Alfred Dawes | Republics and reparations

Someone once asked why I named my practice Windsor Wellness if I professed to be such a republican. I replied tongue in cheek that if the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha family can take their name from a castle they lived in, then I can likewise appropriate the name of the street where I work. The royal family is one of the last vestiges of a system that is based on superior bloodlines. Their very presence in modern society is a reminder of how their family and empire built riches on the backs of oppressed people. That is why I am a republican. Its is time that we sever this final remnant of colonialism and choose our own native head of state.

The talk of removing the Queen as the head of state has been in the works for decades. Lack of consensus on the role of a president stymied early attempts and more recent administrations have kicked the can down the road. With Barbados becoming a republic, the topic has gained traction in several Caribbean territories. Whether it was a deliberate rebuttal to Prime Minister David Cameron’s statement to our Parliament a few years ago, that it is time to move on from slavery talk, Prime Minister Holness informed Prince William that we will be moving on. The timing could not be better.

The Black Lives Matter Movement, the toppling of statues and the cancelling of historic figures linked to slavery, have all reignited interest in our past, and how chained we still are to the events that created this modern world. Had the Europeans not concentrated the wealth of the world into one small continent, the scientific and technological progress of the last four hundred years would not have taken place. For thousands of years technology moved at a gradual pace with the rise and fall of empires intervening in a slow and steady march. However, cities could look the same hundreds of years apart. It was not until the age of discovery ushered in a period of pillage, slavery, oppression and conquest that giant leaps in civilisation began to develop in the realm of the conquerors.

BACKWARD

Europe was as backward a place as any other geographic locations in the 15th century. It was the Chinese and Islamic cultures that were curators of the collective knowledge of man then. It was with technology from the East, navigation tools and gun powder, that their ships ventured out to decimate the populations of new lands with guns and plagues. The rise of the sugar plantations in the Caribbean repatriated immense wealth to the mother countries. This wealth was used to fund universities, ports, infrastructure and research. It was a golden age of inventions as generations improved on the foundations of tinkerers leading to the industrial revolution and eventually what became our modern society.

The contribution of the slave trade and plantation society in the West to the wealth of present-day Britain cannot be downplayed. The wealth of the average white Jamaican far exceeded that of their counterparts in England and the North American colonies. Their money was not spent recreating their homeland in their colonial outpost the way the Portuguese and Spanish built magnificent cities in Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Spanish America. Jamaica had no university until after universal adult suffrage. The education of the masses was to be subordinate to the need to maintain an uneducated workforce for the elite. No parks, few hospitals, few schools and even less clinics. Jamaica was simply a place to make your riches and return to England. You either made it or you died. They lived with reckless abandonment and learned cruelty to the black masses was the key to preserving the status quo. The wealth extracted from the blood of these plantation labourers went straight to developing Britain as a superpower. Then they left.

SERVILE ROLES

Our nominal independence still sees us remaining in servile roles in the new world order. The multinational corporations still rape our country and repatriate profits with little interest in the development of our people or land. Lending and rating agencies dictate harsh terms to us in order to qualify for loans even though we have debt repayments written into our Constitution. International trade and the financial markets are still run by the former colonial powers. There is still a wide gap in the human development index between the former colonial powers and the former colonies. This is maintained by their hegemony over the financial system and multinational institutions.

Even if we received reparations, it would mostly be used to repay debt, little chance of tangible development. This is due to the unwritten rules requiring third-world countries to remain unindustrialised. We are not considered equals in the world. We are markets for their products and voting blocs supporting their special interests. If we are to be continued to be treated as children of a lesser god, then at least say that you are sorry that you are living on top of this world, because your ancestors built its foundations with the blood and bones of mine. Let me feel that their untold suffering and prayers were not in vain, that their sacrifice built this modern civilisation, and that we all appreciate it. If that is so impossible to do, then let at least their wandering spirits see that the head of state of the land they toiled for three hundred years has the same blood as theirs flowing through their veins.

- Dr Alfred Dawes is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, CEO of Windsor Wellness Centre, and medical spokesman for Lifespan Spring Water. Follow him on Twitter @dr_aldawes. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and adawes@ilapmedical.com