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“The most
noble intentions were jarred by portions of your address which asserted that
“slavery was a long time ago, in the historical past and as friends we can move
on together to build for the future”. Mere acknowledgement of its horror will
not suffice. It was and still is a most heinous crime against humanity – a
stain which cannot be removed by the passage of time.
Those who
perished in the Middle Passage and the fatal victims on the sugar plantation
were the victims of genocide. This is a crime in accordance with International
Law.
The
attempt to trivialize and diminish the significance of 300 years of British
enslavement of Africans and the trade in their bodies reflect the continued
ethnic targeting of our ancestors and their progeny for discriminatory
treatment in both the annals of history and in the present.
The 180
years of slavery in Jamaica remain fresh in living memory. There are people
alive in Jamaica today whose great grandparents were a part of the slavery
system and the memory of slavery still lingers in these households and
communities.
To speak
of slavery as something from the Middle Ages is insufficient. For our
communities, its legacies are still present in their memory and emotions. To
reject this living experience is to repudiate the very meaning and existence of
these people’s lives.
How can
we simply forget and move on to the future? If there is no explicit admission
of guilt now, when will be the proper time?
You argue
that Britain abolished the slave system and the credit for this resonates in
the British Parliament today and show British compassion and diplomacy.
Where is
the prior confession that Britain fashioned, legalized, perpetuated and
prospered from the slave trade?
Indeed
the facts speak to a different explanation. In Jamaica, the enslaved led by Sam
Sharpe tried to abolish slavery themselves three years before Parliament acted.
The British army destroyed these freedom fighters and executed their leaders.
This
attempt to destroy the seed of freedom and justice in Jamaica continued for
another hundred years. In 1865, the peasants sought to occupy Crown lands in
order to survive widespread hunger. The British Government sent in the army and
massacred those people, executing Paul Bogle, George William Gordon and other
Leaders
Furthermore,
the British Act of Emancipation reflected that the enslaved people of Jamaica
were not human but property. The 800,000 Africans in the Caribbean and
elsewhere were valued at £47 million. The government agreed to compensate the
slave owners £20million, and passed an Emancipation Act in which the enslaved
had to work free for another four to six years in order to work off the
£27million promised slave owners. It was they who paid for their eventual
freedom.
The enslaved paid more than 50
percent of the cost of their market value in compensation to slave owners. This
is what your Emancipation Act did. The enslaved got nothing by way of
compensation. The Act of Emancipation was self-serving, and was designed to
support British national commercial interests alone.
You have refused to apologize. Yet your Government has
apologized to everyone else for horrid crimes. Are we not worthy of an apology
or less deserving?
Mere acknowledgement of the
crime is insufficient. The international community and international law call
for formal apologies when crimes against humanity are committed. The UN has
deemed slave trading and slavery as crimes against humanity. The refusal to
apologise is a refusal to take responsibility for the crime. In a law abiding
world, this is not acceptable.
Recently, you urged your own
nation to keep the memory of the Jewish experience alive in memorials and
education curricula. We urge you to do the same for the black experience with
remains before us all. It is precisely because we all want to move on
that the reparatory justice movement is alive and growing. We all want to move
on, but with justice and equality.
Contrary to your view, the
Caribbean people will never emerge completely from the “long, dark shadow” of
slavery until there is full confession of guilt by those who committed this
evil atrocity.
The ‘resilience and spirit” of
its people is no ground to impair the solemnity of a privileged Parliamentary
occasion and allow the memory of our ancestors to be offended once again.
The Caribbean people have long
been looking to the future, This is what we do in our development visions, but
these legacies are like millstones around our necks. We look to reparatory
justice as the beginning of shaping a new future. We invite Britain to engage
in removing this blot on human civilization so that together we can create a
new and secure future”.
ONE
LOVE
Yours
Sincerely,
P.J.
Patterson