THE inhuman brutality of British capitalism has emerged into the light of day as the crimes of the past take centre stage over the issue of reparations for Britain’s domination of the barbaric slave trade.
This week, Labour prime minister Andy Burnham was attending a meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government in Antigua – a meeting that was also addressed by King Charles yesterday.
King Charles expressed his ‘sincere sorrow’ for Britain’s ‘historic participation’ in the slave trade but drew back from issuing an official apology.
Burnham meanwhile at the weekend said he was ‘considering’ offering a formal apology on behalf of Britain.
On Monday, it was reported that Burnham has pledged £40 million for green energy schemes in the West Indies and offered to set out plans to help poorer Commonwealth countries facing increased costs on their national debts.
These are promises that fall far short of reparations for the crimes of British capitalism.
On Sunday, Labour chancellor John Healey, in an interview with the BBC, made it clear that the Labour government while open to ‘a discussion about an apology… doesn’t believe that reparations are the right approach’.
Healey insisted that British capitalism shouldn’t have to pay for past wrongdoings.
Past wrongdoings doesn’t begin to describe the sheer inhumanity of the prominent role played by the British merchants and politicians in the slave trade that became the official policy of the British state.
The roots of the British slave trade go back to the 16th century with Britain becoming the dominant force in the transatlantic slave trade up to the 19th century.
British slave ships, protected by the navy, transported an estimated 3.1 million men, women and children from Africa across the Atlantic to be sold in the Caribbean, South America and North America to work on sugar, cotton and tobacco plantations under inhuman conditions.
Around 2.7 million survived this brutal transportation.
Slavery was not just tolerated by the British government but was given legal protection by the state and provided the economic foundation for the massive expansion of the British Empire.
Institutions in Britain, including banks, universities and aristocratic families, made their fortunes on the backs of the exploitation of African slaves who were treated as ‘sub-human’ by their British ‘owners’.
The 1833 Slavery Abolition Act was finally passed, in the teeth of furious opposition from MPs from both the Tory and Whig parties.
A combination of the declining profitability of the slave trade accentuated by the increasing number of uprisings by slaves and the growing opposition amongst workers at home forced the abolitionist case through.
This act legally freed around 800,000 Africans across the British colonies, including the Caribbean, South America and Canada.
These newly freed slaves received nothing from their former ‘owners’ or the British state leaving the majority with no land, financial support and no opportunities for education or jobs.
While they were dumped and left to starve, the British government passed the Slave Compensation Act in 1837 handing £20 million – the equivalent of over £20 billion today – to compensate British slave owners for their financial losses.
This huge sum, representing 40% of Britain’s national budget, was financed through a massive loan taken on by the government – a loan that was only finally paid off in 2015.
For 189 years, British taxpayers have been paying off a debt that was used to finance the banks and major industries that have the economic fortunes they enjoy today based on human slavery.
African and Caribbean countries have formally demanded that Britain apologises and pays reparations for the inhuman slave trade that provided the basis for British capitalism to expand across the world.
With Burnham refusing to pay compensation, the only way for justice to be served is for the working class to bring down the Labour government and bring in a workers government that will expropriate the vast fortunes made out of slavery by the capitalist class and use this to pay the compensation that British capitalism owes for its crimes against humanity.