It's always the right time to talk reparations for slavery and colonisation
But Keir Starmer says talking about it is 'very long' and 'endless'
A joint message was sent from 55 Commonwealth nations at the 2024 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting from 21 – 26 Oct 2024, in Samoa, which asked for a call of reparations to the transatlantic trade that enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement.
In this particular meeting, the heads of government of the Commonwealth of Nations get together for a few days, with an aim to strengthen "resilient democratic institutions upholding human rights, democracy, and the rule of law".
I’m not sure how many meetings the Commonwealth have, I assume it’s many, but this is one I was very unaware of. And like many, I was thrust into its existence by Keir Starmer’s response to this call for equity.
He insisted we should be ‘looking forward, not back’.
But this is where I disagree with him — something I’m doing a lot — we should absolutely always be looking back. History is the most important place we should be looking at all times.
It matters because it’s the source of our decisions, the beginnings of our bad habits, the instigators of our trauma. It’s the conception of…us.
Well archived history — properly annotated records, will tell us exactly what we need to make accurate present day decisions. Or at least, why we should make these decisions.
It will say, ‘we criminalised slavery’, and it will inform us that ‘it was because it was bad’, then our decisions will be made to ‘make it right’.
Or so, you would think.
But reparations for slavery, genocide and colonisation have been requested for years now.
And when these Commonwealth leaders reached out to the UK in order to start talks about justice, history shows that we haven’t done anything to bring equity to the those who were enslaved and colonised.
You see, the call for reparations isn't naive — ever since slavery was abolished in 1833, £20 million was borrowed and used to pay reparations.
That £20 million didn’t go anywhere near the enslaved, instead it went to around 3,000 wealthy slave owners to compensate them for the ‘loss of property’.
Meanwhile, the families of those who were enslaved were left to a failing housing, education and employment system.
It’s a slap in the face, to award reparations and give them to the the people who deserve it the least.
In fact, it’s fraudulent. It is stubborn wealthy supremacy, comfortably sitting in stolen jewels, shrugging when their history confronts them.
It felt just a dismissive. It’s easy to say while wearing the stolen jewels from enslaved lands.
While King Charles and Starmer can move on from the past, many others can't.
The Jallianwala Bagh massacre in India has still not received an apology — in 2019 Theresa May acknowledged it, but never let the British take responsibility. The partition of India, the Bengal famine, returning jewels such as the Koh-I-Noor - there are a lot of apologies and reparations we have been asking for over the years.
The British straight up refuse to learn from their history — we can see it now with the arms they are sending to Israel.
History is sadly too often ignored.
Britain has barely, if ever, made up for its past. So a call for reparations is just, needed and of utmost importance.
This isn’t about money; it’s about acknowledgment and a promise of change. A conversation about reparations can assure us that accountability will be taken, so in the future, there’s less chance of repeating trauma.
But instead, we’re told it’s not the time, and it’s not cool, and oh well.
Nonetheless, we won’t stop asking. Uuntil it’s taken seriously, we can’t believe England has learned a single thing.
You are British.