CARICOM Unites: The Caribbean Community Builds Its Reparations Case

Quarterly Jamaica Windrush & Diaspora Update | Published: 3 July 2013 | Period covered: January–June 2013

Key Developments at a Glance

• CARICOM heads of government commit to establishing a formal regional Reparations Commission in 2013.
• Professor Sir Hilary Beckles of UWI leads the development of the Caribbean reparations framework.
• Home Office announces ‘hostile environment’ policy framework to deter undocumented migrants.
• Immigration Bill being drafted; Caribbean community groups raise alarm about impact on settled residents.
• Deportation charter flights to Jamaica continue; campaign organisations mount legal challenges.
• Jamaica under PNP/Portia Simpson Miller; reparations supported at highest political levels.

The first half of 2013 has seen two parallel and deeply connected stories develop simultaneously — one in Kingston and the Caribbean capitals, and one in London. In the Caribbean, an extraordinary moment of regional solidarity is gathering momentum: the Caribbean Community’s heads of government, meeting in Port of Spain in February for their inter-sessional summit, committed to establishing a formal CARICOM Reparations Commission that will build and advance the Caribbean’s collective case for reparatory justice from the former European colonial powers. In London, at almost the same moment, Home Secretary Theresa May is consolidating and expanding a policy framework that, while ostensibly directed at undocumented migrants, is creating conditions that are already beginning to cause harm to Caribbean-born British residents who have been here for decades and have every right to remain.

CARICOM Moves Towards a Reparations Commission

The decision by CARICOM heads of government to formally establish a regional reparations commission represents the culmination of several years of advocacy by Caribbean academics, civil society organisations, and political leaders. The push has been led intellectually by Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies and one of the most formidable scholarly voices on the history and contemporary consequences of Caribbean slavery. Beckles, whose book “Britain’s Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide” published in 2013 provides the academic foundation for the commission’s work, has been making the case for a formally constituted regional body with the mandate and resources to advance the reparations claim at an international level.

The commission will be charged with developing the legal, historical, and economic case for reparatory justice; engaging with European governments and international organisations; coordinating the national reparations commissions that several Caribbean states have already established; and building public awareness and support for the cause across the region and in the diaspora. Its establishment reflects a growing consensus within CARICOM that the reparations question has moved beyond academic debate into the realm of practical diplomacy and international law, and that the Caribbean’s case needs to be made with the same rigour, organisation, and persistence that any serious international legal claim demands.

Jamaica’s Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, leading the People’s National Party government returned to power in the January 2012 election, has been among the most vocal and committed advocates for the reparations cause among serving Caribbean heads of government. Simpson Miller has spoken about reparations with a personal as well as a political passion, grounding the demand in the lived experience of Jamaica’s people and in the historical record of what British colonialism and slavery took from the island and its people. The Jamaica government’s formal engagement with the CARICOM process, and the resources it has committed to the national reparations commission, reflect that commitment.

The Diaspora’s Role in the Reparations Cause

For the Jamaican and Caribbean community in the United Kingdom, the establishment of the CARICOM Reparations Commission is both a source of pride and a call to action. The diaspora, living in the country that is the primary target of the Caribbean’s reparations claim, is uniquely placed to contribute to the advocacy effort — through public campaigning, media engagement, parliamentary lobbying, and direct connection with the academic and legal professionals in Britain who are building the intellectual case.

Community organisations across the United Kingdom have been increasing their engagement with the reparations question. Cultural events, panel discussions, and community education programmes have been bringing the historical case to new audiences. The Legacies of British Slave-Ownership project at University College London — which has spent years building a searchable database of every slave owner who received compensation from the British government in 1833 — provides a powerful resource for diaspora advocates seeking to make the economic case to British audiences. Its data on the scale of the payments — £20 million to approximately 46,000 slave owners, a sum equivalent to 40 per cent of the government’s annual budget — is the kind of concrete historical evidence that makes the abstract case for reparatory justice immediate and real.

The Hostile Environment: Building the Architecture

In Britain, the political context for the Caribbean community has been shaped in 2013 by Home Secretary Theresa May’s explicit articulation of the “hostile environment” policy. In an interview given in May 2012 and developed through policy action in the year since, May described her aim as creating “a really hostile environment for illegal migration.” The policies being assembled to give effect to that aim — requirements on landlords, employers, banks, and public services to check immigration status; restrictions on NHS access; greater deportation powers — constitute an architecture that, in targeting undocumented migrants, is creating conditions that increasingly affect people who are entirely lawfully in Britain but whose documentation is inadequate to the system’s demands.

For the generation that arrived in Britain from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands in the 1950s and 1960s as British subjects — who were never issued with formal immigration documents because as British subjects they did not need them — the hostile environment’s document requirements are creating a practical problem that could, in the years ahead, become an acute crisis. Community organisations working with elderly Caribbean-born residents are already seeing the early signs: individuals who cannot open bank accounts, who are asked to produce identity documents they do not possess, who are unsure whether their right to be in Britain would survive formal scrutiny in the new enforcement environment.

The Home Office is in the process of drafting an Immigration Bill that will give legislative force to many of the hostile environment measures currently operating in policy. Community groups and legal organisations are seeking to engage with the drafting process to press for protections for settled Commonwealth citizens. The prospects of success are uncertain in a political climate where reducing immigration — and being seen to reduce immigration — is a consuming political imperative for the Conservative-led coalition.

Deportations: An Unresolved Tension

Deportation charter flights to Jamaica remain a persistent source of tension in the UK-Jamaica relationship. The legal framework under which they operate — the mandatory deportation provisions of the UK Borders Act 2007 — continues to apply to foreign nationals with criminal convictions of twelve months or more. Campaign groups including Detention Action, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, and Jamaican diaspora organisations continue to challenge individual flights in court, sometimes successfully, and to press the Home Office for a more humane and individualised approach to cases involving people with deep roots in Britain.

The Jamaican government has raised the deportation issue at bilateral level and through Commonwealth channels. Jamaica’s position — that individuals who came to Britain as young children and have no meaningful connection to Jamaica should not be deported to a country they do not know — has been consistent and clear. Britain’s position — that foreign nationals who commit serious crimes forfeit their right to remain — has been equally consistent. The space for compromise has not yet been found.

As this quarter ends, the Caribbean community in Britain is navigating a landscape that is becoming, in small increments, more difficult and more precarious. The hostile environment is being built brick by brick. The documentation crisis facing the Windrush generation is not yet visible to the national press or the political mainstream. But within communities, in the offices of legal aid charities and community organisations, it is being felt. And in the Caribbean, the response is being organised: not with resignation, but with determination and a clear sense of what history demands.

Sources: Jamaica Information Service; The Gleaner; Jamaica Observer; Caribbean National Weekly; BBC News; Reuters; The Guardian; CARICOM Secretariat; Legacies of British Slave-Ownership database (UCL); Home Office (UK); UK Parliament Hansard; Detention Action; Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants; Runnymede Trust; Jamaica High Commission London.

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