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(L)
CAMERON… scheduled to visit Jamaica this week. (R) BECKLES… the burden of the
inherited mess from slavery and colonialism has overwhelmed many of our best
efforts. (Image source: Jamaican Observer)
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Prime Minister David
Cameron has been reminded of his family’s links to slavery as he faces calls
for Britain to pay Jamaica millions of pounds in reparations ahead of his first
official visit to Kingston on Tuesday. Academics and politicians in Jamaica have
demanded the PM issue an apology for the hundreds of years during which Britain
enslaved and “extracted wealth” from the island’s people.
In
an open letter (SEE INSIDE) to Cameron published in the Jamaica Observer, historian Sir
Hilary Beckles reminded the PM that his ancestral family benefited from slavery
on the island through General Sir James Duff, Cameron’s cousin six times
removed.
RT report continues:
Downing
Street has dismissed Jamaica’s call for reparations on the grounds slavery took
place under a different government, hundreds of years ago.
In
a cutting letter to the PM, Beckles reminded Cameron of his family’s own
involvement in Jamaican slavery.
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© British
Government for Jamaican postal service / Wikipedia
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“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,” he
wrote.
“I
speak, Sir, of the legacies of slavery that continue to derail, undermine and
haunt our best efforts at sustainable economic development and the
psychological and cultural rehabilitation of our people from the ravishes of
the crimes against humanity committed by your British State and its citizens in
the form of chattel slavery and native genocide,” he went on to say.
Buckles
wrote that while Jamaica fueled Britain’s economic growth at a crucial time in
its history, helping it to “become great.” He called on the UK to reciprocate
as part of an effort in “cleaning up this monumental mess of Empire.”
“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 program of rehabilitation and renewal,” he added.
Cameron
will visit Jamaica and Grenada this week as part of a mission to “reinvigorate”
the UK’s relationship with the island nations amid fears they are building
closer ties with China and Venezuela.
Britain’s
imperial legacy is set to overshadow Cameron’s trade trip, during which he will
address Jamaica’s parliament, with Mike Henry MP calling on fellow
parliamentarians to turn their back on the PM if reparations are not on the
agenda.
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.
Jamaican
Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller called for discussions on the issue at the
UN in 2013 and the parliament has approved a motion for the country to seek reparations
from Britain.
The
UK’s position that reparations are not the “right approach” has remained
consistent.
“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,” a Downing Street spokeswoman said.
“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.”
“Britain
has long historical ties with these countries,” she added.
Britain Has Duty To Clean Up Monumental
Mess Of Empire, Sir Hilary Tells Cameron
Yesterday, Jamaican Observer reported:
Sir
Hilary Beckles is encouraging British Prime Minister David Cameron to signal
his country's willingness to work towards a reparatory justice programme for
the Caribbean when he visits Jamaica this week.
Sir
Hilary, who chairs Caricom's Reparations Commission and is also vice chancellor
of the University of the West Indies, made the recommendation to the British
chief executive in a letter on Saturday.
Arguing
that the inherited mess from slavery and colonialism has overwhelmed many
Caribbean countries, Sir Hilary told Cameron that his country needs to
"play its part in cleaning up this monumental mess of Empire".
"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," Sir
Hilary said.
"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," the Caribbean academic added.
Below
is the full text of Sir Hilary's letter.
Dear
Honourable Prime Minister,
I
join with the resolute and resilient people of Jamaica and their Government in
extending to you a warm and glorious welcome to our homeland. We recognise you,
Prime Minister, given your family's long and significant relationship to our
country, as an internal stakeholder with historically assigned credentials.
To
us, therefore, you are more than a prime minister. You are a grandson of the
Jamaican soil who has been privileged and enriched by your forebears' sins of
the enslavement of our ancestors.
As
we prepare for you a red carpet befitting your formal status we invite you to
cast your eyes upon the colours of our national flag that symbolise the history
we share. 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.
Be
assured, Prime Minister, that you will find no more generous people on our
planet Earth than those who will greet you with golden hearts and civilised
consciousness. I urge that you embrace the sincerity of our salutations. It is
born and bred in the cauldron of our enslavement by your family and society.
Consider
it a golden gift of friendship and not simply the empty expression of protocols
relevant to the events you will attend. It is furthermore, an overture to an
expectation of a dialogue of reparatory justice that can redefine for us a new
intimacy for this long 21st century on which we are embarked.
Your
advisors would have informed you that beyond the boundary of the affairs of
State, civil society welcomes you without reservation, though with a
qualification that bears the burden of our tortured past within the
historically textured present. I speak of outstanding and unresolved matters
that are relevant to our sense of mutual respect as equal nations dedicated to
the cause of furthering humanity's finest imagined destiny.
I
speak, Sir, of the legacies of slavery that continue to derail, undermine and
haunt our best efforts at sustainable economic development and the
psychological and cultural rehabilitation of our people from the ravishes of
the crimes against humanity committed by your British State and its citizens in
the form of chattel slavery and native genocide.
In
this regard, I urge you to be aware that the issue of reparatory justice for
these crimes is now before our respective nations, and the wider world. It is
not an issue that can be further ignored, remain under the rug, or placed on
back burners, as your minister who recently visited us so aptly described your
agenda for Jamaica and the Caribbean.
It
will generate the greatest global political movement of our time unless
respected and resolved by you, the leader of the State that extracted more
wealth from our enslavement than any other.
The
Jamaican economy, more than any other, at a critical moment in your nation's
economic development, fuelled its sustainable growth. Britain, as a result,
became great and Jamaica has remained the poorer. Jamaica now calls upon
Britain to reciprocate, not in the context of crime and compulsion, but in
friendly, mutually respected dialogue.
It
is an offer of opportunity written not in the blood of our enslaved ancestors,
but in the imagination of their offspring and progeny who have survived the
holocaust and are looking to the future for salvation.
As
a man, a humane man, with responsibility for the humanity of your nation, we
call upon you to rise to this moment as you realise and internalise that
without the wealth made by your enslaving ancestors, right here in our Jamaica,
we would not be enchained together, today, called upon to treat with this
shared past.
Successive
governments in this land, a place still groaning under the weight of this
injustice, have done well during the 53 years of sovereignty, but the burden of
the inherited mess from slavery and colonialism has overwhelmed many of our
best efforts. You owe it to us as you return here to communicate a commitment
to reparatory justice that will enable your nation to play its part in cleaning
up this monumental mess of Empire.
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.
In
the four corners of Kingston there are already whispers that your strategy will
be to seek a way to weaken Jamaica's commitment to Caribbean reparations in a
singular act of gift-granting designed to divide and rule and to subvert the
regional discourse and movement.
You,
Sir, are a Briton, not a Greek, and we have no reason therefore to fear what
you bear. But we do ask that you recall the Caribbean region was once your
nation's unified field for taxation, theatre for warfare, and space for the
implementation of trade law and policy. Seeing the region as one is therefore
in your diplomatic DNA, and this we urge that you remember.
Finally,
Sir, I write from the perspective of an academic bred in Britain and reared in
the University of the West Indies, an institution your nation planted in
Kingston in 1948 with a small but significant grant. It would honour us to show
you what we the people have reaped from this single seed.
We
have created a flourishing federal farm that now cultivates the minds of
millions, a symbol of our collective determination to take seriously our
self-responsibility and to place our dignity as an emerging nation before any
other consideration. From this singular seed we have grown one of the finest
universities in the world crafted by our hands and inspired by our dreams.
This
story, Sir, can guide your reflection as to who we are and what we expect of
you. We urge you then, in this light, to indicate your nation's willingness to
work towards a reparatory justice programme for the Caribbean, with a view to
allowing us to come together in order to come to closure, put this terrible
past behind us, and to leave it to us to continue the making of our future.
Kindest
regards,
Hilary
Beckles
Chairman,
Caricom Reparations Commission
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