Editorial | Support O’Brien’s initiative

Denis O’Brien’s latest public intervention in the Caribbean’s reparations debate, as a supporter, is a welcome development. Hopefully, it will help to nudge other corporate leaders and people of influence to embrace the movement and appreciate that backing reparations is not the same as demanding something for nothing. Neither is it bad for business. It puts you on the right side of history.

Significantly, in that respect, Mr O’Brien is taking practical action to persuade former slave-owning European countries of their obligation to pay reparations. It would be unfortunate if other influential voices, with hefty stakes in this region, remained quiet from the periphery.

O’Brien, an Irishman, owns the telecoms company Digicel, which he launched in Jamaica two decades ago, expanded across the Caribbean and took to the Pacific Islands. The Pacific business was sold in July to an Australian mobile phone company, Telstra Corporation, in a deal that valued Digicel Pacific at US$1.85 billion.

In a recent speech at a conference of the Caribbean Telecommunications Organisation in Miami, O’Brien calculated that between 1834 and 2015 – the period between the abolition of the slavery and the completion of payment on the £20-million slavery compensation bond – the British government transferred the equivalent of US$19 billion to former West Indian slave owners. These payments, experts say, funded much of the development in Britain’s second industrial revolution, many stately mansions, and prestigious institutions. That does not include what they earned from slave-worked plantations or other activities associated with the 400-year institution of slavery.

PAY REPARATION DEBT

Yet, at their independence, Caribbean countries, O’Brien noted, were left with little development and empty treasuries, which, in large part, accounts for the debt crisis faced by most regional economies. He urged Europe to “fess up” to what happened, offer a full apology to the descendants of slaves, and pay their reparation debt.

To prod Europe along, O’Brien is launching a campaign along the lines of the Jubilee 2000 movement that pressed for debt forgiveness for the world’s poorest countries towards the start of the millennium. He has hired some of the people who worked on that campaign for this initiative.

“They (European countries) are going to be asked to contribute to an investment-funding arrangement for each of the countries in the Caribbean affected by slavery for grant-aided major projects in education, health, agriculture, fisheries, and economic development,” O’Brien said. “And that funding should come in over 25 years.”

An economic study will soon be done to determine what allocations should be made to affected countries.

Importantly, as O’Brien pointed out, his initiative is not “a solo run”. He has consulted with, and received the support of, three Caribbean prime ministers. Moreover, having previously publicly aligned with the Hilary Beckles-chaired CARICOM Reparations Commission, O’Brien is working with the commission on this project.

ADDS HEFT

In that regard, while O’Brien’s activism, as a successful, white, deep-pocketed businessman who is willing to put money into the effort, adds heft to the Caribbean’s reparations movement, it does not depend on him for its legitimacy. The demand for reparations is a profoundly moral issue that stands on its own accord. It is a demand for an acknowledgement of a wrong and for amends or restitution for that wrong. The advice to “move on” does not resolve the issue.

As The Gleaner reminded a year ago in declaring its support for the reparations movement, it was barely a half-decade previously – more than 170 years after the abolition of slavery – that the final payment on the debt that sustained British slave owners in the aftermath of emancipation was finally cleared. The legacy of slavery, in a very direct way, still benefited modern Britons.

In his Miami speech, O’Brien said: “History requires justice, and justice must be fair and lasting ... . Justice delayed is justice denied.”

West Indians of all social strata and economic means believe in pursuing justice. Those who fear for the demons that the process might release are more likely to find it liberating.