Address by Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, Chairman of Caricom Reparations Commission

[Tropicana]

ADDRESS DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR SIR HILARY BECKLES, CHAIRMAN OF THE
CARICOM REPARATIONS COMMISSION, HOUSE OF COMMONS, PARLIAMENT
OF GREAT BRITAIN , COMMITTEE ROOM 14, THURSDAY, JULY 16, 2014, 9:00 P.M.



Madam Chair, the distinguished member of Parliament for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, Diane Abbott, other distinguished members of the House of Lords, and House of Commons, Excellencies of the Diplomatic Corp, colleagues at the head table, Ladies and Gentlemen.
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1:
I speak this evening, in this honourable chamber of the House
of Commons, as Chairman of the Caricom Commission on
Reparations. My colleagues of the Commission are tasked
with the preparation and presentation of the evidentiary basis
for a contemporary truth: that the Government of Great Britain,
and other European states that were the beneficiaries of
enrichment from the enslavement of African peoples, the
genocide of indigenous communities, and the deceptive breach
of contract and trust in respect of Indians and other Asians
brought to the plantations under indenture, have a case to
answer in respect of reparatory justice.
2:
The case of genocide is not only
in respect of our decimated native community. It is also
important to recognize the genocidal aspect of chattel
slavery in the Caribbean . British slave ships brought
5.5 million enslaved Africans into their Caribbean colonies
over 180 years. When slavery was abolished in 1838 they were
just 800,000 persons remaining. That is, a
retention/survival rate of 15%. The regime of enslavement
was crafted by policies and attitudes that were clearly
genocidal. Jamaica received 1.5 million Africans. Only
300,000 remained at Emancipation (20%).
3:
Barbados received 600,000 Africans. Only 83,000
remained at Emancipation (14%).
This case is for the Caricom governments to
present on behalf of its citizens. I am sure that in its
presentation there will be due regard for the principles of
diplomacy and development cooperation - for which they have
long distinguished themselves. This process will bring
honour and dignity to the people of the Caribbean as well as
to the people of Great Britain and Europe .
4:
Caricom governments, like the
government of Great Britain , represent nations that are
independent and equal. As such, they should proceed on the
basis of their legitimate equality, without fear of
retribution, in the best interest of humanity, and for a
better future for us all.
5:
I am honoured to be asked to
speak in this historic parliament of the people of Great
Britain . Like you I am aware that this Parliament prepared
the official political basis of the crimes that defined the
colonial past. It is here, in this House, that the evil
system of slavery, and genocide, were established. This
House passed laws, framed fiscal policies, and enforced the
crimes that have produced harmful legacies and persistent
suffering now in need of repair.
6:
This House also made emancipation from
slavery and independence from colonialism an empowering
reality. It is in here, we now imagine, that laws for
reparatory justice can be conceptualized and implemented. It
is in here, we believe, that the terrible wrongs of the past
can be corrected, and humanity finally and truthfully
liberated from the shame and guilt that have followed these
historical crimes.
7:
We must believe in the corrective
power of this Parliament to respond positively to this
present challenge, and in the process free itself from the
bondage of its own sins and crimes. Without this belief our
journey here this evening would be lacking integrity, and
without a doubt, would be a useless exercise.
8:
But I speak in this honourable House
this evening, not only as chairman of a rightfully
constituted commission that is peopled by some of our finest
Caribbean citizens, and who have been selected by our
distinguished Presidents and Prime Ministers, but as a
Caribbean person with an affinity for this country. I was
raised and educated here. I came from the Caribbean to this
country as a child; I grew to maturity here; and was
educated here in a fine university that has distinguished
itself in the Liberal-Progressive pedagogy of the
nation.
9:
Great Britain , therefore, is my second
home and I care for it as I care for my first home, the
Great Caribbean . I wish for Great Britain , as I do for the
Great Caribbean , peace and prosperity. I wish that their
shared past, painful though it has been, will be transformed
into a moral force of mutual respect and development
cooperation. It is for these reasons that I have joined
the Caribbean and global movement for reparatory justice. I
believe we can settle this case within the context of
diplomatic initiatives that are consistent with our status
as equal nations.
10:
The crimes committed against the
indigenous, African, and Asian peoples of the Caribbean are
well documented. We know of the 250 years of slave trading,
chattel slavery, and the following 100 years of colonial
oppression.
11:
Slavery was ended in 1838, only to be replaced by a century
of racial apartheid, including the denigration of Asian
people. Indigenous genocide, African chattel slavery and
genocide, and Asian contract slavery, were three acts of a
single play – a single process by which the British state
forcefully extracted wealth from the Caribbean resulting in
its persistent, endemic poverty.
12:

I wish to comment,
as a result, on the 1833 Act of Emancipation, and how this
august Parliament betrayed the enslaved people of the
Caribbean by forcing them to pay more than 50% of the cost
of their own emancipation. This is an aspect of the history
long hidden from public view. We know, for example, that
this Parliament in 1833 determined that the 800,000 enslaved
people in the Caribbean were worth, as chattel property,
£47 million. This was their assessed market
value. We know that this Parliament
determined that all slave owners should receive just and
fair compensation for the official taking away of their
property. We know that this Parliament provided the
sum of £20 million in grants to the slave owners as fair
compensation for the loss of their human chattel.
13:
And we know that this Parliament determined that the
enslaved people would receive none of this compensation. The
argument made in this House was that ‘property’ cannot
receive property compensation. This Parliament, in its
emancipation Act, upheld the law that black people were not
human, but property.
14:
What this Parliament has hid from the
world is that it also determined that the remaining £27
million would be paid by the enslaved people to their
enslavers, by means of a 4 year period of free labour called
the Apprenticeship.
15:
This period of additional free labour by the emancipated
represented the enforced extraction of £27 million by the
state. It was a cruel and shameful method of legislating
Emancipation by forcing the enslaved to pay more than 50% of
the financial cost of their own freedom. The £20 million
paid the enslavers by this Parliament was less than the £27
million paid by the enslaved to the enslavers as dictated by
this House.

[Tropicana]

16:
I wish now to engage the argument of
the British Government that the slavery and other colonial
crimes were ‘legal’, and that they took place ‘a long
time ago’, and are beyond the border of
adjudication. Allow me, madam Chair, to breach
protocol and to interject myself into the discourse, in
order to demonstrate how very contemporary and current this
exploitation of the Caribbean people is and has been.
17:
Upstairs this chamber sits the Earl of
Harewood. He is an honourable member of the House of Lords.
But does Lord Harewood know that my grandfather after
Independence in Barbados in 1966 labored on this sugar
plantation, as did his father and forefathers, going back to
the days of slavery? Does the goodly Lord know that as a
child I took lunch for my grandfather into the canefields of
his sugar plantation? Lord Harewood, and my family, go back
a long way, from slavery right into the present.
18:

Take also the very
aristocratic and very distinguished Cumberbatch family. It
has now produced the brilliant young actor, Benedict
Cumberbatch [who I would love to meet one day]. Benedict’s
grandfather owned the estate on which my beloved great
grandmother worked all her adult life. They enslaved my
family on their Cleland plantation in the parish of St.
Andrew. My great grandmother, who helped to raise me, and
who we all called ‘mammy’, carried the name Adriana
Cumberbatch. The actor and academic are joined therefore by
a common past and present, and maybe, common blood!
19:

My case is but one
of ten thousand such cases. Everywhere across the Caribbean
the presence of our enslavers can be identified in our daily
domestic lives. This history is not remote. It is alive and
pressing upon our daily affairs.
20:
And what have our people and governments been doing with
respect to this legacy since we have gained national
independence? The truth is, the people of the Caribbean have
been very courageous in their effort at self-development and
self-help in respect of this terrible history and enduring
legacy.


Our citizens have
faced this past head on, and have established a vibrant
culture of community self-help and sustainable regional
development mobilization. We are not beggars! We are not
subservient! We do not want charity and handouts! We want
justice! Reparatory justice!
21:

When all is said and
done, our governments these past 50 years have been cleaning
up the mess left behind by Britain ’s colonial legacy. Our
finest Presidents and Prime Ministers have been devising
projects to clean up the awful mess inherited from slavery
and colonization. They must be commended for this effort,
but the fact is, this legacy of rubble and ruin, persistent
poverty, and racialised relations and reasoning, that
continues to cripple our best efforts, has been daunting.
22:

Britain , and its
Parliament, cannot morally and legally turn their back upon
this past, and walk away from the mess they have left
behind. This Parliament has to return to the scene of its
crimes, and participate as a legitimate parliament, as a
legal parliament, in the healing and rehabilitation of the
Caribbean.
23:

We cannot, and
should not, be asked to do this by ourselves. We have done
our part. This Parliament must now return, and do its part,
within the context of reparatory justice, and within the
framework of development cooperation.
24:
I wish to give two examples of how this reparatory justice
can work:
(1) Jamaica , Britain ’s largest
slave colony, was left with 80% black functional illiteracy
at Independence in 1962. From this circumstance the great
and courageous Jamaican nation has struggled with
development and poverty alleviation. The deep crisis
remains. This Parliament owes the people of Jamaica an
educational and human resource investment initiative.
(2) Barbados , Britain ’s first slave society, is now
called the amputation capitol of the world. It is here that
the stress profile of slavery and racial apartheid; dietary
disaster and psychological trauma; and the addiction to the
consumption of sugar and salt, have reached the highest
peak. The country is now host to the world’s most virulent
diabetes and hypertension epidemic. This Parliament owes the
people of Barbados an education and health initiative.
25:
It is the same for all our countries;
the Bahamas , the Leewards, the Windwards, Guyana , Trinidad
and Tobago , Belize , and beyond. The Caricom Ten Point Plan
for Reparatory Justice addresses these development issues
that are central to the case Britain has to answer.

It is an invitation to Great
Britain to demonstrate leadership within the legal, moral,
and diplomatic culture of the world, within the
Commonwealth, and within its relations the Caribbean .
There can be no escaping the importance of
this exchange of views about the matter before this
honourable chamber tonight.
26:
It took all of the 19th century
to uproot slavery from the Caribbean; from Haiti in 1804 to
the Spanish sub-region in the 1880s. It took another 100
years to create citizenship, nationhood, and democracy
across the Caribbean as a development framework. We have
helped ourselves.
27:
This 21st century will be the
century of global reparatory justice. Citizens are now, for
the first time since they were driven into retreat by
colonialism, able to stand up for reparatory justice without
fear. Their claim, their just claim for reparations, will
not go away. Rather, like the waves upon our beautiful
shores, they will keep coming until reparatory justice is
attained.
28:
Madam Chair, we call upon you,
and all members of this House, to rise to this challenge and
to assist Great Britain to be truly worthy of the title
“Great”. I urge you to do the right thing, in the right
way. There is no other right time, other than right now, in
our time. There is so much to gain from your leadership. The
Caribbean is counting on you.
29:
In 1823, the honourable Thomas
Buxton, M.P. for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, presented a
bill to this House calling for an Emancipation Act with
compensation for the enslaved people. His bill and vision
were defeated. Instead, ten years later, an emancipation
bill was passed, not with compensation for the enslaved, but
with handsome and generous compensation for enslavers. Some
40% of the national expenditure of the country was handed
over to slave-owners as reparations.
30:
The enslaved people of the
Caribbean got nothing. Indeed, they were then called upon by
the said Emancipation Act to give £27 million in free
labour to their enslavers. The injustice and the cruelty of
that Emancipation Act, remain today like a fish bone stuck
in our throats.
31:

We urge you, Madam
Chair, and other members of this Parliament, to rise up and
bring the Buxton vision to life. He was a noble warrior for
reparatory justice; his spirit can return to this House, in
both places, and the 21st century will be ours to forge a
new moral order for our collective wellbeing.
32:

On behalf of the
Caricom Reparations Commission, all my colleagues across the
Caribbean who have worked with our governments in order to
bring this case before you, I ask that you respond with
humility and openness when your government receives an
invitation to meet with our governments in summit in order
to discuss this matter.

33:
May the values and the spirit of development cooperation
and mutual respect guide us all.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

(Standing Ovation)

[purejam]

Reparations to governments? You must be joking.

If reparations go directly to the people, that's one thing. If they are given to governments ordinary people will not benefit.

[Wahalla]

(1) Jamaica , Britain ’s largest
slave colony, was left with 80% black functional illiteracy
at Independence in 1962

I very much doubt the verasity of this claim.....