Sir Hilary Beckles, Chairman of the CARICOM Reparations Commission and Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies.
There is need for a high level Caribbean reparations summit, geared to turn European and British apology into solid action.
Sir Hilary Beckles, Chairman of the CARICOM Reparations Commission and Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, is advocating for such a summit. Just recently, Andy Knight, former director of the Institute of International Relations at the UWI St. Augustine campus, engaged Sir Hilary on the subject, in preparation for the celebration of International Day for Reparations today – Monday October 12th, 2020. Sir Hilary meanwhile stressed that any further talks about reparations, must now include talks about how investments can be made in the economic development of countries in the Caribbean.
“Reparations then, it is about development, it is about economic and social development. Britain has a debt and we are building upon the Arthur Lewis paradigm, because in 1940, Sir Arthur Lewis, our Nobel Laureate in Economics, he said, the only chance these Caribbean islands have of using development, industrialisation, global competitiveness, is they must have a major injection of capital, to lay the infrastructure” Sir Hilary pointed out.
“The most obvious source of that capital injection he said, is the value of the 200 years of free labour. He said Britain took 200 years of free labour and we did the numbers. If you take 200 years of free labour from 15 million people, including adults and children and remember, the children entered the production system as soon as they were weaned, three and four year olds, they were out on the plantation carrying out tasks, because you could not tolerate the notion of an unemployed asset. All assets had to go to work and we did the calculation and you are talking about seven trillion pounds, if you were to make a calculation on the unpaid labour Britain took from the Caribbean. That is more than their GDP, but it is just a reference, to give you a sense of the enormity of it,” he commented.
“And so, we have said, Britain must come back to the table for Stage 2. What is Stage 2? Stage 1 was when they sat at Lancaster House and discussed the terms and conditions of Independence. Bearing in mind, in those conversations, the CARICOM government back then had actually said, you need to give us a grant of about 200 million pounds to begin this journey. So there was always a development figure on the table and it has been consistently rejected. Their position was, we will give you social aid, and we are not giving you development capital,” Sir Hilary further noted.
He however indicated, “We have said, we want to go back to the table and we have invited the Government of Europe to come back to the table to discuss the legacy of colonisation, the poverty, the endemic challenges not only with public health, but inadequate infrastructures for schools, terrible situations in terms of human rights, a hospital in public health care, very poor undeveloped agricultural systems and we have said, you need to come back to this
“So the reparations that we are talking about, it’s about laying the foundation for investment in the economic development of the Caribbean,” Sir Hilary stressed (RSM)