Slavery - Reparations

[Zen Archer (Raconteur)]

Make the Tobacco Barons pay, tax the weed at £1K a packet and pay off the debt on the drip.

[vikingTON]

12 hours ago, ICTChris said:

I don't think you can compare the Highland clearences to slavery or the slave trade to be honest.  Landlords evicting tenants isn't the same as enslaving people and their descendants. 

^^^ Tory scum found 

The idea that there was a landlord who had an unalienable property right to the land with no obligation to the inhabitants did not drop down from the sky. It was a similar injustice constructed at the exact same stage of early bourgeois capitalism as the transatlantic slave trade. 

As for reparations for slavery, the reality of complex family backgrounds means that with any genuine scrutiny we would fast run out of truly  spotless 'deserving' recipients. The elites of African states enslaved other Africans for the profits offered by the escalation of an existing and reprehensible trade to their state. African warriors likely took a cut of that profit just like ancient Assyrian soldiers did. That doesn't make them hypocrites or traitors - they were responding rationally to the incentives in that historical context. There are very few solid grounds for compensating a post-colonial state in Africa or its current elite.

If we really want to try to  compensate for slavery, we should devote more aid to the only state in the world produced entirely from a successful slave revolt - Haiti - which has suffered from being an international pariah state for at least 150 years.

Edited September 1, 2023 by vikingTON

[supermik]

54 minutes ago, virginton said:

^^^ Tory scum found 

The idea that there was a landlord who had an unalienable property right to the land with no obligation to the inhabitants did not drop down from the sky. It was a similar injustice constructed at the exact same stage of early bourgeois capitalism as the transatlantic slave trade. 

As for reparations for slavery, the reality of complex family backgrounds means that with any genuine scrutiny we would fast run out of truly  spotless 'deserving' recipients. The elites of African states enslaved other Africans for the profits offered by the escalation of an existing and reprehensible trade to their state. African warriors likely took a cut of that profit just like ancient Assyrian soldiers did. That doesn't make them hypocrites or traitors - they were responding rationally to the incentives in that historical context. There are very few solid grounds for compensating a post-colonial state in Africa or its current elite.

If we really want to try to  compensate for slavery, we should devote more aid to the only state in the world produced entirely from a successful slave revolt - Haiti - which has suffered from being an international pariah state for at least 150 years.

^^^ Says the man with the attitude to his imagined lessers, wannabe slavemaster imo.

[vikingTON]

^^^ word salad 

[supermik]

3 minutes ago, virginton said:

^^^ word salad 

^^^ only if no cucumber 

[vikingTON]

*sucks air sharply at that absolute nick of a comeback*

[supermik]

50 minutes ago, virginton said:

*sucks air sharply at that absolute nick of a comeback*

Reckon sucking is your forte..

[velo army]

Aye I don't think it's the wildest take to say that evicting people isn't the same as chattel slavery. 

It obviously was awful and traumatic not to mention an outrage, but being treated like cattle was obviously not the same.

I can see this issue just being lost in a lot of "anti-woke" Piers Morgan-esque outrage, which is a shame as it's a conversation that needs to be had. 

[Guest]

The UN judge referenced in the thread opening comment is Jamaican Patrick Robinson. He was judge to the UN trial of Slobodan Milosevic, incidentally. He provided comment for a recently published report and because he's a big name, it made the news (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66596790). The report is exclusively talking about the estimated 19M people of west and central African descent who were enslaved in the Americas during their lives. They were in Ecuador, Peru, Suriname, Costa Rica, Honduras, Trinidad and Tobago, Haiti, Cuba, USA and many other nations. To help us conceptualise when in history this finally ended, I like to give the example that Pele's great-grandparents were enslaved. So Pele's dad's dad was the first generation of his family to be born "free" since their lineage had been enslaved. From that report, here's an interesting graphic, the nation state responsible for each of those 19M enslaved folk in the Americas: (the two tiny flags in the bottom right are Sweden and Argentina, if you can't make them out):

 

Robinson's report is mainly descriptive rather than prescriptive. There are examples of concrete demands being made elsewhere, though. One is absolutely cast-iron, it should be a national talking point in UK. That it isn't a famous case we all know about shows how our media protect our ownership class. I recommend this article on it - https://time.com/6290949/barbados-reparations/. To summarise; Richard Drax is a Tory MP and the largest single landowner in his constituency, South Dorset. That's because he's the owner of Drax Hall, a sugar plantation in Barbados that his unbroken family line has held since the 1640s. He also owns other Drax plantations in Jamaica. An estimated 30 000 slaves perished on his plantations historically. Sticking with Drax Hall in Barbados, its a wee country Barbados, population about that of Aberdeen. A great many Barbadians today have historical family connections to Drax Hall plantation. Childhood tales told by their grandmothers of her grandmother's life on that plantation as a slave.

This photo from that Time article stands out:

This Tory arsehole, Richard Drax, is still profiting from the labour of the descendants of enslaved Africans in Barbados. They'll be getting paid a small fraction of the value of their labour in profits to him. He sits in London watching the money pour in while Austeria Johnson there toils in the field in Barbados. It's absolutely fucking minging. Anyway, Barbados has asked for him to donate the property, to voluntarily hand it over to the Barbados state, but he refuses. Barbados don't even want to take it over to continue the enterprise for themselves, the plans are to convert it into a public institution - a museum or agricultural school. This is a reparation that needs to happen.

[Dunning1874]

19 hours ago, HibeeJibee said:

Plus surely we can pay with our own reparations from Italy, the Scandinavian and North African countries?

Quite apart from the discussion around the practicality of what form reparations would take and who exactly should receive them, which are valid points, this is a non-sequitur.

No one living in Britain today is in any way adversely affected by the legacy of the Roman Empire's use of slavery; many people across the world are still adversely affected by the legacy of the Atlantic slave trade and more broadly by the legacy of European imperialism in general. As just one example, Haiti only paid off the debt associated with the reparations they were forced to pay France for slaves winning their freedom in 1947, before we consider all the other economic hardships caused by Haiti's pariah status for daring to gain their independence.

You can't compare the legacy of the Roman occupation of Britain which ended 1600 years ago to the legacy of slavery in the Americas, which was only legally abolished in 1888. Beyond but entirely related to slavery, you also can't compare it to empires which were still resisting independence movements in Africa and the Carribean well into the 1970s, in some cases fighting wars to do so, while states and companies from those states are still actively extracting wealth from those former colonies and European governments still hold onto territories in Africa and Carribean.

If we want an example of individuals who should be entitled to reparations directly from the British state, we can start with every single Chagossian and their descendents.

[Snobot]

https://www.communitylandscotland.org.uk/resources/plantation-slavery-and-landownership-the-west-highlands-and-islands-legacies-and-lessons/

“Scores of estates in the West Highlands and Islands were acquired by people using the equivalent of well over £100m worth of riches connected to slavery in the Caribbean and North America. Many would go on to be leading figures in the Highland Clearances, evicting thousands of people whose families had lived on their newly procured land for generations.”

Significant patterns of landownership in Scotland to this day can be linked back to enrichment from slavery. This study is only for the west Highlands and Islands, and I think we are all aware of the links between the landed / merchant classes of the central belt with the cotton / sugar etc trades.

[vikingTON]

10 hours ago, velo army said:

Aye I don't think it's the wildest take to say that evicting people isn't the same as chattel slavery. 

It obviously was awful and traumatic not to mention an outrage, but being treated like cattle was obviously not the same.

As opposed to victims of the Clearances, who were removed because they were quite literally beneath cattle in the valuation of landowners. I'm really not sure that your comparison of pain is going to be productive of anything either.

The historical reality is that both land clearances and slavery were an existing norm in most societies, that were both accelerated into a mass process through the early stages of capitalism taking hold. If you're going to apply broad brush reparations to the descendants of one outrageous act, then there's no logical grounds to disregard the other. 

[velo army]

1 minute ago, virginton said:

As opposed to victims of the Clearances, who were removed because they were quite literally beneath cattle in the valuation of landowners. I'm really not sure that your comparison of pain is going to be productive of anything either.

The historical reality is that both land clearances and slavery were an existing norm in most societies, that were both accelerated into a mass process through the early stages of capitalism taking hold. If you're going to apply broad brush reparations to the descendants of one outrageous act, then there's no logical grounds to disregard the other. 

Oh aye, I do agree with your last sentence. Any discussion of the practicalities of reparations quickly exposes inconsistencies and absurdities and opens up exactly the can of worms you describe.

I just felt you were jumping to a fairly unkind conclusion with ICTChris' post as I do feel he was saying one was worse than the other without minimising the impact on evicted families.

[topcat(The most tip top)]

1 hour ago, virginton said:

As opposed to victims of the Clearances, who were removed because they were quite literally beneath cattle in the valuation of landowners. I'm really not sure that your comparison of pain is going to be productive of anything either.

The historical reality is that both land clearances and slavery were an existing norm in most societies, that were both accelerated into a mass process through the early stages of capitalism taking hold. If you're going to apply broad brush reparations to the descendants of one outrageous act, then there's no logical grounds to disregard the other. 

Competitive victimhood seldom ends well

[LongTimeLurker]

13 hours ago, FreedomFarter said:

...To summarise; Richard Drax is a Tory MP and the largest single landowner in his constituency, South Dorset. That's because he's the owner of Drax Hall, a sugar plantation in Barbados that his unbroken family line has held since the 1640s....

Definitely useful for people like this to have reparations for slavery portrayed as something the UK should do on a national basis rather than something that should apply to them individually.

Robert Mugabe basically had the right idea on what to do with the assets of people still benefiting in a hereditary sort of way from the ill-gotten gains of colonialism even if his methods were clearly far from kosher.

Thing is though the western world were not going to allow Zimbabwe to get away with that and imposed crippling sanctions as a consequence so there's only so much a country like Barbados can do even with what looks on paper like sovereign independence.

[Jacksgranda]

On 01/09/2023 at 16:06, Billy Jean King said:

Who would reparation monies be paid to exactly  ? I most certainly would not be handing cash to some of the countries affected present day governments as it would go straight into their back pockets/offshore accounts. It's very difficult to see how any repatriation money would ever get to the ancestors of those slavery directly affected. 

It would be impossible for it to get to the ancestors...

[DeeTillEhDeh]

14 minutes ago, Jacksgranda said:

It would be impossible for it to get to the ancestors...

Dr Who's TARDIS?

[razamanaz]

No

[ClydeTon]

Nobody alive today was involved in the Atlantic Trade - why should I, or any other, have to pay for what my ancestors, *checks notes*, didn't actually participate in...

The best form of reparation, however, would be for European countries (ahem, France... ahem, Britain) to stop exploiting African economies forcibly. 

[Richey Edwards]

We had some guest speaker at university (a supposed professor) who told us that slavery was the fault of every white person who ever lived and all those currently alive are equally guilty.

The notion that I am responsible for something that occurred at a time when I did not even exist is fucking ridiculous.