LONDON – Chairman of the CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC) Professor Sir Hilary Beckles has urged Britain to rethink its socio-economic policies towards the Caribbean, while criticising some segments of the British press over the call for reparations.
“Sections of the British media, rather than see the enormous hospitality of the Caribbean people, what you talk about is that we have come here to take money away from the taxpayers,” he said.
Sir Hilary, who is leading a sixmember delegation on a “groundbreaking visit” to the United Kingdom to “advance its advocacy for reparatory justice”, told a news conference on Tuesday that there was no reason why Britain should be divided on reparatory justice for the Caribbean.
“There is no logical reason. It’s an emotional response based on the racism of a few and I believe that there is racism in the western world. I don’t believe the majority of the British people have racist tendencies,” he said, reminding the media that he grew up in Britain, attending schools there as well.
“Yes, you have a few racist people knocking around the place, but the majority of the people are open-minded liberal, and that is the consciousness that we want to respond to. That open liberal spirit of the British people, that’s what we are talking to,” he said, telling the media “you can help us to communicate that message”.
Sir Hilary, who is also Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, recalled after the World War II, the United States provided Britain with a Marshall Plan to help rebuild its economy with assistance also from Caribbean people who migrated to the country during the rebuilding exercise.
“Hundreds and hundreds of us came here to help with that. Clean up the place, work in the industries and put Britain back on its feet. Now, that is our joint history. You had a Marshall Plan . . . and it put you back on your feet.
“Now, your smallest colonies that happen to be your oldest colonies are saying to you, ‘Why don’t you extend principles of a Marshall Plan to look at those little colonies in the Caribbean where you started?’” He said Britain used its fiscal and monetary policies
to maximise extraction from those little colonies, but “left those little islands with no resources, bankrupt treasuries, no economic strategy. That’s what you left behind”.
He said the Caribbean countries got together and decided to seek independence in the 1960s, with the British government indicating “if you want independence . . . you are on your own, not a cent from us”.
“And that was our independence journey. In other words, we have to clean up the mess that you have left in the Caribbean and we have to clean it up by ourselves. You don’t want to be part of that. So, we said, no, you have to help us clean up this mess you have created so that we can all go forward . . . .”
He added: “We have converted your slavery into freedom and we say to you, you brought us to the Caribbean in chains . . . and we are saying to you now, come back to the Caribbean, we will host you, no chains. You are absolutely free to walk the streets, the beaches, give your wives and husbands a little vacation. That’s the world we have created for Britain.”
A CARICOM Secretariat statement issued ahead of the visit said the delegation’s mission is to strengthen strategic partnerships and promote a joint programme of public education and engagement on the reparations agenda. It is being organised with the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, which will host the delegation’s meetings and events.
The CRC was created to establish the moral, ethical and legal case for the payment of reparations by the governments of all the former colonial powers and the relevant institutions of those countries, to the nations and people of the Caribbean Community for the crimes against humanity, of native genocide, the Transatlantic Slave Trade and a racialised system of chattel slavery. (CMC)
