By
Kenton Chance
 |
| Pro-Vice Chancellor Hilary Beckles |
KINGSTOWN,
St. Vincent, August 21, 2013 - A leading Caribbean intellectual has presented a
compelling argument of why Britain should pay to former colonies in the region
reparations for slavery and native genocide.
Caribbean
Community (CARICOM) leaders at their summit in Trinidad and Tobago in July
agreed to the formation of the Commission that will be chaired by Barbados
Prime Minister Freundel Stuart and include St Vincent and the Grenadines,
Haiti, Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago.
The
regional countries have also engaged the services of a prominent British human
rights law firm to assist in the matter.
“We
are focusing on Britain because Britain was the largest owners of slaves at
Emancipation in the 1830s. The British made the most money out of slavery and
the slave trade -- they got the lion share. And, importantly, they knew how to
convert slave profits into industrial profits,” said Professor Sir Hilary
Beckles, Pro Vice Chancellor and Principal of the Cave Hill Campus of the
University of the West Indies (UWI).
Speaking
at a lecture Tuesday night on the title of his latest book, “Britain’s Black
Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide”, the academic
detailed how the British government and British citizens used slavery to enrich
themselves.
He
further noted that while at Emancipation, reparations were paid to former slave
owners, the slaves got nothing.
Professor
Beckles argued that the reparation monies stimulated the British economy for
half a century after Emancipation, but “here in the Caribbean, the islands were
descended into poverty after Emancipation.
“And
in Britain, 50 years of growth because the compensation money was reinvested in
the British economy and stimulated the economic development of the company,” he
said, adding “the British government built this system (slavery), they created
fiscal policies to manage it, they created financial systems, they legislated
slavery, they administrated slavery, the government owned the slaves, and,
importantly, the British government is the custodian of the wealth of the
nation.
“We
believe that we now have to repair the damage and this is the final point. This
is why now repartitions is important,” Professor Beckles said, noting that
Caribbean governments were now spending up to 80 per cent of their expenditure
on education and health.
“After
300 hundred years of taking their labour, exploiting their labour and enriching
themselves to build themselves into the most powerful nation on earth, they
have left Caribbean peoples illiterate and unhealthy, which means that the
governments today have to clean up illiteracy and clean up the ill-health do
not have the resources to do it.”
Professor
Beckles said that the British were good at keeping records and hence the wealth
derived from slavery is traceable. He rebutted some of the arguments likely to
be advanced by Britain as it resists paying reparations to the region.
He
said that the British have launched a campaign to discredit the reparations
movement, but stated that British citizens are increasingly seeing the need for
-- and are calling on their government to make -- amends.
Professor
Beckles spoke of a case in which a slave trader, faced with decreasing ration
aboard a slave ship and no tail winds, decided to throw his slave “cargo”
overboard and return to Britain to claim insurance.
The
British judiciary ruled that it was a simple case of property insurance rather
than murder --since slaves were not considered human beings.
“Therein
lies the British court … the judiciary of great Britain, ruling in its own
legal structure that black people are not human beings.
“Therein
lies the charge of reparations, because to deny a people their human identity
is a crime against humanity and that is the case that the British judiciary, on
behalf of the British state, established the principle that once and for all,
that African peoples are not human.”
Professor
Beckles spoke of how the exploitation of the region under slavery resulted in
the underdevelopment of the region’s human resource, infrastructure, and
economy.
He
noted that after 300 years of colonisation, when in 1962 the British left
Jamaica at Independence, 80 per cent of the Caribbean nation’s people were
functionally illiterate
Professor
Beckles also spoke of the impact on the family, and mentioned the high rates of
diabetes and hypertension in the region and the ways in which black people in
the Caribbean and Africa respond to medicine for these conditions.
“These
are the kinds of things we speak about when we speak about reparations,”
Professor Beckles said in reference to the vestiges of slavery and
colonisation.
“The
British government has to come to the Caribbean and sit with us and help us
deal with all of these. We have a legal and moral right,” Professor Beckles
said, lauding the efforts of Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves who has
convinced his CARICOM colleagues to support the reparations movement.
“We
need to take them forward. All of us need to take them forward,” Professor
Beckles said of the issues relating to reparations.
“And
if we do not, this region is going to regress and regress very rapidly. And it
is not about confrontation, it is not about conflict, it is about a 21st
century state of sophisticated diplomacy. 21st century diplomacy is required, a
21st century international relations is required. The time has come now in this
second phase of nation building for us to go forward. I feel this is where we
are at,” he said.
He
noted, however, that reparation is not about handing over money to either
individuals or governments.
“Under
international law, reparations are paid into a fund, which is administered
under international law. … In every society, a reparations committee is
established, a fund is established, and under law, those funds are placed under
trustees and trustees are held responsible for the use of those funds for
community development,” Professor Beckles said. (CMC)
Source:
http://www.caribbean360.com/index.php/news/st_vincent_news/902856.html#ixzz2czypOaiu
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