Persaud Wilberne Persaud, Financial Gleaner Columnist
Justthree years ago my comment to a colleague at the University of the West Indies (UWI) that I was looking at thorny financial and economic aspects of reparations for New World slavery elicited this remark: 'Persaud, why don't you do something to make some money for your children and your retirement - the University don't give a damn 'bout you, you know, especially now, with this new MOU-Omar/Hall dispensation.'
To be honest - shocked, almost visibly, by the response - I did not heed the warning.
While my colleague's insight was correct on the MOU, Omar/Hall, and government's lack of concern for our interest, it nevertheless did nothing to reduce the importance of the issues I had been contemplating.
Times change
Times change and changing times change people. Today, I feel sure I would face an entirely different reaction.
The 200-year anniversary of the British Parliament's Act for the abolition of the slave trade of March 25, 1807 was the subject of commemoration. In Westminster Abbey, Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury spoke on the bicentenary, the Queen, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and senior members of his government all sat hearing him admit that "we who are the heirs of the slave-owning and slave trading nations of the past have to face the fact that our historic prosperity was built in large part on this atrocity."
To the Archbishop's mea culpa, BBC writers added "...an affront against the dignity of human beings."
An African protestor disrupted the proceedings. Speaking from close to the Queen and Tony Blair he demanded of Britain a formal apology for the atrocity. I must admit this protest, by an African, had the full stamp and hallmark of 'British decorum'.
It was masterly executed and masterfully ended. No panic, no wrestling and handcuffs, no violence, just an important blip.
Will formal apology materialise? It's only a matter of time. Then reparations are a mere two feet away. But complex moral and philosophical issues are involved. Financial and economic issues flow naturally from them. For instance, The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, an offshoot of the Anglican Church, owned plantation slaves in the West Indies. Upon their chests was branded the word 'society', yes, branded with red-hot irons.
Slave owners compensated
With emancipation by Act of the British Parliament in 1834, the government paid compensation to slave owners. Among these were the Bishop of Exeter and three business colleagues.
Bishop of Southwark, Thomas Butler at the Anglican Church's General Synod declared that, "The profits from the slave trade were part of the bedrock of our country's industrial development." Finally, regardless of British spin that would make Lance Gibbs, Bishen Bedi and Shane Warne envious, to attribute abolition predominantly to the work of abolitionists like Wilberforce, downplaying Williams' thesis of economic imperatives, is nothing but that: spin.
Higman, says that Jamaican planters' wealth derived from "most particularly the ownership of human beings, the enslaved who worked in field and factory. It was slavery that made the planters rich. More broadly, the riches of the planters were founded on an extremely unequal distribution of wealth ... most people did not even have legal possession of their own bodies [they were] tradeable capital stock." [Plantation Jamaica 1750-1850: Capital and Control in a Colonial Economy]
We ask the first question, why? This is the easy one. Atrocity, crime against humanity, whatever you will, the name is not the issue. In law an attempt is made to provide compensation. The next question is how much? Difficult but manageable.
United States economists have for years found a lucrative avenue for their esoteric skills-valuing human life. Think of 9/11. What compensation was paid to those who lost loved ones in the tragedy? Mechanisms are already developed for these kinds of evaluations. In the case of reparations, there will be controversy. What of value of effort, unpaid labour, again difficult but doable. Accumulated wealth: should descendants of slaves share in wealth accumulated because their forbears' compensation was withheld, invested and grew?
Who pays?
Who pays? The Church? Companies and governments-British, French, Spanish, Dutch, USA?
To whom? Perhaps no reparations could be made to individuals merely as a matter of overwhelming archival work and administrative cumbersomeness. Should the UN be involved, should there be government to government transfers? Ought it to be used for education of Africans in the diaspora? Should Ghana for instance be compensated for loss of population and hence lack of development?
These are just some of the issues to be contemplated, to be debated and agreed upon. Difficult but doable. I venture to suggest that the time of reparations is not too far off.
wilbe65@yahoo.com
