The writer Esther Phillipsborn in Barbados in 1950, has been burned with the story that her grandmother told her, about her grandmother, on the Drax ranch. There was a dark-skinned woman in the family, who lived on the plantations owned by the English Drax, who used to carry a light-skinned baby. Where did the baby come from? By then, plantation women were raped by white men. There ends the sinister riddle.
More than three centuries have passed since English James Drax came to Barbados (Caribbean), the first British colony with a “slave code”in 1661, which qualified African humans as “property material” for buying and selling. Esther Phillips is today with the Caricom Repair Commission (Commission for the Reparation of the Caribbean Community), made up of descendants of slaves and other positions, belonging to fifteen member countries and six associated with the aforementioned commission known as Caricom. The English Drax family is one of the few – among 46,000 compensated for the abolition of slavery in the 1830s – to continue to own plantations in the former British Empire.
Caricom is raising its voice these days at the biennial summit of heads of State and Government of 54 Commonwealth countries held in Apia, capital of Samoa (Polynesia), a meeting decaffeinated by the absence of the largest member of the association, the prime minister. Indian, Narenda Modior the relevant Cyril Ramaphosapresident of South Africa. Both have delegated to subordinates. Yes, the representatives of the British colonial power have attended, the Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Charles III. Caricom insists on a formal apology for slavery and economic compensation in the form of scholarships for education, infrastructure, health or school services, etc. Reparations could reach 200 billion pounds (180 billion euros).
“Reparations and apology are not on the agenda and will not be included; the Prime Minister wants to talk about the future,” Starmer’s spokespersons repeated. In the end, The prime minister has accepted the creation of a forum with the Caribbean people most affected by slavery, which will meet in 2025 to begin a “meaningful dialogue” that will lead to an agreement between the former colonial power and some former colonies.
Joshua Setipaformer trade minister of Lesotho and candidate for secretary general of the Commonwealth, has dropped that “UK owes more money to India than it has“. Resistance to a formal apology does not respond to choice of vocabulary, but to legal consequences. “Government lawyers believe that with a formal apology they admit guilt and the legal responsibilities that may arise from it, but I believe that is not like this,” he considers Alex Renton to Publicauthor of the book Blood Legacy (‘Bloody Legacy’) about Great Britain and slavery in the Caribbean. “The English were the first in benefits and exploitation of the transport of slaves, behind the Portuguese if we look at the proportional number of ships and muzzles, and we were also the first in cruelties, far ahead of the Spanish and French,” states Renton. .
The British Foreign Secretary, the Labor David Lammyis in a bind, since, in 2018, in opposition, he published the following tweet: “As Caribbean people, enslaved, colonized and invited to Britain, we remember our history; We don’t just want an apology, we want reparations and compensation“. It was Lammy in the opposition. The Labor MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, He announced in the House of Commons that “an apology is free, and if the government does not open dialogue on reparations, the Commonwealth will fall to pieces.” A premonition shared by Alex Renton and the group Heirs of Slavery. In this case they are descendants of the colonial power, united to learn the history of their families and contribute to reparations.
King Charles III, with a precise and careful vocabulary, has said that “we must learn and understand the past, and find creative ways to correct remaining inequalities“. At the last summit he expressed “pity” for the empire’s role in the slave trade, abolished in the 1830s. The prince Williamtraveling to Jamaica in 2022, described slavery as an “aberration”, the same word that Keir Starmer has repeated in Samoa. Although historians like Suzanne Schwarzfrom the University of Worcester, have published documented articles on the economic benefits that the royal family obtained from the slave trade – only one member was an abolitionist – and the defense of slavery, Carlos III has commissioned a study, without a delivery date, of the links of his ancestors with human trafficking throughout the former empire where the sun never set.
The professor and president of Caricom, Hilary Becklesis another of those who has been studying the same topic for years and states that “in 200 years, some 30,000 slaves died on the Drax family plantations.” Data that has made Esther Phillips, whose family lived for generations on the Drax Hall Estate or Drax estate in the British colonies in the Caribbean, shudder. Currently, Richard DraxConservative MP from 2010 until losing the seat in July 2024, He is one of those who resists formal apology and compensation. He describes slavery as “regrettable” and continues as an absentee owner of plantations in the Caribbean, following in the wake of more than three centuries of his pioneer ancestor in the degradation of humans.
In the 1830s the British Government abolished the slave trade and drafted a law that paid for the freedom of those who did not have it. For this, it allocated 20 million pounds at that time (17,000 million in today’s value) that were just paid with state loans in 2015, causing surprise among those around and outside the matter. The money was distributed in the 19th century among 46,000 landowners who claimed the loss of ownership of the plantation labor and, consequently, demanded financial compensation from the Government that represented the British State at that time. Not one pound for abolition went to slaves who became apprentices or fled the plantations.
Although the British Government and the monarchy refuse a formal apology and financial compensation, The Anglican Church has agreed to pay for having benefited from slavery. The Archbishop of Canterbury has allocated 100 million pounds (85 million euros) and has appointed Guy Hewitta reverend from Barbados and a kind of peace ambassador, to subsidize projects in the Caribbean that compensate for the “racial discrimination” in which the Anglican Church participated in the past. The Anglican Church has said “sorry”, as did the former prime minister Tony Blair at the time, but without going too deep into the mea culpa.
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