Caribbean wins reparations payments

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UWI clarifies: No agreement made on reparations as yet

"Not so fast, says the University of the West Indies (UWI), there’s no agreement yet on the payment of 200 million pounds sterling (US $256 million) in reparations from the University of Glasgow.

UWI Vice Chancellor Sir Hilary Beckles sought to make that clear on Tuesday, on the heels of a Jamaica Gleaner newspaper article on Sunday, indicating that the university in the United Kingdom had agreed to make the payments. He said that “while the quoted content of the story is correct, the headline that suggests an agreement to pay 200 million pounds to the UWI is not.”

In a statement issued Tuesday, Sir Hilary acknowledged that the University of Glasgow had admitted that the amount in fees, endowments and grants had been received from Caribbean slave owners, but he stressed that deliberations on payment of reparations were still ongoing. :heh: (until when?)

“The universities are working through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) built upon the principle of ‘reparatory justice,’ but there is no ‘agreement’ about the repayment of 200 million pounds to the UWI,” he said. :stopitslime:

“In good faith, the two universities – ever since the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Glasgow, Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli indicated that his university seeks to be excellent and ethical – have had excellent conversations about how the University of Glasgow can contribute to cleaning up the colonial legacies of slavery that are holding back the region.”

“A working team has been established, which has made many reparatory justice submissions, but is yet to complete its deliberations,” he added.:usure:

Sounds like a bunch of :duck: to me.

"We're sorry and we'll pay something.... but we haven't really decided what and to whom... maybe we'll donate to a few black "elites" who we "trust" will trickle it down to the "people".. because we're sure that'll work... :aicmon: ultimately they'll do our bidding to keep the island under our control while we make it look like we did our part..."
 

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As Glasgow University owns up to slavery wealth, others urged to follow


The institution is making reparations after admitting it had made £200m from the transatlantic trade

Kevin McKenna

Sat 22 Sep 2018 11.29 EDTFirst published on Sat 22 Sep 2018 11.00 EDT

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Professor Geoff Palmer, standing beside a statue of a freed slave in the Calton cemetery, Edinburgh, welcomed the report. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian
Sir Geoff Palmer, Scotland’s first black professor, has welcomed a groundbreaking report into how Glasgow University benefited from the proceeds of slavery. He said it posed “uncomfortable questions” for British society as a whole and called on institutions that had profited from the slave trade to make amends.

The report, published last week by Glasgow University, is based on more than two years of research and reveals that the institution benefited directly from the slave trade in Africa and the Caribbean in the 18th and 19th centuries to the tune of almost £200m in today’s money.

The university has now launched a wide-ranging and ambitious “reparative justice programme”. Ironically, the university was at the forefront of the movement in the 19th century to abolish slavery. It will now create a centre for the study of slavery and a memorial or tribute in the name of the enslaved. It is also working to establish ties with the University of the West Indies.

The report’s findings, though, carry profound implications far beyond the cloistered spaces of this 546-year-old university. The unrelenting and forensic detail of the study also raises questions about how the wealth of the city of Glasgow and other parts of Scotland was derived.

“Some Scots have told me they’re mystified why no one told them any of this, but who did they think made the tobacco?” said Palmer, professor emeritus at the school of life sciences at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. “Now, I think the country faces a very uncomfortable question which the Glasgow University report has raised once more: to what extent did slavery make Scotland great?”


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Ironically, Glasgow University fought to end the transatlantic slave trade. Photograph: Print Collector/Getty Images
Palmer, while paying tribute to the scholarship of the Glasgow University report, and the desire to make reparations, put Scotland and the UK on notice. “We can have all the equality laws and anti-racism legislation we like,” he said, “but if no other institutions, firms or organisations which also benefited from slavery declare this and seek to make amends then it’s all meaningless.


“If they all were to follow the example of Glasgow University then that would be real race relations … If what Glasgow University is doing in reaching out to these communities as a means of reparation were to be replicated, it would make a real difference.”

Pleading ignorance of slavery doesn’t bear scrutiny. An entire district near Glasgow’s city centre was re-named the Merchant City in the 1980s for marketing purposes. It is a chic neighbourhood full of expensive bars, cafes and designer shops in the shadow of some of the city’s grandest civic buildings. Many of these were built on the tobacco trade which profited from the most appalling acts of inhumanity, some of which are described in grim detail in the report.

The evil of slavery has been stitched into the very fabric of Glasgow for almost 200 years: Buchanan Street, Glassford Street and Ingram Street are named after some of the most notorious exploiters of the slave market while Jamaica, Tobago and Virginia are similarly commemorated.

One of the most notorious Scottish slave-masters who figures prominently in the Glasgow University report is Robert Cunninghame Graham who, on his return to Scotland after two decades as a slaver, became a politician, poet and, eventually, rector of Glasgow University. His portrait was painted by the renowned Scottish artist Henry Raeburn and hangs in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. A small entry on the gallery’s website hints at the trade in which Graham made his fortune.

The report also looks at the family connections to the slave trade of the great Scottish engineer James Watt and the Coats family, whose cotton fortune, which contributed to the prosperity of Paisley, was built on slavery.

This, in turn, raises the question of how many other grand Scottish families and companies derive much of their present-day wealth from historical human trafficking and whether or not they may be willing to acknowledge this and make reparations.


Tom Devine, the Scottish historian, was unsparing of Scottish society and his own academic community in a book of essays published last year. In Recovering Scotland’s Slavery Past he wrote: “Scottish engagement in the slave system itself was either ignored or lost from both academic history and popular memory for generations until the early years of the present century. Where amnesia started to take root is difficult to determine.”

Graham Campbell, an African Caribbean member of the ruling SNP group on Glasgow city council, said he was stunned at the scholarship and detail of the university report, entitled Slavery, Abolition and the University of Glasgow. “I was particularly delighted at their use of the phrase ‘reparative justice’ because this means that the university fully intends to implement programmes and projects which will provide scholarship and exchange programmes for Jamaican and other Caribbean students through its links with the University of the West Indies,” he said.

“After this report there is no way the city as a whole can stand by and not act in a similar fashion and I fully expect us and other academic institutions to follow Glasgow’s lead.”

As Glasgow University owns up to slavery wealth, others urged to follow
 
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UWI clarifies: No agreement made on reparations as yet

"Not so fast, says the University of the West Indies (UWI), there’s no agreement yet on the payment of 200 million pounds sterling (US $256 million) in reparations from the University of Glasgow.

UWI Vice Chancellor Sir Hilary Beckles sought to make that clear on Tuesday, on the heels of a Jamaica Gleaner newspaper article on Sunday, indicating that the university in the United Kingdom had agreed to make the payments. He said that “while the quoted content of the story is correct, the headline that suggests an agreement to pay 200 million pounds to the UWI is not.”

In a statement issued Tuesday, Sir Hilary acknowledged that the University of Glasgow had admitted that the amount in fees, endowments and grants had been received from Caribbean slave owners, but he stressed that deliberations on payment of reparations were still ongoing. :heh: (until when?)

“The universities are working through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) built upon the principle of ‘reparatory justice,’ but there is no ‘agreement’ about the repayment of 200 million pounds to the UWI,” he said. :stopitslime:

“In good faith, the two universities – ever since the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Glasgow, Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli indicated that his university seeks to be excellent and ethical – have had excellent conversations about how the University of Glasgow can contribute to cleaning up the colonial legacies of slavery that are holding back the region.”

“A working team has been established, which has made many reparatory justice submissions, but is yet to complete its deliberations,” he added.:usure:

Sounds like a bunch of :duck: to me.

"We're sorry and we'll pay something.... but we haven't really decided what and to whom... maybe we'll donate to a few black "elites" who we "trust" will trickle it down to the "people".. because we're sure that'll work... :aicmon: ultimately they'll do our bidding to keep the island under our control while we make it look like we did our part..."

Just saw this. I am looking for other sources. To verify.
 

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University of Glasgow Commits to Pay Reparations for Profiting From African Enslavement, Providing A Model for Others to Follow
By
David Love
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January 12, 2019
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The University of Glasgow has announced it made £200 million ($255 million) from the transatlantic slave trade according to a comprehensive report, and because of that, will make reparations through a “reparative justice program” and by establishing ties with the University of the West Indies. (Photo: National Library of Jamaica.)
Even as those who oppose reparations argue it is unfeasible or too costly, one British university is proving that it is both possible and necessary to make amends for the enslavement and genocide of African people. While the steps made so far may not seem so substantial, this institution could provide a model for others to follow.

The University of Glasgow made £200 million ($255 million) from the trans-Atlantic slave trade, according to a comprehensive report, and because of that will make reparations through a “reparative justice program” and establishing ties with the University of the West Indies. Reparative justice — which is known by various terms such as “restorative justice,” “communitarian justice,” “making amends,” “positive justice,” “relational justice” and “community justice” — responds to criminal behavior by balancing the needs of the community, the victims and offenders, according to the United Nations.

As opposed to retributive justice — which focuses on criminal punishment for the offender of an individual act, such as retaliation or “an eye for an eye” — reparative justice is about a people’s collective responsibility for committing wrongs, for stealing that which they had no legitimate right to own during times of enslavement or genocide. The reparations do not necessarily take the form of a cash payment to victims to alleviate suffering. According to Restorative Justice International, a global criminal justice reform association advocating for an expansion of victims-driven restorative justice, such a system places victims first, while holding the offenders accountable by having them learn how to make things right from the victims’ perspective.

“Restorative justice repairs the harm caused by crime. When victims, offenders and community members meet to decide how to do that, the results can be transformational,” notes the Centre for Justice and Reconciliation.


In the report “Slavery, Abolition and the University of Glasgow,” which was released in September 2018, the university “acknowledges that during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it received some gifts and bequests from persons who may have benefitted from the proceeds of slavery. Income from such gifts and bequests has been used in supporting academic activity undertaken by the students and staff of the University.” The University of Glasgow says it never owned or traded in enslaved people. The educational institution graduated the first African-American in medicine, and much of its staff had a clear pro-abolitionist position. Nevertheless, the university resolved to decide how to address and understand this history, and, looking ahead, use its resources to increasing understanding of the legacy of slavery, eliminating racism, and promoting racial equality in education and the greater society.

Although the University of Glasgow points to its abolitionist past with pride, it had forgotten that it benefited financially from the profits of enslavement, and trade in goods produced by enslaved people, according to the report. Between 1727 and 1838, at least 133 of its students (3 percent) came from the Caribbean, typically the sons of planters and merchants who enslaved others. Some of these students were likely the children of Scottish men and enslaved or free Black women. “Many Scottish graduates went on to live and work in the slave societies of the Caribbean and North American colonies. As Glaswegian and Scottish merchants, planters, bankers, shipbuilders and others grew wealthy through the slave economy, some of the money they made (or left to their descendants) was passed on to the University of Glasgow, often by grateful alumni” the report noted. While the thousands of enslaved people who created this wealth are unknown, the university acknowledges, it is important to remember the lives and experiences of these people, some of whom are identified in the report.

For example, Ardoch and Beniba worked on the Lucky Hill sugar plantation in Jamaica, regarded by some historians as the harshest system of enslavement ever. These people faced violence, malnutrition, disease and oppressive 96-hour weeks, on average. This resulted in low life expectancy and high mortality for enslaved African people in Jamaica. According to the report, “at least one million enslaved Africans were disembarked on British-ruled Jamaica, yet even with natural increase only 385,000 people of African origin were still alive when the slave trade ended in 1807. With annual mortality rates ranging between 3%-7% far more enslaved people died each year than were imported from Africa or were born on the island.” One quarter of enslaved children on a typical plantation died before adulthood, and most of those who survived died before reaching age 40. “Those who survived into their thirties were by then unwell, maimed or exhausted, and the few who survived beyond their mid-forties were often considered elderly and decrepit,” the report said.



The report from Glasgow comes as other universities assess their role in the enslavement of Black people and the debt they owe, and CARICOM nations demand justice from the European colonial powers in the form of reparations. This past November, corporations have paid reparations for their wartime human rights atrocities. South Korea’s Supreme Court ordered Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan to pay reparations to South Koreans who were forced laborers during World War II. Meanwhile, the Netherlands state-owned rail company Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS) announced, under threat of being sued, that it will compensate survivors and relatives of those it delivered to the Nazi death camps. During Hitler’s regime, NS was paid £2.2 million ($2.8 million) in today’s money to transport 102,000 Jews to European concentration camps.
Taking cues from other universities that admitted they benefited from African enslavement, such Brown, Yale and Georgetown, the University of Glasgow estimated how much it profited from slavery based on many of their benefactors had ties to slavery. For example, out of 200 endowments, scholarships and prizes, 43 had a possible link to slave trade profits, and 16 had a clear connection. In some cases, the university was able to determine that some benefactors derived most or all their wealth from slavery. Although the university found that determining the exact amount of historic gifts and their present-day value is extremely difficult, it is clear the university “enjoyed a significant financial benefit from slave-holding and the profits made from slave-ownership and the trade in slave-produced goods.”

Moving forward, the University of Glasgow has undertaken a number of reparative actions, including increasing racial diversity of students and staff, and scholarships to Afro-Caribbean students; establishing ties with the University of the West Indies; an interdisciplinary center for the study of historical and modern slavery; a professorship for historical slavery and reparative justice; a new commemorative building to increase understanding of the university’s history, and other initiatives.

Attempting to repair the damage done to millions of African people and their descendants is no small task. Estimates of the debt the U.S. alone owes to Black people for the legacy of enslavement ranges in the multiple trillions of dollars. Nevertheless, repairing the damage requires a first step of admitting the crimes committed by society and its institutions and making amends for the theft, rape and pillaging. At least the University of Glasgow has taken that step.
 
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