Gus John | ‘Heirs of Slavery’ become our advocates

It was surely just a matter of time before those lately repentant ‘Heirs of Slavery’ organised themselves to take centre stage in the global reparations movement.

Not surprisingly, their focus is principally upon their ancestors’ trade in enslaved Africans as chattels in the Caribbean, not on their barbaric use of indentured labour from South Asia and their continued exploitation of former enslaved Africans long after the trade was legally abolished, let alone reparations in respect of damage done to Africa and Asia, the Indian subcontinent in particular, for well over 400 years.

Given the fact that all of those heirs of barbaric slave owners remain integral parts of, or at least extensions of the English aristocracy and landed gentry, in the same social and financial milieu as the British monarchy - owners of vast swathes of the British countryside and urban spaces - rather than them seeking to be our reparations allies, they should collectively set their own agenda. They should demand that the British state, the monarchy, the Church of England and the hundreds of their fellow heirs set out a timetable for delivering reparatory and climate justice, including non-repetition.

The indisputable fact is that for the last century and more, repetition has been taking place across Africa, as Britain and Europe have continued to bleed the continent dry and to prevent its progress towards self-determination and political and economic self-reliance, murdering those national leaders whom they see as working against their interests.

On November 3, it was announced that “the British-American journalist and reparations activist Laura Trevelyan has been appointed as an associate fellow by the P.J. Patterson Institute for Africa Caribbean Advocacy” at the University of the West Indies. Carib News reports the former prime minister, the Honourable Percival Patterson, as saying: “ Trevelyan’s new position will help raise funds for the organisation, to strengthen the institute’s role as a significant advocacy organisation capable of facilitating positive change, extending its outreach in the global space, and strengthening ties between the motherland and the diaspora”.

About Trevelyan herself, no one explains how and when she became a ‘reparations activist’.

Carib News noted that “along with other British families whose ancestors benefited from slavery, Trevelyan co-founded a group called ‘Heirs of Slavery’, which aims ‘to amplify the voices of those already calling for reparations, including Caribbean governments’”. She expressed her intention to support the reparative justice movement and promised to do her best “to help build on the global momentum towards healing and repair as we finally begin to confront the legacies of transatlantic slavery in Africa and in the Caribbean”.

GROSS INSULT

Heirs of Slavery makes slavery sound like a benign philanthropic enterprise, rather than the barbaric, dehumanising and evil system it actually was. Gestures such as Trevelyan’s apology to the long-suffering, yet ever-so-generous people of Grenada, with her accompanying £100,000 cheque is a gross insult when compared to the wealth accumulated by her ancestors and the generations of trauma those whom they enslaved bequeathed to their descendants, while ‘heirs’ such as Trevelyan continue to this day to enjoy generational wealth.

It seems to me that Heirs of Slavery takes the recent fad of allyship to a totally new level. Laura Trevelyan’s intention to help build on the global momentum towards healing and repair is interesting. Where is that momentum to be found, who and what is driving it, and among whom is the healing and repair taking place? And as for ‘we’ finally beginning to confront the legacies of transatlantic slavery in Africa and the Caribbean, does that simply refer to CARICOM and its 10-point plan, both of which Trevelyan has embraced?

Where is the healing and repair taking place in civil society as people continue to contend daily with the material conditions of their existence and deal with layers and layers of trauma, as well as, in far too many cases, disavowing any ancestral connection with Africa? How are they being facilitated to relate their history and their aspirations to Africa and the global African diaspora? How and where are the legacies of transatlantic slavery and more widely of empire being confronted in Britain itself? Where is Trevelyan’s ‘activism’ in relation to that?

In 2003, the African Union (AU) passed a resolution to constitute the global African diaspora as the Sixth Region of Africa and immediately set about convening summits across the continent to encourage member states to work towards that goal. It established a Technical Committee of Experts to work out the modalities for establishing the Sixth Region and invited some of us in the diaspora in Europe, me included, to join that committee.

AU RESOLUTION

The challenges we face are massive, but there is no question that working together, we in the diaspora and in AU member states across Africa could confront those challenges and build new paradigms and institutional structures and arrangements to help mend the ruptures caused by enslavement, displacement and erasure, and to unify Africa and its global diaspora.

The University of the West Indies and various island states in the Caribbean region have already started to do just that. Would it not have been considerably more advantageous and far less backward if the P.J. Patterson Institute for Africa Caribbean Advocacy had appointed Associate Fellows from among those Africans in the diaspora who have been working tirelessly even before the AU resolution and who are more than capable ‘to strengthen the Institute’s role as a significant advocacy organisation capable of facilitating positive change, extending its outreach in the global space and strengthening ties between the motherland and the diaspora’?

Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, vice-chancellor of The University of the West Indies and chair of the CARICOM Reparations Committee, who is also on the advisory board of the P. J. Patterson Institute, is reported as saying:

“The Reparatory Justice Movement is grateful to the P.J. Patterson Institute for Caribbean African Advocacy (UWI) for developing and hosting an honorary fellowship for reparations advocacy, which has attracted the inaugural occupancy by Laura Trevelyan, who has been a pioneer in pursuing a strategy to bring heirs-of-slavery enrichment to the table of accountability.”

Unpack that if you will.

Am I the only one who is utterly bemused by the thought that an heir of a slave trader who owned 1,000 enslaved Africans and was handsomely rewarded when an act of parliament dictated that he set them free, destitute and broken, and who is able to donate £100,000 to kick-start a reparations fund, could be welcomed by Jamaica, of all places, as an associate fellow for Africa and Caribbean advocacy?

Is the Pan-Africanism of Baba Dudley Thompson (God rest his soul) dead and buried alongside him?

But then, if after all that Britain has done and continues to do by way of repetition, especially to the settled African and Asian diaspora within its borders, King Charles is still able to charm his way across the black Commonwealth as its imperial head, there is a certain logic in having Laura Trevelyan advocating for Africa and the Caribbean.

So, let us all suspend disbelief and sing Land of Hope and Glory!

Augustine John is a human-rights campaigner and honorary fellow and associate professor at the UCL Institute of Education, University of London.