KING Charles acknowledged “painful aspects” of Britain’s history while failing to address calls about reparations for slavery, but he could learn from a Scottish university on how to atone for his ancestral past, a leading expert said.
At a summit of Commonwealth leaders in Samoa this week, the head of the British monarchy said: “None of us can change the past, but we can commit … to learning its lessons.”
With a change in party leadership in the UK Government and Charles being crowned king in 2023, both have been facing increasing pressure from renewed calls for the UK to pay reparations.
The Caribbean Community (Caricom) reparations committee has urged Prime Minister Keir Starmer to “engage in a compassionate, intergenerational strategy to support postcolonial reconstruction”.
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David Cameron famously said Jamaica should “move on from the painful legacy of slavery” when visiting the nation in 2015.
However, Professor Geoff Palmer, a scientist and human rights activist who is also the chancellor of Heriot-Watt University, said there has been a lot more learned about the UK’s colonial past since Cameron’s comments 10 years ago.
Palmer, Scotland’s first black professor, led a review into Edinburgh City Council’s involvement in the slave trade, where it apologised unequivocally for its part.
He was also cited in the University of Glasgow’s 2019 decision to engage in a £20 million reparation programme where the institute acknowledged it financially benefited from slavery.
The professor believes the University of Glasgow’s model, which is seen as an example of “reparative justice”, is something both the UK Government and the royal family could look at as a realistic way to atone for its historical colonial past.
“They came up with a report admitting that they got money from slavery, and they set up an educational programme in the West Indies in order to assist the University of the West Indies,” Palmer said. “And that programme is working.”
The most commonly used figure for what the UK owes towards reparations for its part in the slave trade and colonialism is around £18 trillion – an amount worth seven times Britain’s annual economic output.
A figure Palmer said realistically wouldn’t be paid, but the UK Government and the royal family could set up similar programmes like the University of Glasgow’s in the Caribbean or India.
“The point is that funding could be found,” he said.
A counterargument Palmer often gets is why the actions of the people in the past are the responsibility for those alive today.
“We cannot change the past,” he said. “But we can change the consequences of the past, such as racism, for the better, using education.”
Palmer explained that consequences can be used to look at and address in the best possible way what has happened historically and can be used as a positive step forward.
The academic said that Scotland is already ahead in understanding its part in the UK’s colonial history.
“The Scottish people are big enough to take their own history,” he said.
An example Palmer gave of Scotland’s willingness to better understand its history was the replacement of a plaque at the base of the controversial Melville Monument in Edinburgh.
The plaque, which was installed in March explained that Henry Dundas, an 18th-century politician, delayed the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade - which resulted in the enslavement of half a million Africans.
When approached by academics from the Caribbean who have asked why Scotland seems to be ahead in terms of its willingness to accept its past, Palmer said: “With the people of Scotland, once you tell them the truth, you can’t go back and tell them a lie.”
He added: “Scotland has played a role – a leading role – in looking at this history and therefore in terms of reparation, there is a lead because Glasgow University has set out an educational programme which could be followed.”
Britain transported about three million people from Africa to the Caribbean where the average lifespan of a slave was around seven years.
Palmer (below) asked how much worth you can put on a life, never mind what price you can put on three million lives.
According to the professor, debating that question won’t get anyone anywhere and will cause a “whole load of resentment” towards the king and the government, which he said will not produce anything.
However, acceptance and acknowledging the past is the way forward, he said.
He reiterated that both the UK Government and the royal family need to get to the point where they can look at what is financially affordable and from there start to make reparations for the past.
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“I think that will address [reparations], rather than we keep debating about trillions of pounds, which is completely unrealistic, and try to balance that Africans were involved in and it's the past.
“The past has consequences in not just slavery, but in a lot of what we do.
“Therefore, as far as I'm concerned, we have a diverse society – and a diverse society requires diverse management to be fair and efficient.”
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