Reparations

[africanmixedkid]

Can we talk about this?
It's something that I feel needs to discussed and a collective campaign to force countries responsible for the slave trade to address. Black mumsnetters what do you think?

The UK has gained huge wealth off of the back of the slave trade. eastmidlandsbylines.co.uk/whose-ill-gotten-gains/

Reparations is something I hear many of the black community shout. But how do we go about getting this?

Well, I’d think you have to prove slave ancestry to be eligible for reparations. Because there were and are also a lot of free black people. Currently in the US, 10% of black people are foreign born immigrants from Africa. A much higher percent would be black people descended from free black immigrants who arrived after the abolition of slavery.
So we cannot assume that black = slave descendent.

Secondly, the U.K. was a minor player in the slave trade. While they should be included in the demand for reparations, we should not exclude major players like Spain, Portugal and Brazil. We should also include other minor players like the French and Dutch.

*or the US of course. Can’t believe I left them off the list!

Not only the slave trade but colonialism as well. It is a travesty Haiti had to pay France for it's freedom. I expect the payments to be in the reverse and to every country that was colonised in the exact unapologetic manner the French demanded the same of Haiti.

If the UK government could pay reparations until this century to slave owners it should very well do the same to descendents of slaves and it's former colonies.

Starting with questions as to why dossiers of their actions in their former colonies were recently destroyed completely to hide their actions.

To me being a minor or major player is irrelevant. A player is a player all the same. And yes all countries responsible should be included. But speaking as a UK citizen, how can we address this in the UK.

And your point about being black does not equal slave descendant is taken. I'm not a descendant, my father is African, and so were his mother and father.

But is something that bothers me in terms of my Caribbean sisters and brothers. There are descendants of slavery in the UK from the West Indies. Most of them still carrying the name of their ancestors slave owners.

@Dastardlythefriendlymutt I did not know about theses missing dossiers. Can you link to more information please?

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/uk/2012/apr/18/britain-destroyed-records-colonial-crimes

To me major and minor player affects the amount of reparations due from each culprit. For example, the country responsible for 90% of the African slave trade, should pay 90% of the reparations to the descendants of slaves. And we need to also recognise contemporary forgotten slave trades such as the East African slave trade and the role that the Arab and Indian countries had as slave traffickers and buyers.

Colonialism I’m a bit unsure how reparations could be handled. Is it the origin country responsible or the descendents of colonists to pay? And given that many colonists were not there by choice- all the slaves in Haiti weren’t nor were the convicts shipped to penal colonies of Botany Bay for example. Culpability is hard to untangle. Too, how far back in time or how recent in time do we go? (Ie Israel was a post WWII colony that displaced the Palestinians...would that count?) Finally, who gets the reparations for colonialism in places like Haiti or Tasmania where the indigenous population was completely genocided with not a single survivor.

@africanmixedkid
Yes agree that for U.K., the majority of their reparations would go to descendents of slaves kidnapped to British Caribbean colonies like Jamaica, Antigua, Barbados, Virgin Islands, etc.

Although it can get messy, for example Jamaica was originally a Spanish colony from 1494 to 1655 and they genocided the indigenous Arawaks and Tainos and then brought in African slaves to run their sugar plantations. Jamaica was taken from the Spanish by the British on 1655 and they inherited the plantations and slaves and shipped top ups of slaves until emancipation of the slaves in 1838. So reparations for descendents of Jamaican slaves should rightly be paid by both Spain and U.K.

Should probably a massive fund paid into by all the countries responsible and set up under the United Nations as custodian and then paid out that way. It wouldn’t be fair for descendents to have to file claims for reparations to multiple nations.

The UK profited from the slave trade, undoubtedly. My kids learnt about this when they were in Y8 at school. I think it's an important part of the curriculum.

Slavery is still a very serious issue in the UK with live slaves existing in this country under our noses. We have trafficked girls from Eastern Europe being raped every day in this country, held captive. I think it would be shocking to try and "fix" the past with reparations whilst ignoring the current live suffering of slaves that we still have here.

Why not do both?
Massive fund for historic slave descendents to claim a reparation payment paid by all culprit countries to UN and the UN makes the payments.

Massive victim fund run by each country, funded by seizing the assets of the traffickers when they catch them. Then every modern day slavery victim can claim compensation payment from that fund.

I think reparations for most colonies are more straightforward than the tricky situations you have described. Specifically speaking about Africa, the scramble for Africa took place between 1881 and 1914. That is very recent history. If reparations for slave traders (which predates this) could easily be resolved and the descendents easily identified this is simply the case for most African countries if not all.

Along with returning historical artefacts and returning the wealth stolen from those countries which can easily be traced as to who has benefited the most. The source of Cecil John Rhodes, and other industrialists' wealth, and even how and where the British government gained financially, is easily identifiable and it is easy to show where it should be returned to. It is by no means a long time ago.

I'm not sure how it would be workable or where the money would come from. Would the money come from taxation?

The vast majority of people in the UK had working class ancestors, coal miners for example and other industrial labourers, and so ancestors who had no control over government policy because they had no vote or representation until decades after slavery in the BWI had been abolished, and so had no say in the slave trade, slavery or colonialism.

@Dastardlythefriendlymutt
Well, is it fair to have the cut off for reparations for colonialism to be 1881 and limit it to Africa? What about Australia? Hawaii? Phillipines? Canada? Mexico? Brazil? United States? All of Central America? Argentina? Patagonia?
I mean we can safely argue that the slave trade in Africans was by far and large the biggest example of the atrocity of slavery, but we can’t make the same argument about Africa and colonialism. Especially when you consider that the first British colony in Africa, Freetown, was specifically founded by buying land from African chiefs and then giving it to rescued slaves from when the British did a naval blockade of Africa to try and stop the slave trade by caputuring slave ships and then settling the slavers back in Africa as free people.

• settling the slaves back in Africa. Typo

@Flaxmeadow
Yes, I agree. Funding for slavery reparations I think should come from corporate taxation and also a wealth tax on anyone with more than £5m in assets whether in U.K. or squirreled away in a tax haven like Singapore. It shouldn’t be an increase in VAT or in income tax rates because those have been shown to disproportionately affect the working class. And the working class had no say or involvement in these things.

Thank you @Dastardlythefriendlymutt for the link.

@PlanDeRaccordement yes it gets tricky when addressing reparation for the the Caribbean. As you say some of the islands had multiple countries involved in the slave trade. The Some of the Grenadines have had 3 countries controlling the trade and plantations.

I think you're suggestion of a fund that countries who were responsible for taking part directly should pay into. And yes to the UN administrating it.

And yes to the funds coming partly from government and through the estate of slavers. I understand that their descendants were not directly responsible or had any control over the abhorrent actions of their ancestors but neither have the descendants of slaves in the UK.

Slave descendants are at a disadvantage here in the UK. Economically and otherwise. I don't see how without reparation the field can be levelled. This is after all multiple generations of disadvantage.

The Government found the money to pay compensation to the slave owners for the lost of their slaves. The money would have came from taxpayers I take it.

So how do you prove you were descended from a captive slave? This would be civil law and would need to fall within the boundaries of legal reparation. You can't just pull some vague possibility out of thin air. There would need to be documentation and a legal process. The law isn't interested in moral arguments, just in proof, liability, causation and so on.

Yes you would imagine that the compensation for slave owners came from taxation. I'd need to look into this.

What shocks me about this, is that compensation only stopped being paid in 2015. I get angry when I think about.
What have the UK slave descendants had, or those in the West Indies? Nothing!

Exactly! nothing.

The compensation paid to former slave owners wasn't paid because government thought they deserved the money, they didn't think that

It was paid because that was the only way to end slavery legally at the time, without years of wrangling in courts. It was paid to end slavery as quickly as possible and yes it was paid for via direct taxation

@samanthawashington the law doesn't care about moral arguments. The recent windrush scandal has highlighted that.

In answer to your question on how to prove descendants are of African slaves, I believe some of the Caribbean countries hold archives of slave records. And there is genetic ancestry research.

A civil case would only need to prove a balance of probability. The above should be sufficient for that.

@Flaxmeadow whether the government wanted to pay or not is irrelevant. The fact is they paid this compensation to slave owners and their descendants until as recent as 2015. The facts are that this was paid due to loss of income through the abolition of slavery. The owners lost their assets. Their human assets.

Why can't this argument be applied to the slaves and their descendants? Why can't they be compensated for their loss. Loss of earnings. Loss of life. Loss of family ties through being kidnapped from their home country. Through the loss of bodily autonomy. Through the loss of consent. Through the fact they were raped, mutilated, tortured and murdered. And through the fact that their descendants are still wrangling the after affects of all of the above? Why can't they be compensated too? Whether the governments wants to or not.