Repair Campaign unrelenting in fight for reparations

When slavery in the British Caribbean was abolished between 1834 and 1838, the British government authorised a £20-million compensation package for former holders of enslaved people – funded entirely by British taxpayers. This vast sum represented roughly 40 per cent of the national budget at the time, while the formerly enslaved received nothing.

Since then, debate has intensified over whether the countries from which former slave traders and owners originated should apologise and offer repair for the atrocities committed against enslaved Africans. The conversation has broadened over the decades, and numerous organisations have emerged to campaign for slavery reparations.

Out of this discourse, several questions have persisted: What form should reparations take – cash or kind? How should the value be calculated after almost two centuries? Who should benefit, and by what criteria? And who should be responsible for offering an apology? These were among the questions put to Brian Royes when The Gleaner met him recently in his role promoting The Repair Campaign, of which he is the campaign manager.

He explained that “The Repair Campaign is a non-profit organisation supporting the CARICOM reparatory justice movement, led by the Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on Reparations and the CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRR) ... . The Repair Campaign was founded in 2022 by Denis O’Brien, having worked and invested in the Caribbean for over 25 years as founder of Digicel and built relationships across the region as patron of the Digicel Foundation”.

The campaign’s goal is to amplify the movement through public awareness initiatives, advocacy, and the development of evidence-based reparatory justice plans in collaboration with researchers at The University of the West Indies, the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, the CRR, and national reparations committees.

Its work rests on three pillars: public education through events, community mobilisation, and digital outreach; political advocacy within the Caribbean and Europe; and the preparation of detailed reparatory justice plans outlining concrete interventions being sought by each CARICOM member state.

The CRR’s 2014 Ten-Point Plan for Reparatory Justice remains the guiding framework. It calls for a full formal apology, development programmes for indigenous peoples, funding for repatriation, cultural institutions and heritage return, support for public health recovery, education initiatives, historical and cultural knowledge exchange, psychological rehabilitation, a development right facilitated by technology transfer, and debt cancellation alongside monetary compensation.

“The benefit of reparatory justice interventions should go towards the communities descended from, and most affected by, the ongoing legacies of chattel enslavement in the Caribbean,” Royes noted. He added that rather than individual cash transfers, reparative funds could be placed in an independently managed sovereign fund with transparent oversight, deploying resources to projects led by an expert committee comprising private-sector leaders and CARICOM officials.

Reparations, in the context of the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans, are expected to come from the states and institutions that enriched themselves through genocide, chattel slavery, and settler colonialism in the Caribbean. Drawing on data from SlaveVoyages.com, Royes identified these as the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and Switzerland.

“So far, apologies and commitments to repair have come from governments like the Netherlands and the Dutch king; families including the Trevelyans and Gladstones for their ancestors’ enslavement of people in Grenada and Guyana, respectively; institutions like the Church of England, United Reformed Church (UK), United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, The Guardian, Greene King, Lloyd’s of London, among others.”

Despite rising expectations and the occasional apology, substantive reparatory action remains elusive. When asked why campaigners persist despite slow progress, Royes responded: “Reparation campaigners pursue this issue as a matter of justice for the greatest crime against humanity for which there has been no recompense, acknowledgment, nor apology. For many, this pursuit of repair is just as much about the pursuit of dignity, self-determination, and justice, as it is about the delivery of financial compensation.

“For many campaigners, the work of re-education of the self and society is itself an act of self-repair, and is rewarding in its own right … . For many campaigners, the prospect of reparations is an achievable outcome, in light of established legal precedents and procedures … . Just as formerly enslaved people might not have thought the abolition of chattel slavery was possible, they continued to fight for abolition.”

The Repair Campaign’s core team is based in Kingston, supported by extended teams in Guyana, St Lucia, St Kitts and Nevis, and Trinidad and Tobago, “where community organisers have begun engaging wider grassroots communities to join the campaign”.

editorial@gleanerjm.com