Dear Editor,
It took three hundred and fifty years from slavery to the status of the colonial subject to raise Europe to its robust maturity. It was the late Marxist British historian C Hill who some three decades ago admitted that, “Slavery was the cornerstone of our eighteenth century predominance. The profits of the slave trade, and of slavery, contributed greatly to the accumulation of capital which made Britain the country of the first industrial Revolution, and so consolidated her position as the greatest world power.” Every citizen on the local turf, should understand that Reparations is not a toy of current politics, it embodies far more severe concerns, and commands the responsibility to ensure that it is not a subject of debt write-offs by a suspect government. This described well by M Maxwell in his insightful letter captioned ‘Borrowing to steal – A mountain of debt and little to show for it’ (KN, February 12, 2013). But since Dr Clive Thomas’s article in Stabroek News of July 20, headlined, ‘Wildly off track: Considering “debt relief for Guyana” as reparations payment’ there have appeared some emotional ‘bash Reparations’ letters in the media, that emit the typical venom and are minus depth in relation to the topic in question. Such is the most recent by a Michael Dingwall in KN of August 13.
A letter to the media cannot expand on the vast areas of research and the contentions that constitute the cause of Reparations, but the most concise theme would be ‘There was work forcibly done, minds, spirits and souls destroyed, that has to be atoned for.’ Between 1783 and 1793 ships from the Mersey shipped more than 300,000 Africans into slavery, producing an income of ₤14.5 million; London’s share was 46,000, and that of Bristol 10,718 souls. And the accounts continue as documented by Derrick Knight in Gentlemen of Fortune (1978): “John Gladstone was a Liverpool businessman who invested in shipping, sugar, cotton and slavery in British Guiana and Jamaica. His accounts show that his fortune rose from ₤15,900 in 1795 to ₤40,700 in 1799 then ₤333,600 in 1820, etc. He was an MP from 1818 to 1827, his son William was elected to Parliament at the age of 23, and became Prime Minister three times. And this is only one case study.” In Black and British David W Bygott writes: “The entire peoples of slave owning nations prospered, sailors, shipbuilders, coopers, smiths of all kinds, gun makers, textile producers; plantation produce nourished and enriched all, for four hundred years [including the colonial period].”
British rule in British Guiana was colonial rule as it has been throughout history, including in Ireland. Regardless of how politely it was said, you had to know your place. A colony was created for the enrichment of the coloniser, for example, from the creation of Stabroek-Georgetown beginning in 1781. Though excellent drainage eventually was applied to ensure its continuity, poor housing , terrible health facilities for its slaves and freed slaves and other disposable populations were the norm in town and village, which resulted in epidemics of disease such as malaria, leprosy, tuberculosis, yaws and cholera, while infant deaths were high. Housing had to wait on Independence and the PNC housing programmes to liberate thousands from the ‘nigger yards.’ The colonial also had to watch his tongue. An Elder of the Jordanites was thrown in prison for heralding through his public preaching the ‘Fall of the British Empire’ (see Denis Williams, Giglioli in Guyana 1922-1972 (1973)), though there’s a much more terrible account of this matter.
Reparations constitute the intricate process of repair; the application of measures to facilitate the therapy of psychological repatriation to a better economic landscape and world view. Those who are petitioning for reparations do not see the former coloniser as an enemy, but rather as being in the position technologically to enable talent and entrepreneurial skills to be engaged, through a realistic collaboration on the debt of Reparations. The ten point agenda now made public through the Reparations committee, are in the form of sub-heads that are all subject to scrutiny by the best minds available; reparations is not the sole mandate of any single committee. That it embodies Afro-Guyanese and specific Amerindian tribes does not mean that should reparations become active, that its activities will exclude the expertise of others; that level of closed-mindedness is associated with a mindset which does not recognise the symbiotic nature of true organic nation building.
Reparations envelops historical Atonement for an injustice that cannot be ignored. Of course it can be debated in the court of politics, but the precedents illustrate that the callous court of politics embraces the pale-dark side of human nature. The factual weight of the Reparations petition can never be discounted before the presiding, eternal scales of historical, moral justice.
Yours faithfully,
Barrington Braithwaite
