Trouble ahead for King Charles and PM Keir Starmer when they attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Samoa on Oct 21. 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 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.
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. Mottley removed the Queen as Barbados’s Head of State in 2021 and Jamaica has pledged to ditch the monarchy by next year.
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, Lammy said he would ‘take the responsibility of being the first Foreign Secretary descended from the slave trade incredibly seriously’. — NNN-MERCOPRESS
