‘It is a good rule in life never to apologise. The right sort of people do not want apologies and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.’ P.G Wodehouse
Does historical ignorance trump bad faith, or vice versa? Does lack of personal responsibility absolve everyone of historical crimes? Is the same true for historic familial responsibility? And if absolution is not agreed, and genuine contrition absent, what should be expected, what should suffice? Do current apologies for historical crimes mean anything? Since personal contrition is hardly to be expected for crimes not personally committed, can an apology be anything but bogus, empty?
Arguments for and against ‘reparations’ are so soured by bad faith and the perception of bad faith that the overwhelming desire is simply not to have a conversation which can only end badly, if it ever ends at all. Before us, also, we have the morbid spectacle from the US of a historically unmoored sense of grievance which seems unassuageable, corroding all aspects of social and political relations. Who in their right minds would willingly start down that path?
Even if we did not have the doleful example of the US to warn us away from the debate, the arguments against Britain making ‘reparations’ to the West Indies immediately seem overwhelming. Not only was Britain uniquely early in abolishing slavery, it did so owing to the moral determination not of its rulers, but of the ordinary working people. Seven or eight generations on, does it seem right that, say, the people of Manchester should be dunned for reparations for the slavery their ancestors fought successfully to abolish? Obviously not.
Who, then? The British government? Seven generations on, the British people, now a genuinely multi-ethnic demographic, should be dispossessed by taxation for the sins their ancestors fought successfully to abolish?
And on the other side of the Atlantic, when it is clear that being born in Bridgetown, Barbados gives you life chances at least as good, if not better, than being born in, say, Hartlepool, is it obvious that the sons and daughters of Hartlepool should be further disadvantaged in order to ‘compensate’ the sons and daughters of Bridgetown? The one has done no harm, the other has comparatively suffered no harm. End of story?
If history were only history, it would indeed seems right to close the book. And indeed, if we are to retire this history, I suggest that the place to start is by retiring the word ‘reparations’, and the desire it codes to punish and to be punished.
Rather, I think a reasonable place to start is to ask the question: ‘Has damage been done?’ If is has been done in the past, does that damage ramify down the generations to today? And if it does rattle down the generations, is it possible for this generation, on both sides of the Atlantic, to begin to repair that damage?
I am quite certain that the 17th and 18th century sugar/slave empire of the West Indies did damage, and left damage in its wake. Quite apart from the individual crimes and cruelties, the damage done was the profound denigration and insult to (African) humanity when chattel slavery became one of the foundation-stones of global finance and trade. Yes, slavery has been effectively a universal phenomenon in human history - we’ve all done it - but the development from a relationship mediated personally no matter how unjustly, to one mediated by global finance was Britain’s alone. By removing the possibility of personal mediation, it added a new layer of human degradation. Humans were not merely bought and sold, they were securitized.
That, I think, did damage to the conception of what a human being is. For the chattel slave, the degradation must have been profound. For the slave-financier? Can his conception of humanity have survived unscathed?
So I think the answer to the question 'has damaged been done?’ is: “Yes, the slave-trade was a tear in our conception of humanity, and although we in the West bear no personal responsibility for that tear, it may be that we could all benefit from the work of repair.” For those in the West Indies, the argument is exactly the same, but surely stronger, more obviously present. After such degradation, what is an adequate respect?
When we think of the issue in these terms, it becomes obvious - to me at least - that the payment of large cash-sums to the distant descendants is a recipe for disaster. On the British side, the resentment generated in those unjustly paying for crimes they did not commit would merely widen a fissure which it is proposed to close. Meanwhile, in the West Indies, the sudden and unanticipated arrival of unthought-of wealth would immensely intensify political competition. (The track record for this is extremely lengthy and is seen everywhere, from the Roman Republic’s response to acquiring asset-rich Pergamon, to the more recent impact of oil & gas discoveries in the West Indies.) At the worst, we the cash bounty buy the arms needed to settle the political differences it itself exploded.
If ‘reparations’ are ruled out, we can perhaps start to think creatively about what needs repairing, and what role both sides can play in doing the work of repair? For both sides must be involved - embracing the role of ‘white saviour’ isn’t one which is going to help repair the damage to the conception of African humanity. Rather, in humility we might offer the descendents of ‘our’ slaves the best Britain still has to offer, in a way which invites them to re-write their own, and our, version, of their qualities, characteristics and potentials.
One way in which Britain remains world-beating is in its universities: Oxford and Cambridge regularly find a place in the top two in lists of the world’s best. One of the unique characteristics is that that they are collegially based, and that within the universities, those colleges are in keen and unrelenting competitive pressure. In Oxford, the Norrington table is compiled/calculated every year and published as a league table of academic excellence within the university. The prestige of heading the Norrington table is, within Oxford, extreme.
I propose that Britain should endow a new Oxford (or Cambridge) college with entry specifically limited to citizens of those West Indian countries which comprised Britain’s sugar/slave empire of the 17th and 18th centuries. Those governments would be responsible for determining who gains places - one assumes that some form of West Indies Oxbridge exam would be involved. But once students arrive in Oxford, they are as any other students, enjoying the same opportunities, enduring the same rigours, and discovering the same excitements. The division of responsibilities would be clear: Britain would endow the college, but the West Indies would be responsible for entry conditions, and those West Indians who won a place would be responsible for how the college fared in the Norrington table.
If we wanted to mark the significance of the college, it could, perhaps, be called the Royal African College (after the Royal African Company), or perhaps, Clarkson College (in Cambridge, after the remarkable activist campaign undertaken by Thomas Clarkson).
Imagine now the day that Clarkson College topped the Norrington table. The restoration of proper and public pride, and the recalibration of public expectations of West Indians both in Britain and elsewhere would be profound. West Indians know they can produce the best sprinters and musicians in the world. But to top the Norrington table would be proof positive that without ‘positive discrimination’ West Indian students could out-smart, out-work and out-think all others. What unacknowledged debts would be paid, what tears in all our conceptions of humanity would start to be sown back together? What pride we could all finally share!
There is one further benefit. Contributing to the college’s founding endowment would also provide an opportunity for those direct descendants of slave-owners who feel burdened by their ancestors crimes, to help repair the damage done. One would, for example, anticipate that All Souls College would to be happy to help establish the college’s library, in appropriate recognition that its own library received large-scale finance from the bequest of plantation-owner Christopher Codrington’s in 1710. Endowing this college would do good where ‘reparations’ would do harm; it would ennoble both sides of the transaction, rather than diminish and shame them. It would acknowledge history without being bound by it. It would be, in fact, an answer to history.
I wonder whether you read what I wrote? Since my views on the demand for reparations would seem to be similar to yours. As for wanting to do something about the manifest unfairnesses our history had bequeathed to our own people, go and take a look at The Long March, and the maybe get back to me.
"Rather, in humility we might offer the descendents of ‘our’ slaves the best Britain still has to offer, in a way which invites them to re-write their own, and our, version, of their qualities, characteristics and potentials."
Hand wringing self-aggrandising liberals have been coming out with this kind of thing for decades. Reparation has long been repaid in the form of all the innovations, technology and medicine which Britain has given the world. The quality of life of those West Indians living in the Caribbean and Britain today is immeasurably better for the gifts of Britain's industrial and scientific revolutions. People such as yourself have long given black people a stick to beat white people with and look where it's got us.
This issue was actually long forgotten until it was dragged up by the likes of the Runnymede Trust to attack this country with. It is clearly being used as a psychological weapon together with the accusation of racism and there is a direct link between that and the mass sexual enslavement of tens of thousands of white girls across this country over the last 40 years. How about you turn your sanctimonious mind towards securing "reparation" for those kids and their parents and remind those in the race industry what their politics led to.