MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Trouble ahead at Samoa Commonwealth summit; Caribbean nations demanding £200bn billion from UK for slave trade
Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley meets PM Starmer. She is demanding the UK's debt to her country is £3.7 trillion. Trouble ahead for King Charles and PM Keir Starmer when they attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Samoa on October 21st. A group of fifteen Caribbean governments have unanimously decided to demand an incredible £200 billion from the UK in compensation for its role in the slave trade, according to reports in the British media.
It comes after the the Prime Minister of Barbados told United Nations that reparations for slavery and colonialism should be part of a new 'global reset'.
Mia Mottley, who is leading the demands from the West Indies nations, met the King in London for talks in advance of the 56-nation Commonwealth gathering. She has praised Charles for declaring two years ago that slavery is 'a conversation whose time has come', although Buckingham Palace declined to reveal the contents of their latest 'private discussions'.
The calls come in the wake of the PM's decision to hand the Chagos islands to the republic of Mauritius, a move which has led to fears for the future of British control of other strategic territories including the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy – who is descended from enslaved people – has described how his ancestors heard 'the twisted lies of imperialism as they were stolen from their homes in shackles and turned into slaves'.
He also controversially supported protesters who toppled the statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol and dumped it into the harbor four years ago. Dozens of other memorials to traders and colonialists were removed in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests.
Estimates of the likely reparations bill for British involvement in slavery in 14 countries range from £206 billion to a staggering £19 trillion. The higher figure was cited last year by UN judge Patrick Robinson, who called it an 'underestimation' of the damage caused by the slave trade.
Mr Robinson said he was amazed that countries involved in slavery think they can 'bury their heads in the sand' on the issue, adding: 'Once a state has committed a wrongful act, it's obliged to pay reparations'.
The demands come amid increasing republican sentiment in the Caribbean. Ms Mottley removed the Queen as Barbados's Head of State in 2021 and Jamaica has pledged to ditch the monarchy by next year.
Ms Mottley has described her country as 'the home of modern racism' thanks to British rule from 1625 and says the UK's debt to her country is £3.7 trillion.
Over the weekend, No 10 said that as an agenda for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) had not yet been published, the issue was a matter of 'speculation'. A spokesperson for the Commonwealth Secretariat pointed out, 'Commonwealth heads have always discussed challenges and aspirations constructively', adding that it would use its collective power to 'discuss matters of importance and significance to its member states'.
The Foreign Office nor the Commonwealth Secretariat responded to a request for comment. But the Church of England last year announced it was setting up a £100 million fund for reparation payments to recognize that it once profited from the slave trade.
Speaking when he was still Shadow Foreign Secretary, Mr Lammy said he would 'take the responsibility of being the first Foreign Secretary descended from the slave trade incredibly seriously'.
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Read all commentsBlack kings and Moslems fought the British to keep slave trading. Today the black Africans still make slaves, slavery is legal for the Moslems TODAY!
Oct 14th, 2024 - 05:33 pm +1Many of the reparation advocates descend from slave traders and slave makers.
Jamaica had black slave owners! First slave owner in USA was himself black!
If the lucky people of the Caribbean want money they should think of working for it. Like Hong Kong and Singapore! Lying around doing nothing and trying to invent a way of getting the money for nothing of other people is “con”!
Is Africa going to pay reparations for the white slaves which Africans took from Northern Europe? More white slaves were taken than all the black ones which were taken to the North of America (Dr. Thomas Sowell)
Well, Britain could equally say she is owed by these nations £200billion for all the ships and men the Royal Navy lost in battles, tropical diseases-some of which took out entire crews during the Decades in the 1800s when Britain was alone in the World in fighting to stop slavery and transportation across the Atlantic .
Oct 15th, 2024 - 12:55 am +1Yes today at least 10 nations openly practise slavery - and about half of them are black African ones .
Are the descendants of the King of the main area of Nigeria who made a fortune out of selling people his men rounded up from the other tribes in western nigeria and nearby and selling them to the slave ships?
It was indeed a terrible thing, but it was a different world with different standards and beliefs 200-300 years ago.
Oh and in the early days Britain was not alone- most of the European nations of the day were also involved in that despicable trade - don,t see any criticism on them yet- and many of them tried to carry on and fought the Royal Navy anti slavery ships!
Livepeanuts
Oct 15th, 2024 - 03:25 pm +1Slaves taken from west Africa were all bought by Europeans on the coast, from African tribes. Trading posts being located on Islands or peninsulas, with salt water around them as a defence against mosquitos, Europeans did not survive inland.
During the Atlantic Slave Trade, an estimated 12.5 million slaves were transported to the Americas, an estimated 10.7 million arrived, they kept comprehensive and accurate figures of their losses. The biggest recipient being Brazil.
Britain is estimated to be responsible for approx. 3.1 million being shipped and 2.7 million arrived.
The Atlantic Slave Trade was likely the costliest in human life of all long-distance global migrations.
Islander1
That was the Fulani Sultanate of Sokotu, which took over from the Hausa Bakwai Kaliphates.
At the time of the Emancipation Proclamation in the US, the country with the largest slave population in the world was in the US, some 6 million people.
The country with the second largest slave population in the world was the Sultanate of Sokotu, with some 2 million slaves.
Whilst I reject any idea of ‘reparations’ for somethings we are not responsible for like slavery, I strongly support money for the ‘holistic repair’ of communities in today, the effects of slavery are still with us and that is our responsibility to fix.
A friend of mine put it, ‘for 300 years we were bred like farm animals to work in the fields, kept in squalor and ignorance, our languages and culture whitewashed out of us and taught just enough European to understand what we were supposed to do’.
‘Then just because someone waves a piece of paper in your face, which you can’t read, tells you your free, a word with no meaning to you, that doesn’t mean that the next year we were all living in the Burbs with our kids going to college’.
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