David Cameron is facing calls for
Britain to pay billions of pounds in reparations for slavery ahead of his first
official visit to Jamaica on Tuesday.
Downing Street said
the prime minister does not believe reparations or apologies for slavery are
the right approach, but the issue is set to overshadow his trade trip to the
island, where he will address the Jamaican parliament.
Ahead of his trip,
Sir Hilary Beckles, chair of the Caricom Reparations Commission, has led calls
for Cameron to start talks on making amends for slavery and referenced the
prime minister’s ancestral links to the trade in the 1700s through his cousin
six times removed, General Sir James Duff.
In an open letter
in the Jamaica Observer, the academic wrote: “You are a grandson of the
Jamaican soil who has been privileged and enriched by your forebears’ sins of
the enslavement of our ancestors ... You are, Sir, a prized product of this
land and the bonanza benefits reaped by your family and inherited by you
continue to bind us together like birds of a feather.
“We ask not for
handouts or any such acts of indecent submission. We merely ask that you
acknowledge responsibility for your share of this situation and move to
contribute in a joint programme of rehabilitation and renewal. The continuing
suffering of our people, Sir, is as much your nation’s duty to alleviate as it
is ours to resolve in steadfast acts of self-responsibility.”
Professor Verene
Shepherd, chair of the National Commission on Reparation, told the Jamaica
Gleaner that nothing short of an unambiguous apology from Cameron would do,
while a Jamaican MP, Mike Henry, called on fellow parliamentarians to turn
their back on Cameron if reparations are not on the agenda, noting that the
Jamaican parliament has approved a motion for the country to seek reparation
from Britain.
“If it is not on
the agenda, I will not attend any functions involving the visiting prime
minister, and I will cry shame on those who do, considering that there was not
a dissenting voice in the debate in parliament,” he told the newspaper.
Jamaica’s prime
minister Portia Simpson Miller called for non-confrontational discussions at
the UN in 2013, but Britain has never accepted the case for any compensation
payments.
A Number 10
official said: “This is a longstanding concern of theirs and there is a
longstanding UK position, true of successive governments in the UK, that we
don’t think reparations are the right approach.
“The PM’s point
will be he wants to focus on the future. We are talking about issues that are
centuries old and taken under a different government when he was not even born.
He wants to look at the future and how can the UK play a part now in stronger
growing economies in the Caribbean.”
The official said
Cameron’s purpose in visiting Jamaica and Grenada was to reinvigorate their
relationship with the UK.
“He looks at that
kind of relationship and who the Caribbean see as their major partners and sees
them looking to China and Venezuela and thinks Britain should be in there.
Britain has long historical ties with these countries,” she said. (End of The Guardian file)
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(Professor Hilary Beckles delivers his landmark lecture on African reparations from Britain/pan-Europe on the latter’s centuries of the enslavement of African peoples in the Caribbean and elsewhere in the Americas; venue: Methodist Church Hall, Kingstown, St Vincent and the Grenadines, 20 August 2013)Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe
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