Caribbean Nations to Seek $33trn in Slavery Reparations

The Times – Caribbean nations will seek $33 trillion from European governments and an apology for their role in the transatlantic slave trade as part of a new push for reparations.

A bloc of 15 Caribbean nations hopes to begin negotiating with Britain, France, Spain and Denmark over a ten-point plan that would include a formal apology, funding for health and education and the cancellation of debt and direct payments to governments.

Britain owes $19.6 trillion, Spain should pay $6.3 trillion and France owes $6.5 trillion, according to a report produced by an American consulting firm that sought to calculate legal damages for the enslavement of 19 million people over four centuries.

The Emancipation Statue in Barbados, one of 15 nations that are members of Caricom, a political and economic union calling for slavery reparations

Verene Shepherd, a Jamaican professor of history and vice-chairwoman of the reparations commission for Caricom, a political and economic union of 15 states, said that while it was almost impossible to calculate the true extent of the damage caused by the slave trade, the figures provided a starting point for negotiations.

“We need a figure to begin with, a negotiating figure,” she said. “The crime is huge. The responsibility for what happened is huge.”

Caricom established a reparations commission in 2013. In the years that followed the group made approaches to former colonial powers on reparations. “We didn’t get a positive response to our letters,” said Shepherd. “I’m not at liberty to quote everything they said.”

In the intervening years, support for the idea has strengthened in the Caribbean. Shepherd believes that “we have won in terms of our public presentation and our advocacy”.

Some have even suggested that Caribbean nations could pursue reparations through the courts in the countries they are targeting. A London firm was consulted, but leaders of the Caribbean nations that make up Caricom have instructed the reparations commission to first seek negotiations, Shepherd said.

A second round of letters to European governments was drafted, though it has not yet been sent, she said. “We are trying negotiations. We are trying lobbying, through the United Nations.”

She said the group had also chosen to seek “a development approach” rather than cash payments to people whose ancestors were enslaved, an approach that has been sought by some demanding reparations for slavery in the United States.

Advocates for reparations to the Caribbean note that after Britain abolished slavery in the 1830s it paid £20 million in compensation to 46,000 former slaveholders — a colossal sum at the time.

“By giving slave owners compensation for the loss of their property, they set a precedent,” said Peter Espeut, dean of studies at a seminary college in Kingston and a columnist for the Jamaican newspaper The Gleaner. “If you compensated the owners for the loss of their property surely you should also compensate the slaves for the loss of their freedom.”

He was sceptical of the idea that reparations should be paid to Caribbean governments, including that of Jamaica, which was said to be owed $9.5 trillion, a figure calculated by the consulting firm Brattle and included in the report. “When Jamaica became independent, the British government handed us a national debt of zero,” he said. “Any debt that Jamaica may currently have is arguably not the result of slavery or colonialism but malfeasance on the part of the Jamaican government.”

If the reparations were to come in the form of cash for development, Britain and the European Union could argue that they have been “paying reparations for decades” in the form of development aid, he said.

Espeut remains an advocate of reparations but says the money “is owed to the descendants of former slaves, not to the government”. He added: “The government is trying to steal poor black people’s money by making this claim.”

Most European governments have resisted the idea of reparations. Responding to a question in the Commons in April over whether he would offer an apology “and commit to reparatory justice”, Rishi Sunak said no, saying he believed that “trying to unpick our history is not the right way forward, and it’s not something that we will focus our energies on”.

Shepherd said that development aid from European nations did not count as reparations as the money often came in the form of loans, or with conditions attached. Britain had left her former colonies in a parlous state at independence, she said.

She quoted a statement by a Labour MP named Arthur Creech Jones who served on the Advisory Committee on Education in the Colonies, who warned in 1939 that “criminal neglect” had allowed Caribbean islands to sink into “hopeless squalour” and misery. Shepherd said: “If that’s not an admission of guilt I don’t know what is.”

Most European governments had not offered more than a “statement of regret” she said. The King of the Netherlands offered a formal apology recently, as have members of the Gladstone and Trevelyan families.

Some European groups had sought to help, Shepherd added. A group in Switzerland “are sending information to us about how Switzerland was involved [in the slave trade]” by selling navigational instruments used by slave ships, while a group in Sweden was contributing evidence of how the country provided iron for manacles used on plantations. “We are gathering the information which is the proof of how countries are associated with this crime against humanity.”

Note – The precedding was originally published by THE TIMES of the UK. Original article can be found here.