Reparations 1 – Reflections on a Critical Discussion; plus a Reflection for Black History Month. # 175. 08/10/2024.
Out of Many, One People.
Welcome. This week part 1 of a series on Reparations. Next week a review of Professor Michael Banner’s ‘Britain’s Slavery Debt – Reparations Now!’. Plus many thanks to Andrew Kwapong for allowing me to republish his thoughtful refection for Black History Month.
Reparations 1 – Reflections on a Critical Discussion; plus a Reflection for Black History Month.
‘Reckoning with History - A Critical Discussion on Britain's Reparations Debate’ took place this afternoon, 8thOctober in the House of Lords, sponsored by the Equiano Project.
The main contributors were Rasheed Griffiths (RG), the Barbadian Director of Caribbean Progress Institute, who has contested the Eric Williams/Hilary Beckles over the extent to which slavery boosted the British economy; Tiffany Jenkins (TJ), sociologist and author of Keeping Their Marbles: How the Treasures of the Past Ended Up in Museums - And Why They Should Stay There; Professor Alan Lester (AL), Professor of Historical Geography, University of Sussex and author of Deny & Disavow: Distancing the Imperial Past in the Culture Wars (2022) and Professor Robert Tombs (RT), emeritus professor of history at the University of Cambridge. and author of The English and Their History (2014) and This Sovereign Isle: Britain In and Out of Europe (2021). It was moderated by Equiano project director Inaya Folarin Iman and was followed by a Q and A.
The blurb for the conference provided an excellent summary of the issues under debate:
The reparations movement has gained considerable momentum in recent years. The formation of an all-party parliamentary group for Afrikan reparations highlights the growing political engagement with the issue. Internationally, figures like UN judge Patrick Robinson, who estimated that the UK owes £18 trillion in slavery reparations, have intensified the conversation. Domestically, institutions such as the Church of England have made significant pledges, including a £1 billion fund in response to its historical involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.
The debate over Britain’s colonial legacy and its role in shaping the nation's wealth has taken centre stage, especially following the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and efforts toward 'decolonisation'. This year, former Business and Trade Minister Kemi Badenoch's assertion that attributing Britain’s economic success solely to its colonial past is misleading has sparked widespread discussion. Her statement challenges the dominant belief that colonialism was the primary engine of British prosperity and the main cause of underdevelopment in former colonies. The debate over colonialism’s true impact remains central to the broader reparations discussion.
Cultural restitution has emerged as another critical aspect of the reparations debate. British museums and galleries house numerous artefacts obtained during the colonial era, many of which are now subject to calls for repatriation. Objects like the Benin Bronzes, looted during a British military expedition in 1897, and the Koh-i-Noor diamond, taken from India, have become symbols of this issue. Critics argue that keeping these artefacts perpetuates colonial dominance, and their return would help address historical injustices.
However, opponents of repatriation raise philosophical and practical concerns. Some argue that artefacts are better preserved in Western museums with advanced conservation technologies. Others suggest that these objects have become part of global heritage and should remain accessible to a wider audience.
Beyond questions of historical responsibility, broader concerns arise. Why are calls for reparations gaining such intensity now? To what extent are colonialism and slavery responsible for the current economic conditions of former colonies? Some argue that the exploitative economic systems established during colonial rule created lasting inequalities, which continue today in the form of underdevelopment, poverty, and political instability. Others contend that internal factors, such as governance and corruption, play equally significant roles in shaping the modern realities of post-colonial states.
The debate over financial reparations also raises complex moral, economic, and practical questions. Can monetary compensation ever truly address centuries of exploitation and violence? Is there a risk of fostering a victimhood mentality, undermining the economic agency and empowerment of formerly colonised nations? How can reparations campaigns be balanced with efforts to promote self-sufficiency and development in these countries?
Comments on the Issues raised.
First of all, many thanks to the Equiano Project for organising a thought-provoking, excellently chaired and wide-ranging debate, in which ‘conservative’ voices predominated but where Professor Alan Lester courageously and courteously offered critical dissonance.
From the discussion I identified several significant running themes (I have used the initials of the main participants, as in the introduction above):
The weight of history.
AL warned against the trivialisation of slavery, partly contesting RT’s suggestion that the discussion was largely an Americanised import. There was significant discussion between AL & RG about the minutiae of Caribbean historical development, with the latter suggesting that Hilary Beckles (the most high-profile academic to source the current debate) had sought to shift from a ‘quantitive’ assessment of the historical impact to an emphasis on ‘suffering’. Therefore, should the moral enormity and evils of slavery shape our reading of historical consequences. TJ warned against the ’rewriting and re-litigating of history’. Whether history morally requires reparations or is wrongly weaponised to demand them lay behind the debate. Often historians abjure building a balance sheet of the good versus the bad in history, yet (it seems to me) are rarely able to resist the temptation of doing so, and so throughout the discussion there tended to be hidden assumptions about the moral force today of slavery’s past evil. In this respect it was a serious loss that no descendant of the enslaved was present who felt deeply aggrieved about the evil, and the evil consequences, of what had been inflicted on his people.
The weight of guilt.
In introducing the debate Lord Tony Sewell lamented that it tended to be seen through the Judaeo/Christian lens of guilt, repentance and moral feeling. But given the Christian roots of our culture how else can it be handled. From the movement for abolition in the late eighteenth century down to discussions in the churches today, questions of guilt and how you repair following evil actions are unavoidable. (In passing both the blurb above and RT’s contributions conflated two documents from the Church of England – an initial fund of £100 m from the church to the descendants of the enslaved – see blog # 104 on ‘The Church Commissioners’ £100m’; and a subsequent - and intellectually ill-disciplined - bidding for £1 billion from a wider range of sources and for a very much wider range of causes – Blog # 151 on ‘The Fund for Healing, Repair and Justice’ on 12/03/2024). So how should English consciences – unavoidably impressed by a Christian inheritance – respond. The journalist Tomiwa Owolade raised the important question of whether our focus is on moral justice or improving the situation. Political theorists from Thomas Sowell to Eric Kaufmann have raised the question of how far a too fast and easy resort to warm but perhaps soft-hearted moralising can impair rather than resolve situations, so that a simplistic concern for ‘justice’ can instead simply institutionalise grievance.
The weight of Independence.
RG raised the unsayable – how far is the demand for reparations merely a moralising cover for failures of governance by the Caribbean nations? The premier of Barbados, for example, became a late entrant in her long political career for the demand of reparations, and only after Prof Hilary Beckles’ arguments had become normative in Caribbean history textbooks. RG cited evidence that Caribbean islands still under western suzerainty considerably out-performed the islands that had gained their independence, not only economically but also in terms of freedom under the law. Munira Mirza raised the question of how far development funding had been put to good effect. One suspects that any British government, especially Labour, would find it hard to attribute disparities in wealth to misgovernance in the Caribbean, but the question needs to be on the table. So too one might raise whether the decline of racism in the present has pushed progressive academics to focus on grievances in the past.
The weight of responding.
So, what response might benefit the Caribbean nations. AL made concrete proposals – for example low-carbon technology transfer, and pointed out that the CARICOM ten points included specific proposals such as payments for education, but RT also raised the important question of what is the aim here – are we now not in the broad area of humanitarian aid (therefore to any poor nation), established upon the basis of need, rather than a reparative response to the formerly enslaved based on guilt or justice? In reality, as RG pointed out, the CARICOM nations are in the middling rather than poorest range of economies – the GDP of Barbados is ten times that of their cousins who were left behind in Benin. The formerly enslaved in the USA are the richest black people on the planet, with those in Britain not far behind. In his introductory remarks Lord Tony Sewell quoted the Jamaican born historical sociologist Orlando Patterson that reparations would not be helpful. Given the long history since the abolition of slavery and the shorter history since independence, are reparations for historic injustice now an unsettling intrusion into a forward-looking development of the Caribbean nations?
The weight of outcomes.
A lawyer present raised the legal principle of ‘but for’ – that is,’ if this event had not happened what would now be the outcome?’ But maybe the outcomes pull in opposing directions. On the one hand, the descendants of the enslaved, as suggested above, are actually better off than those left behind in Africa – they need no reparation. But, on the other hand, that takes no account of the cultural and psychological damage inflicted by centuries of being enslaved and with the total disruption of your culture and previous identity – reparations give that due seriousness. TJ suggested that attempts at reparation serve to reinforce a sense of victimhood, of fragility. In that respect they provide a veil to cover poor governance. A Canadian contributor raised the important question of repairing relationships, which surely must be an important goal of the whole process, but does facing a painful past offer healing for past injustices or simply exacerbate past grievances. At the risk of a personal analogy being overly simplistic, is a verbal apology for a past wrong without any recompense cheap and empty; or is a material recompense – a bouquet of flowers? – a trivial deflection, when the only proper, though still incommensurate response, is deep-seated and thorough mortification. On a large-scale historical canvas, is no response available to Britain beyond a notionally expressed repentance and shame over the perpetration of a large-scale gross historical evil? Thereby rightly recognising our utter helplessness to retrieve any honour or dignity from this episode of our past. Whilst the only response that will benefit the aggrieved is to acknowledge it and move on.
Was transatlantic slavery, then, just one more item in a litany of horrible histories which simply belong in the past, or was it an item of such totemic significance that like the Holocaust (which we are culturally, temporally and spatially adjacent to), is it also for us in Britain today a unique historical event without comparison. At an event where Hilary Beckles spoke several years ago several African-Caribbean contributors bitterly contrasted David Cameron’s stirring statement in Jerusalem that the Holocaust must never be forgotten with his blithe comment in Jamaica that, in effect, it was time to move on. But does the Caribbean (and Israel?) need to recognise that the past is the past, and instead become wise in learning how to build for the future.
In trying to formulate my response to the event I recognise there are an unsatisfactory number of unanswered questions. But then that unsatisfactoriness is tribute to the events success in raising the complexity of the questions.
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A Reflection for Black History Month by Rev Andrew Kwapong, vicar of St Martin’s, Gospel Oak, north London.
I recently attended a theatre performance called “Aint I a Woman” at the Tower theatre in Stoke Newington, partly because a friend was performing and partly just to get out of the house with Martina. The plays are a collection of stories examining the intersection of race and gender; written by black women, and curated and produced by Landé Belo. In the spirit of the speech by Sojourner Truth, of said title, through the sheer force of her character, demanded those present to hear her story, intertwined with the story of many like her, calling for equality as a woman, specifically as a black woman. The five performances spanned a wide range of contexts, from teenage angst, to an unexpected pregnancy in an apocalyptic future, to a satire of a reality TV show encouraging one to change the colour of ones skin to achieve success. Through these familiar and unfamiliar plots, stories of the black female experience were shared. Some of the stories were intentionally uncomfortable and provocative, whilst others were witty and warm yet still hard hitting. I did my best to mask during the most awkward parts which I am not very good at, where I wished I wasn’t sat in the front row. All of the plays were intended to grab your attention and reckon with the experiences of black women in those scenarios. The purpose was not to usurp other stories, but they aimed to bring to attention voices that had been marginalised, giving them centre stage with the hope of broadening our understanding of one another, as well as sharing a variety of cultural experiences within a presiding culture. Sojourner Truth would be proud.
During the Q and A at the end, the writers gathered on stage. They were all at different stages of their career, including one that wrote regularly for a TV soap, but were, through theatre, within this space curated by Landé Belo, given permission to express their non-monolithic, yet somewhat similar experiences of being black women in the arts and of being marginalised in society. They all appreciated the opportunity to create stories that paid attention to their experiences in a way the arts at times failed to encourage.
This year, the theme of Black History Month is “Reclaiming Narratives” emphasising the power of stories which shape how we all can understand our past and live our present by highlighting stories previously on the margins, in danger of being lost if untold. Stories give us an insight into another’s value system and culture. Paying attention to diverse stories in the past and the present can help us all gain a deeper understanding of one another.
Willie Jennings, in his book “Beyond whiteness: An Education In Belonging,” speaks about the importance of joining one another’s fragments; one another’s stories. He suggests that the place of Christian formation as being with “Jesus and the crowd.” That the crowd is not necessarily Christian, but the crowd is where Christian formation happens.
Jesus creates space for stories.
The crowd, with Jesus, is where stories are told, where miracles happen, where those on the margins are brought to the centre, where justice is expressed in the midst of grumbling prejudice and the fragility of the privileged. It is where the beautiful, yet oftentimes, awkward act of the joining of our fragments with each other and with Jesus, happens. It is where new insights into each other as well as into the character of Jesus are shared.
Kwame Bediako a 20thC Ghanaian theologian described this cultural and theological exchange as “seeing new facets of the diamond.” That when we pay attention to each other’s diverse, culturally inspired stories, experiences of God and of each other, our Christian imagination of God is enlarged.
Bediako uses the example of Afua Kuma, a farmer and traditional midwife from the forest town of Obo Kwahu on the Kwahu mountain ridge in the eastern Region of Ghana. She was famed for her prayers and praises in her mother-tongue; the Akan language, especially within the Catholic and Independent Pentecostal churches in her region and across Ghana. She prayed and praised God from inside an Akan worldview, using honorific Chieftain titles in the Akan tradition and applying them to Jesus. She saw God reflected within her own culture and community and it’s intimacy with nature, and allowed her knowledge and experience of God and her culture to expand her imagination of God within that very same culture.
Here is an excerpt of one of her translated prayers:
He gives plenty, even in excess, and to everyone!
We don’t receive your gifts in our left hand,
O Great One, Okatakyi;
But because of your bountiful blessings,
our right hand is full!
Resplendent, shining-faced Chief of the lepers!
Helper of the crippled, Guide for the blind!
Lord Jesus,
whose eyes blend with sunshine and enlighten the world-
you see everywhere!
Chief among chiefs, when you stretch forth your hand,
widows are covered with festive beads
while orphans wear kente!
Ohemmerefo: humble King,
your words are precious jewels.
We don’t buy them, we don’t beg for them;
You give them to us freely
Afua’s Holy Spirit inspired prayers express a widening Christian imagination infused with the reality of her life experience, her culture, her community and its needs. Afua Kuma challenges us to see, through our own beautiful blend of cultures here in London, the ever present God who is longing to be endlessly revealed amongst us as we give space for diverse stories, even ones that are painful and harrowing that force us to reckon with our own experiences, yet expand our imagination
May we be part of this crowd with Jesus, bringing our stories and centring previously ignored stories so we can do the important work of joining together our fragments for our formation. This Black History Month, let us commit ourselves to expand the creative ways our churches and worship spaces can be safe places to share stories. For when this happens, new facets of the diamond will be revealed.