Reparation is crucial in a divided world – Lord Anthony Gifford

In this week’s Reparation Conversations, we bring you the first of a two-part interview with British-Jamaican Lord Anthony Gifford (AG), by Director of the UWI’s Centre for Reparation Research (CRR), Professor Verene Shepherd (VS). Gifford is a former barrister and QC in London who established a law practice in Jamaica in 1991 and has been in the Jamaica reparation movement since 2009. He was a hereditary member of the British House of Lords from 1961 until the passing of the House of Lords Act 1999, which he supported.

VS: QC Gifford, your name has been associated with the reparation movement for quite some time. When and why did you become involved?

AG: I became involved in the movement for reparation in the late 1980s under the mentorship of Member of Parliament Bernie Grant. Bernie and I had worked on a project called the ‘Broadwater Farm Inquiry, which dealt with racism in the area in which he was then council Leader.

He started the African Reparations Movement, and because I was working with him, he told me about it, and I engaged with the issue because it was clearly a matter of justice. However, it wasn’t until the early 1990s that another of my mentors, Dudley Thompson, made an extraordinary request of me to prepare a paper on the legal basis for reparation for the first Pan-African Conference to be held in Abuja, Nigeria, in April 1993.

That task got me closer to understanding the various ingredients of the history, the law, and the moral arguments for reparation. I produced that paper, titled The Legal Basis for the Claim for Reparations, and presented it to the Abuja Conference, The arguments put forward in that work are arguments I stand by today. The fact is, once one gets involved in a cause like reparation, so crucial in a divided world, working alongside the most extraordinary people, one stays with it.

VS: How have you been involved in the Jamaica reparation movement?

AG: I was a member of the Jamaica Commission on Reparation, first led by my dear friend Professor Barry Chevannes, and established in 2009 and thereafter chaired by you, Professor Shepherd, which has been an inspiration. I have also been a member of the National Council on Reparation, for which you were co-chair, a council that still functions today.

In addition to being part of the official support team, I have also been speaking my mind in Jamaica and to some extent, in England. I recall meeting Ibo Cooper after one of my speeches in Jamaica, who asked, “Why are you talking in Jamaica? You should be talking in the UK”. I thought about what he said and reckoned he was quite right. I was still a member of the House of Lords then (which I am not now, I voted myself out of it). So that led to me introducing the only debate that has ever been held in the House of Lords about reparation.

VS: Lord AG, you have been honest, open, and upfront about two of your ancestors who were involved in crimes in Africa during the British colonial period. Tell me about those actions by those two family members, Edric and Maurice Gifford.

AG: Edric Gifford, who was my great-uncle, was second in command to Sir Garnet Wolseley in the Ashanti Wars in the 1870s. He was part of the expedition that went through Ghana to Kumasi and ransacked the king’s palace. The reports suggested how impressed the troops were with the vast range of books in foreign languages (which they burnt). He, in fact, committed unspeakable crimes. The second Gifford, who was involved in South Africa as an associate of Cecil Rhodes’, was my grandfather, Maurice, who had a regiment called “Gifford’s Horse”. He fought and killed the Matabele peoples in large numbers.

VS: How did that discovery make you feel, and how have you sought to make amends?

AG: Throughout my life, their actions have been awful to live with, especially as in the Cape Coast Museum, there is a picture of Lord Edric Gifford chasing the Ashanti. I have had to deal with that. I have visited the areas of atrocities and tried to make amends. I was part of that collective work in support of the independence movements for Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea Bissau. I was also invited to Ghana to work with President Jerry Rawlings on a new constitution.

While there, I visited Kumas, where an audience with the Asantehemaa, the Queen Mother of the Ashanti people, was facilitated in her palace. I went into the room where I saw a woman who was petite, strong at 80 years old (she later died at age of 109). She asked me about the purpose of my visit, and I told her, but I explained that I had another purpose of my own, and she asked, “What is that?” I replied: “I am aware, and I am sure you are also aware, of the crimes committed by my great-uncle Edric in the 1870s, and I want to apologise as humbly and as sincerely as I can for the destruction and killing he perpetrated with his soldiers and to tell you that I have come to Ghana with a very different state of mind.”

She thanked me and she said I was welcome and that the Ashanti peoples bore no personal grudge against the British - which is an interesting way of putting it because it was clear she had every right to feel a collective grudge, but she was welcoming me personally.

VS: How do you measure individual responsibility against states’ responsibility?

AG: My experience has been that when people express themselves strongly enough and when enough institutions join them, that all of these different agencies, coming together, form a stream, and the stream turns into a torrent, and the torrent overthrows the old order. I saw that happening within our work in support of Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea Bissau. [Eduardo] Mondlane, first president of the FRELIMO (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique, the dominant political party in Mozambique) said “we want for you to set up a committee to support our struggle”, and we did. They saw the importance of establishing committees in European countries.

They didn’t want to be looked at as communist because they got their arms from Russia. So we set up the committee, and they sent wonderful speakers, and they invited us into the liberated areas, and we took photographs, and then there was a moment in 1974 when the Portuguese dictator [Marcello] Caetano came to Britain on a state visit a week after the news of a terrible massacre in Mozambique had been published, and with the publication of that news, people stopped being neutral. People like Harold Wilson … they weren’t going to boycott the Queen’s banquet.

But once that news came through, they boycotted everything. We had demonstrations in 14 different places. We had “Caetano Asesino (Caetano the murderer)” being chanted all over London, and within eight months Caetano was overthrown, and democracy was restored to Portugal. I give that example to say that all methods of legitimate process and action are needed. There is not only one think tank.

Send feedback to anthonymgifford@gmail.com or to reparation.research@uwimona.edu.jm.