Tag Archives: reparations

The Commonwealth, reparations and a Liberal Democrat approach

By John Armah | Thu 31st October 2024 - 12:00 pm

As we come to the end of Black History Month, it seems an appropriate time to discuss our party’s policy on the Commonwealth, reparations and the Climate Emergency. With the election of Ghana’s Foreign Minister Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey as the new Secretary-General of the Commonwealth,the subject of reparations has risen to the top of the agenda. We should take this time to think about what a Liberal Democrat policy should be.

We should vigorously and vociferously make the case for the Commonwealth.This is personal, my late father served as Ghana’s High Commissioner (Ambassador) to the UK and was charged with removing the newly declared republic from the Commonwealth. He like many others then and now viewed it as a colonial hangover. However, he was persuaded by the Indian Prime Minister and Pakistani President that the body was the only forum where the West and Global South met as equals.

He was persuaded and went on to persuade newly independent countries across the West Indies, Asia and Africa of the merits of joining. He became a leading advocate, opening the Commonwealth Institute in London with the late Queen and co-founding the Africa Centre. It influenced his thinking when he helped establish the African Union. If a man born in a British Colony, who’s grandparents could remember being subjects of an Asante and then a British Emperor believed in the potential of the Commonwealth, we need to think about what it should look like in the twenty-first century.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged climate emergency and the commonwealth | 14 Comments

Should we make it policy to apologise for historical UK atrocities?

By Dean Moore | Mon 12th September 2016 - 12:31 pm

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The Transatlantic Slave Trade, famine in India, Social Darwinist programs across the globe (which included racial science influencing policy and creating what were effectively concentration camps for indigenous peoples in Australia and in South Africa during the second Boer War) and the destruction of the city of Benin – the United Kingdom is far from an innocent player on the international stage.

Even in the modern age, our hands are not exactly clean. Churchill openly endorsed eugenics and now-illegal warfare (saying in one letter that he saw no issues with “giving the natives a sniffle”, regarding biological weaponry). We engaged in the War on Terror and this year official government figures have shown that we are the second biggest arms dealer in the world, having sold two-thirds of our weaponry to the destabilised Middle East.

Our history, though sometimes a progressive one, is drenched in human rights abuses across the planet. Of the 196 countries in the world, only 22 have not experienced an invasion led by the British.