CARICOM says apology without repair is incomplete; welcomes Britain’s apology offer as “essential first step”

See full statement below from the Chair of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Hon. Philip J. Pierre, Prime Minister of Saint Lucia: 

Reparatory Justice

The Caribbean Community has taken careful note of the remarks published by the Right Honourable Andy Burnham MP, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, on Britain’s role in the transatlantic trafficking and chattel enslavement of African bodies ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting which opens in Antigua and Barbuda on Sunday.

Let me begin by recognising what is new.

Prime Minister Burnham has expressed personal sorrow and regret for the suffering caused by slavery and its continuing effects on the world today. He has said that he is open to a formal apology on behalf of the British state, and he has offered a structured dialogue with those affected. No British Prime Minister has gone this far before. It would be wrong of us not to say so, and we welcome it in the spirit in which it appears to be offered. For more than a decade, this Community has asked for exactly such a dialogue.

We are ready to engage.

But friendship requires candour, and so I must be equally clear about where we differ.

The Caribbean Community does not accept that reparations are “not the right answer”. Nor do we accept the argument that responsibility falls away because the people of Britain today played no personal part in these crimes. Reparatory justice has never been about individual guilt. It is about the responsibility of states and institutions — and that responsibility does not expire with the passing of generations. We do believe that the successive  generations continue to be the beneficiaries, materially, socially and psychologically of that crime of racialised chattel enslavement.

The British state did not simply tolerate slavery; it legislated for it, protected it and profited from it. At Emancipation, that same state compensated the enslavers for the loss of their “property”, while the formerly enslaved received no land, no wealth and no compensation despite their demands. The loan raised to pay those enslavers was still being repaid by British taxpayers until February 2015. That is not a distant history. Its consequences are lived every day in the Caribbean — in the burden of chronic disease, in gaps in education and opportunity, in fragile economies built for extraction, and in the debts our nations continue to carry and in our vulnerable societies and economies.

The pursuit of reparations is not about blame, and it is not about revenge. It is about truth, and it is about justice for the human suffering of slavery.

An apology is an essential first step, and we would receive a formal apology from the British state as a moment of historic importance.

But an apology without repair is incomplete. The CARICOM Ten-Point Plan for Reparatory Justice sets out a practical, developmental agenda: a full formal apology; public health; education and training; cultural heritage restitution and reconnection; psychological rehabilitation; technology, innovation and entrepreneurship; and debt cancellation, monetary compensation and decolonisation among others. A dialogue that begins by placing reparations outside the room cannot be a complete dialogue. We therefore ask that the structured dialogue now offered be one in which every element of the Ten-Point Plan is on the table which also extends to the need to repair the genocide of Indigenous Peoples and the damage caused to those who were brought from India and China to maintain the system of persistent colonialism.

We also note the United Kingdom’s initiative, to be led by the Right Honourable Gordon Brown, to restructure the debt of the poorest Commonwealth countries. Debt is at the heart of the Caribbean’s development challenge. We will examine the proposal seriously.

We must caution, however, that most CARICOM Member States are classified as middle- or high-income on the basis of per capita income and are routinely excluded from concessional relief — even though we are among the most vulnerable nations on earth to climate and economic shocks. Any initiative that is to be meaningful for our region must measure vulnerability, not income alone. And debt relief, however welcome, cannot be offered as a substitute for reparatory justice.

The Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on Reparations led by Prime Minister Mottley and the CARICOM Reparations Commission led by Sir Hilary Beckles  stand ready to work with the Government of the United Kingdom to agree the terms, agenda and timetable of a structured dialogue.

I look forward to meeting Prime Minister Burnham in St John’s, Antigua over the next few days.

Our ancestors did not receive justice in their lifetime. We owe it to them, and to the generations who will come after us, to see this work through — with dignity, with patience, and with resolve.