Veteran attorney Bert Samuels has delivered a stinging rebuke of Britain, describing the Emancipation Declaration read at midnight on July 31, 1838, as “a scam” that deceived the formerly enslaved and whose legacy, he argued, continues to shape Jamaican society nearly two centuries later. Samuels made the remarks on Friday, exactly 188 years after the declaration was read by then Governor Sir Lionel Smith at midnight, ushering in Emancipation Day in the British West Indies on August 1, 1838. “The British are super scammers,” Samuels told The Gleaner.