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.
The debate on the Global South needs to move beyond aid. Mia Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados, has made the case for debt mitigation as part of a Climate transformation deal, an idea embraced by President Macron. Removing debt could form part of a wider discussion on reparations that admits not just the complicity but the active involvement of traditional African kingdoms in the enslavement of the subjugated. Traditional African leaders such as the Asantehene (King of the Asante) and the Oba of Benin as well as Britain and the descendants of the enslaved across the West Indies are natural participants in a discussion that the Commonwealth should facilitate.
The reparations debate has fallen victim to our culture wars, split between the poles of Robert Jenrick, the colonies should be grateful to the Afrikan, Britain needs to pay trillions. Both positions are rather absurd and do nothing to address the serious issues of indebtedness and challenges to development in the African and West Indian Commonwealth. As Liberal Democrats, we believe in the power of multilateral, multinational organisations to be a force for good and free trade. The Commonwealth brings together the West and Global South and should be used as a forum for serious discussions. It will require further resources to do so. We should argue for a Cabinet level Commonwealth and International Development Secretary in the FCDO and a comprehensive Commonwealth visa programme for work, holidays and study.
As believers in a fairer global system we know the Global South must develop to satisfy the hopes and dreams of its people. We also know this cannot be based on fossil fuels that harm the planet as we have done. Removing or restructuring debt and providing additional finance for climate mitigation by accurately valuing natural resources such as tropical rainforests is a way forward. Aid matters but as free traders the removal of tariffs from Global South goods is a better long term solution to grow exports, increase domestic tax revenue and reduce migration. A Liberal Democrat foreign policy should see the Commonwealth as a truly 21st Century body. A forum of equals with a unique membership and the convening power to shape the global debate on climate, debt, development, democracy and security.
* John Armah is a member of City of Westminster Liberal Democrats and a digital transformation consultant based in London.
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14 Comments
The issue is where does it all begin & end …
You are opening up huge historical injustices – all of which are valid ..
Civil rights activist Bayard Rustin puts it into perspective…
“If my great-grandfather picked cotton for 50 years, then he may deserve some money, but he’s dead and gone and nobody owes me anything”
I think is gaslighting on an industrial scale for any political party to pretend that they will ever pay reparations in the form of a large cash payment. No government of any colour red/blue/yellow is ever going to do it.
At the lowest estimate reparations would be £200,000,000,000 pounds (£200 billion). That is about £3,000 in extra tax per man/woman/child. No political party, of any colour is ever going to agree to pay that, it would be political suicide expecting people to pay that for the sins of previous generations. It more than the Budget of the NHS for the entire year. It is just never ever going to happen.
At the highest estimates reparations would be £18,000,000,000,000. (£18 trillion) This is about £300,000 per man/woman/child. In order to pay this every single person in the country would have to sell their homes, empty their bank accounts and pay all the money to the commonwealth. Again it is just never ever going to happen.
Why do we pretend that we are going to pay money reparations?
Anybody who to pay reparations on a personal level can. They can sell their houses and transfer all their assets either to the Commonwealth or any country of their choice, I am sure they will accept the money.
Interesting to read of your family background, John. I lived in Kenya, Nigeria and Singapore as a child, and seeing the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings (CHOGMs), it always struck me as a shame that these countries did not have closer links, despite the talk of ‘South-South Cooperation’ and ‘Afro-Asian solidarity’, also espoused by the Non-Aligned Movement.
One interesting development has been the growing number of countries outside the former British Empire that have joined the Commonwealth, Ghana’s neighbour, Togo, formerly French, being one of them.
Unfortunately, this has emboldened those Brexiteers peddling the ‘Empire 2.0’ myth, the irony being that were they to see a Nigerian passport, they would see that instead of displaying the country’s coat of arms, it displays the emblem of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Regional integration? What a good idea, wonder if it’ll catch on in Europe… oh, wait!
Where does it end?
What about exploitation in Great Britain of all my ancestors? Who worked the fields for the Lords and Barons, who worked down the mines, who had to hustle in the city streets, who worked in unsafe factories for the Industrialists.
Who were at the sharp end of two world wars (causing PTSD and storing up family problems for the next generation to inflict their children (Me and my siblings), who lived in modest post war accommodation, who died young of exposure to asbestos (Father) and the unhealthy diet of the poor (Mother)?
I’m a well-educated professional with a worthwhile/useful career with better than average pay, but still, within this country I’d be much much better off if I’d only been born to a luckier more privileged family.
If the principle of reparations hold… I’m looking for to the land, financial assets, large house, status symbol car, and other luxuries that today’s rich/elite/millionaires/land-owners are morally obliged to send my way. Luvly jubly.
John’s conclusions focus on “Removing or restructuring debt and providing additional finance for climate mitigation by accurately valuing natural resources such as tropical rainforests is a way forward” as well as Visa programs for work, holidays and study for commonwealth citizens and tariff free trade.
Low income counrties do face a debt crisis as this report notes Debt relief in low-income countries
The Common Framework is the current intiative of the G20 and Paris Club to support low income countries.
Munira Wilson submitted a written question to the Treaaury this month on how much debt relief Chad has received from external private creditors through the G20 Common Framework for Debt Treatments Chad: Debts Written Off.
The Commonwealth should be an important body is shaping debt relief negotiations and as the House of Commons Committee report notes “The financial capacity of the UK to help low-income countries through overseas aid has been diminished by cuts to the Official Development Assistance (ODA) target. However, by creating an effective debt relief system and supporting low-income countries to put their finances on a sustainable footing, the UK can have a meaningful impact on the development of low-income countries without spending large sums of money.”
slamdac “every single person in the country would have to sell their homes,”
mmm. who would buy them?
We would have to give them for free to the commonwealth. Even then it would wouldn’t be enough. The net worth of all the assets of the UK is £12 trillion
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/uksectoraccounts/bulletins/thenationalbalancesheetandcapitalstockspreliminaryestimatesuk/2024#:~:text=2.-,UK%20net%20worth,the%20level%20recorded%20in%202021.
The point I’m trying to make is that is is unfair on everyone to string the commonwealth along pretending that we as a county are ever going to pay billions and billions of cash reparations. It’s just not going to happen.
It also poisons any debate about things that are realistic such as debt forgiveness or aid in the form of skills transfer.
John’s proposal for a Cabinet level Commonwealth and International Development Secretary in the FCDO reminds me of what some British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean complaining about being under it when ‘we’re not foreign countries, not Commonwealth countries, and in most cases, not developing!’
The Commonwealth Office, a merger of the Commonwealth Relations Office and the Colonial Office in 1966, only lasted two years before it was merged into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. However, even before then, the post of Colonial Secretary and Commonwealth Secretary had been held simultaneously for two years by Duncan Sandys, co-founder of the European Movement.
No odder than the Department of Health being in charge of the sick and the Department of Work and Pensions being in charge of the unemployed.
Well, more a case of being in charge of those who aren’t sick or unemployed now but might be in future – if those places wanted to become Commonwealth countries, or foreign countries, few in the UK would care; I remember when Bermuda had a referendum on independence, which was rejected, in spite of the Bermudians I knew at university being no more British in outlook than Canadians.
Barbados became a republic nearly three years ago, but that hasn’t stopped British tourists from coming.
Ultimately, most ‘old money’ comes from activities that would be illegal in the UK today. We need inherited wealth to be redistributed at the the individual and international level. It does not require that guilt or victimhood should be inherited.
A wise and balanced article. Let’s steer clear of the culture wars.
@Mark…All too often the progressive left continue to stoke those wars with some virtue signalling – that is impossible to put any context or boundaries on – reparations is one ..
The Commonwealth has the size and the opportunity to be a great force both for its members and for the wider world.
It needs someone\ country to have the vision to make it happen. Yes the UK as the past villain needs to lead it and contribute a regular and substantial amount to what ever the Commonwealth decide to do. I would put Climate Change at the top of the agenda with ending fossil fuels and mitigation preparation as the first things to support the poorer nations with. NO LOANS. Grants and expertise to train locals to earn an income from the work that HAS to be done.