In the ongoing discourse surrounding reparations, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St. Vincent expressed the necessity for enhanced awareness and understanding within the British government regarding the enduring matter of indigenous genocide and the enslavement of African bodies. This sentiment was conveyed during a panel discussion on emancipation and reparations held in Barbados on Thursday, August 3.
Gonsalves referenced Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary of the United Kingdom, who is of Indian heritage as to why the education is important citing a report in which Braverman allegedly expressed the view that the British populace lacks any justification or feeling of regret over slavery, but should instead be commended for their role in emancipating slaves.
The Prime Minister of St. Vincent expressed his belief that it will be necessary for the Caribbean population to propose a compilation of literary works for the Home Secretary, which he intends to send to her.
Gonsalves stated that the region wants to be engaged in a dialogue rather than conflict, and he emphasized that he would not be found protesting outside of Downing Street with a sign. Gonsalves, the Prime Minister, expressed his desire to engage in a discussion with the residents of Number ten Downing Street.
According to Gonsalves, the Britain derived significant advantages from the enslavement of African people who were forcefully transferred to the British colonies in the Western Hemisphere. These individuals were subjected to forced labor and utilized for resource extraction, so playing a crucial role in driving the Industrial Revolution and facilitating the accumulation of Britain’s wealth.
“If you read the speech of the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Ron Williams, in March 2007 on the occasion of the Anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, He made precisely that point. And he was saying that there is a moral and, indeed, legal duty for reparations. He made the point and called on Christian people in the United Kingdom and across the world to come to our aid in this campaign. This is why I say we need progressive people and people who are touched by these crimes against humanity in relation to native genocide and the enslavement of African bodies”.
Gonsalves says CARICOM, through Freundel Stuart Stuart, former Barbados Prime Minister who was then chair of the Prime Ministerial Committee on Reparations in CARICOM, corresponded with former UK Prime Minister David Cameron. However, Cameron’s response was centered on a forward-looking perspective, urging to refrain from dwelling on the past.
“That is the line that is being taken. I answer them with a poem from Daniel Williams, a Vincentian poet: ‘We are the cenotaphs’. ‘ We are all the time, Yet only the future is ours to desecrate. The present is the past. Our father’s mischief To avoid the desecration of the future. We have to put this item on the agenda for serious conversation, as King Charles and then Prince Charles advocated in Kigali in their opening speeches to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference”.
The books recommended for the UK Home Secretary are the following, as outlined by Gonsalves:
“I want to suggest, first of all. The book by C.L.R. James, Black Jacobins, is about the Haitian Revolution and for Haiti with the French as a special conversation on reparations, and we have to have that with President Macron. The second book is Is Capitalism and Slavery? By Eric Williams”.
“The third book I want to recommend to the Home Secretary in the United Kingdom is one by a Jamaican activist from the 1930s. The book is entitled (Two Volumes: Slaves Who Abolished Slavery. And the fourth book is the book by Hilary Beckles on Britain’s Black Debt. I want to recommend those as important reading for the Home secretary”.
It is estimated that about 12.5 million people were transported as slaves from Africa to the West Indies and elsewhere in the Americas between the early 1600s and 1807, when the British outlawed the trade. It would be another 27 years before slavery was abolished in the British Empire. Slavery was abolished totally in Latin America around 1850 and in the United States in 1865. The great exceptions are Brazil and Cuba, where the importation of slaves actually accelerated during those years and abolition did not come until the late 1880s.
Britain then compensated the former slave owners in what became the single largest financial bailout in history, amounting to 40 percent of the UK’s budget at the time. The compensation, valued at £20 million in 1833, was paid to slave owners for the loss of their “property”. The compensation was part of a compromise that helped secure abolition. The British government took out a £15 million loan to pay the compensation, which was not repaid by British taxpayers until 2015.
