REPARATIONS ROW
Andy Burnham is reportedly considering increasing financial assistance to Commonwealth countries to atone for Britain’s participation in the slave trade. Breaking with established government policy, the Telegraph reports Burnham will listen to demands for education and healthcare investment from African and Caribbean countries at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Antigua which he is attending alongside the King. Pro-reparation campaigners have promised protests.
After Burnham recently suggested he is willing to make a formal apology for slavery, Commonwealth leaders said he had made an ‘essential first step’ towards paying reparations. The Prime Minister has played down suggestions Britain will pay a single lump sum, arguing ministers cannot be held responsible for the wrongdoing of centuries prior. Instead, he will this week offer a ‘structured dialogue’ with nations affected by slavery and consider calls for development funding.
‘Every time we meet, Andy, it only seems to get more expensive’
Some reports suggest that, had British officials originally got their way, discussions of reparations for slavery would not be on the agenda of the summit at all – and Burnham would not have attended if it had been. According to the Guardian, Ralph Gonsalves – a former prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, and a leading reparations campaigner – suggested Britain had to be brought ‘kicking and screaming’ toward the issue and ‘British officials’ were ‘even raising the prospect that if it is on the agenda the Prime Minister of Britain wouldn’t go’.
Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, has suggested Burnham’s intervention is ‘a navel-gazing distraction’ and that if ‘every Commonwealth summit becomes an exercise in presenting Britain with demands for cash then we need to start asking if it is worth the effort’. A formal apology, she suggests, will just lead to more demands for money. The King will address the UK’s role in the trade, reportedly expressing ‘honesty and sincere sorrow’.
Attending a church service to mark Independence Day in Antigua and Barbuda yesterday, the King and Queen were told of the importance of listening to ‘indigenous communities’ by Ernest Flemming, Bishop of the North Eastern Caribbean and Aruba. The religious leader suggested that ‘true partnerships’ within the Commonwealth require the ‘voices of small states’ to be heard. With confusion about what Britain’s position is, the Palace has at least made clear that there will be ‘no surprises’ in the King’s speech on Tuesday. Burnham could learn from his discipline.
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