Jamaica’s campaign for Britain to pay billions in reparations for the human abominations of the transatlantic slave trade will go directly to King Charles III on Monday as a petition is due to be handed over detailing the desired settlement.
A figure of £7.6 billion (U.S.$10 billion) has been variously estimated as the amount that will be sought along with “answers” in the pursuit of “reparatory justice.”
The country’s culture minister Olivia Grange said ahead of the handover the petition will ask the King, who serves as Jamaica’s head of state, to refer three questions to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the country’s highest court, over the legality of the enslavement of Africans in Jamaica, the BBC reports.
Grange said it could pave the way for a “long outstanding settlement for the hundreds of years of the most horrific abuse that our African ancestors endured” in a process that has long been mooted in various forums.
She will also meet with British Museum officials to discuss the return of artefacts she claims were taken during the colonial era.
Buckingham Palace has been working closely with the Governor General of Jamaica to ensure the petition is correctly lodged. A Palace spokesperson said, per the BBC report:
His Majesty has on many occasions expressed his personal and wholehearted commitment to promoting greater understanding around the issue of slavery and finding ways to address historic wrongs for the benefit of communities today.
The BBC report makes clear there is already a precedent established for reparations.
When slavery was abolished across most of the empire in 1833, the British government paid £20 million (U.S.$27 million) to slave owners in compensation. The loans taken out to raise the money were paid off in 2015.
Grange said: “Up to 2015, Britain was paying the slave masters, because we were being considered property.
“The question really should be: if in modern times we’re still paying back the slave masters for the property that was our people, our ancestors, for property that was because of the abolition of slavery, then why shouldn’t we be pursuing some remedy at this time?”
History shows after becoming the first nation in the world to outlaw the slave trade, with the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1807 and the owning of slaves with the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, the British Empire acted unilaterally to stamp out slavery throughout the world, as Breitbart News reported.
File/Original caption/A British naval officer overhauling an Arab dhow in Zanzibar during attempts by Great Britain to put an end to the slave trade, circa 1870. The pursuit and overhauling of these fast-sailing slave-dhows required both enterprise and courage on the part of Her Majesty ‘s officers. By W. H. Overend. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
The Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron alone freed some 150,000 African slaves after capturing an estimated 1,600 slave trade ships between 1807 and 1860. In total, 1,587 men died on the West Africa Squadron during efforts to stamp out slavery.
Britain was also instrumental in combating the Barbary and East African slave trades as well.
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