An open pastoral letter addressed to Prime Minister David Cameron from Bishop Dr Delroy Wesley Hall of the Church of God of Prophecy speaks of how he felt "compelled to join with the thousands of other Caribbean and black British voices who have been enraged by your "get over slavery and move on" rhetoric." The letter in the Jamaica Observer of October 18 continues:

"As a tax-paying British citizen of Caribbean descent, I was taken aback by the insensitivity and distasteful nature of your comment. Given your level of intelligence and education, I am sure you would never tell the Jewish people to forget the Holocaust, move on and build their future. Neither would you tell the Palestinians to forget their injuries caused by the Israeli's and move on. What surprises me is that somehow you felt emboldened to stand on Jamaican soil, which has soaked up the blood of thousands of enslaved Africans who were literally worked to death, died on the plantations, or who were mercilessly brutalised, and tell your audience to forget slavery and move on. Your comment was inappropriate and insensitive."

Read the full letter here.

A letter in the Financial Times today from Michael McEachrane in Sweden, entitled "Reparations movement has basic tenets of justice and equality on its side", mentions David Cameron's recent dismissal of reparations on his visit to Jamaica and sets the issue in its wider context of colonialism.

"International trade has been shaped by hundreds of years of European colonialism. In fact, much of today’s global economy, for example the trade relations between the developed and under-developed world, is inextricably tied up with this history. The legacies of this history did not end with formal independence. Yet, there has never been any concerted effort by the international community to discontinue these legacies so as to create true equality of opportunity and justice in international relations and trade." Read the full letter.

Black History Month has been celebrated every October in the UK for over 35 years.  The National Black History Month portal and Black History Month Magazine 2015 are the central point of focus for a nationwide celebration of Black History, Arts and Culture throughout Britain. There are many events and activities running throughout England, Scotland and Wales. Click here for regional listings. MJR is hoping to add to their number in 2016.

Today a petition is being launched to call on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to create a formal bilateral partnership with Jamaica, making it a Priority Country for trade and international development. This is to recognise that trade with Jamaica has contributed significantly to the foundations of economic growth and prosperity in Scotland and recognising that Scotland should now seek to advance the prosperity of Jamaica.

The links between the countries include the fact that many Scots came to make their fortunes in the Caribbean slave economy. The consequence is that there is a greater frequency of Scottish surnames in Jamaica than in countries like Canada or New Zealand. A large number of places in Jamaica are Scottish and include Glasgow, Kilmarnock, Elgin, Roxborough and Culloden. More details are in this article.

The petition highlights that between 1760 and 1830 the Scottish economy grew from one of the weakest in Europe to becoming one of the most powerful. Profits were made from vast amounts of Jamaican sugar as the old sugar sheds that still exist in Greenock today testify. Other industries in Scotland profited in unexpected ways. The import of linen to clothe slaves in Jamaica increased tenfold between 1765 and 1795. Recent research has confirmed that Scottish slave ownership was higher than in any other part of the United Kingdom.

The contrast with the comments made during the recent visit of Prime Minister David Cameron to Jamaica is plain.

​The petition can be found and signed here. Anyone can sign, not just Scots! It is an initiative of a new organisation called 'Flag Up Scotland Jamaica'.

MJR is about addressing the legacy of past slavery, but we fully endorse the work of those seeking to expose the evils of modern slavery and trafficking. October 18 is Anti-Slavery Day. "It provides an opportunity to draw attention to the subject and to pressurise government, local authorities, public institutions and private and public companies to address the scale and scope of human trafficking."

​We would encourage everyone to find out what is happening in their locality and try to support it. The main 'What's On' listing is here and the EA have a useful guide here.

David Cameron’s visit to Jamaica where he refused to discuss reparations but offered £25 million towards building a new prison has not been well received in Jamaica.  Bruce Golding, former Prime Minister, described the offer as ‘unacceptable’ and urged Jamaica’s Prime Minister, Portia Simpson-Miller, to reject the offer. He added that Britain is a rich country whereas Jamaica is a poor country and the offer of £25 million would only cover 40% of the total leaving Jamaica to find 60% of the cost of building the prison. In addition Jamaica would have to pay the support of the men convicted in British courts whom Britain want to deport to Jamaica.

David Cameron said that the agreement would mean “Jamaican criminals are sent back home to serve their sentences, saving the British taxpayer millions of pounds but still ensuring justice is done.”

​But what kind of justice is this? The whole deal is weighted in Britain’s favour. Even the £25 million on offer will be taken out of Britain’s aid budget which is supposed to be used for alleviating poverty and distress. But this is typical of Britain’s cavalier attitude to justice in the Caribbean for more than 400 years. It was back in 1562 that Sir John Hawkins began the British slave trade, taking the first 300 captive Africans across to the Americas. The Spanish had been involved in this trade for many years but the British soon overtook them as the leading European slaving nation some of whom were brought to Britain which prompted the first Race Relations Act in British history. The first Act was not in the reign of Queen Elizabeth II in 1962, but during the reign of Elizabeth I in 1596. It was worded thus,

“Her Majesty understanding that there are of late divers blackamoores brought into this realme, of which kinde of people there are alreadie too manie, consideringe howe God hath blessed this land with great increase of people of our owne nation… These kinde of people should be sent forth of the lande.” (Acts of the Privy Council, 11 August 1596)

It was said that the stench of an approaching a slave ship could be smelt in Kingston Jamaica two days before its arrival. The monstrous inhumanity of the Atlantic crossing that could take up to 3 months when facing contrary winds was followed by the unspeakable cruelty facing the Africans on the slave plantations of the Caribbean islands – all to feed the insatiable appetite for sugar in Britain. By 1800 some two thirds of the British economy was in some way dependent upon slavery and most Members of both Houses of Parliament were involved in the trade or plantation ownership.

Even the Act of Emancipation in 1833 was laced with grotesque injustice for the Africans. The British Government paid £20 million to the 46,000 owners of slaves in Britain for the loss of their ‘property’– that is £17 billion in today’s money – but not a single penny to the Africans themselves who had suffered centuries of cruelty, oppression, loss of freedom, identity, culture, language and personal dignity. Even their African names were taken from them, which is why Caribbeans all have the names of their former British owners today: part of the legacy of slavery they still bear.
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But our Prime Minister refuses even to discuss reparations. I have lived and worked among African Caribbeans for much of my life and I know that what most of them would like is not the distribution of a pot of money but for Britain to lead the way in investing in the future of the Caribbean Islands by stimulating the economy; helping small businesses; promoting education; founding a University with educational grants for bright students. This is the way we could help to compensate for the gross injustice the islands have suffered for hundreds of years. This would be the most effective way of expressing our remorse for the way our forebears built the cities of London, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham as well as the great country houses of the rich on the proceeds of slavery. But to offer to help build a prison is to rub salt in the wounds of those whose lives we destroyed: it is adding insult to injury.

​Dr Clifford Hill

​Should any of us be in the least bit surprised by David Cameron’s reluctance to address the issue of slavery, reparations and repair in any serious way? Not from where I stand!

As an African Caribbean man I find his comment that Caribbean countries should “move on", patronising, insensitive and insulting in the extreme. Mr Cameron’s upward mobility, his ability to “move on”, has been greatly aided by the very trade he says he finds so very “abhorrent.”

Does, the prime minister, I wonder, feel the same way about the Jewish Holocaust? Did he tell the survivors and descendents of the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Belsen, to “move on? Would he dare to?
Instead he tried to reverse the psychology by saying that Britain’s wiping slavery "off the face of our planet" should be remembered. Well Mr Cameron it is remembered alright, but so is the 271 years between 1833 and Captain John Hawkins’s first known English slaving voyage to Africa, in 1562, in the reign of Elizabeth 1, perhaps the real start of British imperialism!

And just in case he is suffering from amnesia, let me remind him that Hawkins made three such journeys over a period of six years, he captured over 1200 Africans and sold them as goods in the Spanish colonies in the Americas. Mr Cameron Britain’s abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and of slavery in 1833, does not absolve you of guilt, merely it is a mitigating argument for mercy in the final judgement! 

It should also be recalled that upon the abolition of slavery, Britain paid £20 million, the equivalent of £17bn in compensation money to 46,000 of Britain's slave-owners for "loss of human property". Your own ancestor General Sir James Duff received the equivalent of £3 million in today’s money. But no reparations for the sufferers: is that justice?
None the less you are rightly proud of the part played by British abolitionists in the destruction of chattel slavery. We laud the efforts of Wilberforce and the Clapham sect, but Africans did not stand idly by in the march to manumission.  The amelioration of our condition was achieved just as much by the bravery of Cudjoe and Nanny, Paul Bogle and Sam Sharpe, remember them? By the eloquence of Olaudah Equiano and activism of Ignatius Sancho, yes Africans played a huge part in achieving their own freedom.

Certainly 1807 and 1833 were dates to be celebrated and remembered by all, but so is 1884/5. In case you forgot, that was the time of the Berlin Conference. Following Stanley’s charting of the Congo River Basin, which removed the last “Terra Incognita” from European maps, it was open season on Africans once more: the European race for colonies was on!
Let us state unequivocally that Britain was in the vanguard of that race, and were only too willing to engage with the other invitees at that conference hosted by Bismarck, with the intention of the peaceful carving up of Africa!

In short you replaced chattel slavery with colonialism, slavery at home, only this time you captured the Africans, their homelands and the resources therein! Britain became “Great” during this period but you want us to “move on!”  Britain “filled her boots” - free labour, free land, free gold & diamonds, silver, copper, rubber. Everything free except for the Africans at home and in the Diaspora, they were not free. Yes, you abolished slavery but reintroduced it under a different guise - colonialism - but we should just “move on!”

You state that you want to concentrate on future relations rather than centuries-old issues, and you want to do this by giving Jamaica a grant of £25 million for of all things to build a new prison! That should endear you to the people.
“The African Holocaust” - yes, that’s what it was - has left an economic, psychological, socio-political, and cultural scar on all people of African descent, whether they know it or not! There is a very definite legacy of slavery that is preventing all people from “moving on”. There has been no repair for our 400 years of trauma. To quote Gladstone, no irony intended, “justice delayed is justice denied”.
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Britain should do its part in helping us to “move on”

​Khareem  Toussaiint Jamal