Politics was also integrally connected as slave profits funded the campaigns for, or purchase of, seats to Parliament. The Hogg family who gave Britain and its empire two Lord Chancellors in the 20th century – and the name of the island in the Essequibo River – acquired much its wealth from the labour of slaves on plantations in British Guiana. John Gladstone, father of the long-serving British Prime Minister William Gladstone, not only owned slaves on his British Guiana sugar plantations, but also was the initiator of the system of indentureship from India that supplied cheap labour after the abolition of slavery. One of the ironies of slavery is that the planters who profited from slavery were offered “reparations” after abolition – worth US$25 billion in today’s money – for the “loss of their property”, while the Africans who were exploited were not even given a firm handshake.
Earlier this year, as Guyana observed the 250th anniversary of the 1763 Berbice Revolt, at the launch of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Slavery Exhibition at the National Museum, President Donald Ramotar said: “I take this opportunity to reaffirm Guyana’s commitment to zealously pursue the case for reparations.” He referred to the recent lectures in Georgetown by two distinguished West Indian historians Professors Verene Shepherd and Hillary Beckles that made a cogent case for reparations. Beckles recent book, “Britain’s Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide” should be required reading for all West Indian peoples.
As the great West Indian novelist George Lamming said prophetically, “There is a perennial debt to be paid to black people for continuing of enslavement and degradation. There are those who believe that the matter is over. They are completely wrong. Actually, there are those among us who believe that the demand and struggle for justice and restoration to full dignity would take a generation to win a crusade for reparations.”
In the words of the late great, Dudley Thompson, “The debt has not been paid; the accounts have not been settled!”