Why UK should not pay reparations for slavery, and what it should do instead
If the Commonwealth Heads of Government conference is reduced to a platform for demanding slavery reparations, then it was hardly worth the fares to Samoa. The Commonwealth has survived, much against the odds, for 75 years as a consensual relationship among countries which were, mainly, the victims of British colonialism. Despite or because of this, there has been enough sense of common cause to keep them in the same large tent and sports arena.
This was in full knowledge of the history that led them there, and the fact that for many it included slavery. It is far from clear why, at this particular moment, it should become the defining point of these relationships, except in order to sustain a fashionable demand for impossible sums of money.
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Hide AdThe answer may lie in the fact that all three candidates to become next Secretary General of the Commonwealth – from Ghana, Lesotho and Gambia – are campaigning to make reparations the big issue. If so, future relationships will be fraught and built around division rather than the rather remarkable spirit of unity which has prevailed.
A historic evil among many
Rejecting the reparations demand does not equate to a denial of history; only the means of recognising it, which are many and varied. There is, for example, a duty to ensure knowledge of how wealth and power in this country, down to the present day, were accumulated on the backs of exploitation and suffering. Scottish land ownership would be a good place to start.
Slavery was a terrible historic evil amidst many terrible historic evils, each of which has played its part in shaping the world as it now exists. Addressing the horrors and injustices which these have bequeathed is more than enough to be going on with, without arguing over how many hypothetical trillions are required to compensate for them.
Personally, I feel not the slightest responsibility for the slave trade any more than for, let’s say, the Opium Wars in China or the Bengal famine or the oppression of Ireland. If I had been around at the times, I hope I would have opposed them all. But I wasn’t, so the best I can do is learn the lessons of history and seek to apply them to the present.
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Hide AdInfamous triangular trade
On our own doorstep. Scotland could do an awful lot more to recognise its leading role in the slave trade and reflect this in how history is taught. Despite the lip service, there is not a lot of evidence that it actually happens. I am not much interested in removing statues but explanatory plaques about what and whom they represent cost little.
In Birmingham recently, I noticed how well this can be done. There is a striking gilded statue which has been there since 1956 in honour of three engineers who made outstanding contributions to the city’s industrial success. One of them was James Watt, the Scottish pioneer of the steam engine. Unfortunately, the trio were “morally ambiguous” towards the slave trade.
The solution has not been to remove the statue but to explain that they were not only great engineers but also “hard-nosed businessmen who were quite willing to explore selling steam engines to West Indian slave plantations” while “local gun makers exported huge numbers of muskets which were used as currency to purchase West African slaves as part of the infamous triangular trade”.
Scottish land ownership
While it would be absurd to evaluate the financial cost of this behaviour to the West Indies or West Africa 200-odd years ago in order to calculate “reparations”, it is respectful and proportionate to ensure that history is known and context established. Surely this could be done far more widely for the benefit of our own society as well as out of respect for the suffering of others?
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Hide AdI mentioned the issue of Scottish land ownership and here there is plenty opportunity for history to be recognised, learned from and acted upon. The evidence, particularly of connections to slavery, has been around for years but has elicited no response in terms of present day policy, or even symbolically.
The question of how and why we have ended up with such a grotesque pattern of land ownership is never questioned at policy level because the answers would be so inconvenient – and remind us in passing that there have never been any reparations for our own displaced people or the places they inhabited.
Third of Highlands bought with slavery wealth
Research by academics Iain Mackinnon and Andrew Mackillop showed how 63 estates in the West Highlands and Islands alone were bought by “significant beneficiaries of slavery derived wealth”, mainly between 1790 and 1855, which was also the period of mass evictions. Almost 1.2 million acres were involved, covering a third of the West Highlands and Islands.
The authors asked: “Does this obscure piece of history matter? In the context of debates over the challenges facing rural Scotland, what value is there in highlighting the links between colonial slavery and the current structure of landholding and estate economies in the Highlands?” They concluded there is rather a lot of value as they “provide a route map for understanding how patterns of large-scale land ownership came to be as they are today” with all the attendant consequences.
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Hide AdOnce again, the answer does not lie in compensation for ancient wrongs but, in the present day, to do what we can to address their legacies. Yet every action of government which relates to Scottish land ownership continues to build upon what exists – the product of all that dirty money and the profits from human suffering 200 years ago.
At present, there is a particularly useless “Land Reform Bill” making its way through Holyrood. Maybe if it was repackaged as the “Land Ownership Reparations Bill”, some radical thought might be encouraged, and at least one legacy of the slave trade finally confronted.
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