In the Book of Isaiah Chapter 61 and Verse 1, it is stated:
“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.”
The Gospel of Luke tells us in Chapter 4 that Jesus went into the synagogue at Nazareth, where he grew up, on the Sabbath day shortly after he had been tempted by Satan following his 40 day period of fasting. Verse 17 tells us that He stood up and read from the Book of Isaiah. Verse 18 essentially quotes verse 1 of Chapter 61 of Isaiah in these words:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed.”
Jesus also read part of verse 2 of Isaiah 61 which says:
“To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord…”
After Jesus read the scripture He said to the worshippers:
“Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
One of the highly unfortunate and heinous historical facts about the role of the Christian Church, the Anglican Church very much included, in the development of the system of chattel enslavement of Africans in the plantation system of the West Indian colonies of the European countries, is that the official/state Church often sided with the slave holders and the ruling class against the enslaved, oppressed and poor inhabitants of the colonies. The Church provided religious justification and support for slavery. There are ample parts of Scripture, on which the apologists for slavery relied in the Church in defense of this inhumane institution.
As an example, in Leviticus, Chapter 25, verses 44 – 46 it is written:
“As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their clans that are with you, who have been born in your land, and they may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you to inherit as a possession forever. You may make slaves of them, but over your brothers the people of Israel you shall not rule, one over another ruthlessly.”
The leadership of the early Christian Church appears in a number of instances to have accepted and even condoned slavery as it was organized in those ancient times. For example, the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians wrote in Chapter 6 and verse 5 of Ephesians:
“ Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ.”
Again Paul writes to Timothy in verses 1 and 2 of Chapter 6 of 1st Timothy:
“Let all who are under a yoke as slaves regard their own masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be reviled. Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brothers; rather they must serve all the better since those who benefit by their good service are believers and beloved. Teach and urge these things.”
The Church also took the side of those who were in bondage and answered the call of Scripture in keeping with the tradition of the work of Jesus, whose ministry emphasized lifting up the poor and oppressed and rebuking those who exploited, abused and denied them succour for selfish gain. Here we refer to the instruction in Deuteronomy Chapter 23 and verses 15 and 16 as follows:
“You shall not give up to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you. He shall dwell with you, in your midst, in the place that he shall choose within one of your towns, wherever it suits him. You shall not wrong him.”
Isaiah Chapter 1 and verse 17 exhorts us individually and collectively to:
“Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.”
Proverbs 14 and verse 31 advises us that:
“Whosoever oppresses a poor man insults his maker, but he who is generous to the needy honours him”
The Psalms return repeatedly to the theme of opposition and resistance by the poor to their oppression and by those who have empathy with them. Psalm 9:9 affirms:
The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.
And Jesus himself in Matthew Chapter 25, verses 41-46 has this to say in instructing his disciples about the kingdom of God and the judgement of God:
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’
David, in Psalm 119 and verse 134 prays:
“Redeem me from man’s oppression, that I may keep your precepts.”
Confusing? This can be quite confusing. What is really the mind of God? What is it that God would really have us do? Is God a pacifist and would have us succumb to oppression meekly. Is it his will that we should have accepted chattel slavery and accept wage slavery, exploitation, poverty and oppression, today? Bible verses seem to provide justification to suffer oppression passively and peaceably. Simultaneously, there is strong support in the Bible for working to alleviate and end oppression, deprivation and poverty.
The second course, alleviating and ending oppression and poverty, to me makes most sense, biblically. The Children of Israel resisted enslavement in Egypt and God raised up Moses and Aaron and Joshua to lead them to freedom from Egypt and into the Promised Land. Jesus preached and modeled love in action extended to the downtrodden and exploited, recognizing that though they are the most disadvantaged in society, they are equally worthy of the favour and love of God.
The compass with which to navigate the contradictory and confusing verses of Scripture on slavery is the overriding admonition of Jesus that we should love our fellow human beings and care about and for them in the same measure that we would wish to be loved and cared about. We must aim to love them unselfishly.
With unselfish love as our compass we can be comfortable taking the side of the oppressed against their oppressors. As the children of enslaved and oppressed forebears we have a duty to resist oppression in our day as they did in theirs and to remind ourselves of their legacy of resistance by pondering the meaning of their partial emancipation partial chattel slavery on August 1st 1834 and full freedom for slavery on August 1st, 1838. We must recommit to striving in our day to make freedom ring in our communities, as Martin Luther King Jr. called us to do and to erase the harmful impacts of slavery on our societies since 1838, 175 years ago.
EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH COLONIES, 1834 – 1838
Fast forward from biblical times to July 31st, 1834 in the British colonies in the Caribbean, in which Africans were enslaved as chattels for over 200 years, providing the labour for the production operations of the sugar plantations. At midnight on that date, the legal foundation of chattel slavery was destroyed and our enslaved forebears were set free nominally or as may be said, set free on paper. August 1st, 1834, in the minds of the newly freed ancestors, was the first day of a new era that they expected would bring about a marked improvement in their life conditions and opportunities. From the get go, certain provisions of the Act for the Abolition of Slavery of the British Parliament aimed specifically to limit the civil rights and freedoms of the formerly enslaved populations of the colonies. These provisions greatly benefitted the sugar planters and the other slave owners.
Emancipation was the outcome of two movements. Firstly, a tradition evolved among the enslaved Africans and their descendants, of resistance to slavery. They fought against their abject subjugation passively and actively. Active resistance from time to time boiled over into individual and group acts of violent revolt aimed at destroying the system. As a result, the system of slavery became progressively more costly to maintain.
The second movement was the antislavery movement by white British antislavery activists, who were morally outraged at the institution of slavery in the British colonies and were motivated by Christian and philanthropic values and sentiments to advocate and lobby for the abolition of the British slave trade and of slavery. The slave trade was abolished in 1807. It took a further twenty seven years to achieve the abolition of slavery in the British colonies, in 1834.
On 28 August 1833, the British Parliament passed An Act for the Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Colonies; for promoting the industry of the manumitted Slaves; and for compensating the Persons hitherto entitled to the Services of such Slaves. The Preamble of the Act, which summarizes the objects and reasons for the law reads:
‘WHEREAS divers Persons are holden in Slavery within divers of His Majesty’s Colonies, and it is just and expedient that all such Persons should be manumitted and set free, and that a reasonable Compensation should be made to the Persons hitherto entitled to the Services of such Slaves for the Loss which they will incur by being deprived of their Right to such Services: And whereas it is also expedient that Provision should be made for promoting the Industry and securing the good Conduct of the Persons so to be manumitted, for a limited Period after such their Manumission: And whereas it is necessary that the Laws now in force in the said several Colonies should forthwith be adapted to the new State and Relations of Society therein which will follow upon such general Manumission as aforesaid of the said Slaves; and that, in order to afford the necessary Time for such Adaptation of the said Laws, a short Interval should elapse before such Manumission should take effect;’
Note should be taken of this statement in particular:
“a reasonable Compensation should be made to the Persons hitherto entitled to the Services of such Slaves for the Loss which they will incur by being deprived of their Right to such Services”
Glaringly absent from the Preamble is any reference to resources to be allocated for assistance and compensation of any kind for those to be freed on August 1st, 1834. On the other hand, the Preamble sets out as an objective “promoting the Industry and securing the good Conduct of the Persons so to be manumitted, for a limited Period after such their Manumission.” The measures authorized for this purpose, constituted the apprenticeship system. Apprenticeship was intended to last for six years. It was cut short by two years, due to the resistance of the newly freed Africans between August 1st, 1934 and July 31st, 1838.
The British Government eventually provided a fund of 20,000,000 Pounds Sterling, to compensate the planters and other former slave holders. This figure has been variously estimated as equivalent to between 25% and 40% of the British Government’s budget at that time. Research also has revealed that taxes on the imports of the produce of the British West Indian colonies mainly sugar and by products made the largest percentage contribution to the Government’s revenues.
The 20 million Pounds Sterling in today’s currency has been estimated between 11.6 and 76 billion Pounds in compensation. Guyanese, Sir Ronald Sanders, noted Caribbean diplomat, quoted these figures in a panel discussion at the University of London in October 2013 on reparations. The British Government went into debt and obtained a loan of this amount to compensate the former slave owners.
A major, but little known legacy of this compensation, discussed by Sir Ronald Sanders is that these compensation monies became a major part of the financial base for several of today’s leading banks in Britain, such as Barclays, Lloyds Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland. Britain’s economy and society and economy gained in many other ways as well.
What did the formerly enslaved Africans get for their blood sweat and tears? Nothing! And how did Caribbean economies and societies benefit? They did not. The Act for the Abolition of Slavery was heavily skewed in favour of the ruling planter class and middle merchant class in the colonies, especially the absentee planters. Apprenticeship was geared to keep the economic situation on the plantations and in the West Indian colonies as a whole, as close as possible to the conditions that existed before Emancipation. The Act required the former slaves to work unpaid five days a week for at least 40 hours on the plantations. They were forced to provide their food, shelter, clothing and other means of survival for themselves in the remaining two days and in the hours before and after they worked free of charge for the planters, during the regular work week.
This was a highly beneficial deal for the planters. Under slavery the slave owners were responsible for the welfare of the enslaved workers. With Apprenticeship they were relieved of this responsibility. At the same time they were entitled by law to 40 hours a week of unpaid labour from the newly freed workers. In a sense this represented further compensation/reparations for the slave holding planters.
The newly freed men and women strongly resisted Apprenticeship and forced its abandonment in 1838, two years ahead of schedule. From August 1st, 1838, the planters had to pay the workers for their labour. Despite the payment of wages, conditions continued to be stacked against the former slaves as the wages paid were virtually starvation wages. This accelerated the growth of the free peasantry, based on small holdings and the development of communities in some of the larger colonies, economically self-sufficient and largely independent of the plantation.
CELEBRATION OF THE ANNIVERSARY OF EMANCIPATION
The tradition of celebrating Emancipation day, with merriment and festivities began from the very first Emancipation Day.
The annual celebration on August 1st or on the first Monday in August of Emancipation Day in Anguilla and across British Commonwealth Caribbean countries has evolved into a season of revelry in the form of national carnival celebrations and other festival events. They uniquely include, in Anguilla’s case, the sport of traditional boat racing.
The celebrations, in Anguilla, have been transformed over the decades from an annual August Monday bazaar by the Anglican Church in the Valley and replaced by national carnival celebrations for ten to twelve days around the Emancipation Day holiday. Traditional carnival events constitute only half of the festivities.
The other half of the Emancipation festival in Anguilla is the programme of boat racing that lasts typically eight days from the Sunday before August Monday to the Sunday following August Monday. Most recently, on August Monday, Carnival and boat racing come together in what is dubbed the Caribbean’s biggest beach party in Sandy Ground, patronized by people in their thousands from Anguilla, the nearby islands and further afield. The celebrations are now officially dubbed Anguilla Summer Festival.
BEYOND THE FUN: PONDERING EMANCIPATION’S SIGNIFICANCE
Over the years, occasionally there have been less public events to remember and draw attention to the importance of Emancipation Day. In Anguilla, the Anglican Church has played a lead role over the decades along with the Methodist Church. It seems to me that in the past few years, a new twist to the observance is taking root as a result of the initiative of our Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Errol Brooks. This is to be seen in the turn out of worshippers in African and African inspired fashions. There was a time when, and perhaps it still lingers today, when our people no matter how dark of hue, would be highly insulted if you called them Africans. Thankfully that is fast disappearing and we are all coming to terms with our ethnic, racial, cultural and historic personas, defining who we are.
Perhaps most significant is the fact that the Church as a whole in Anguilla has begun to place greater emphasis on reminding all of us from whence we came and of the significance of Emancipation. This is happening at the same time that the Summer Festival, comprising carnival and boat racing is growing and diversifying.
CARICOM REPARATIONS JUSTICE PROGRAMME
Fast forward to March 11, 2014, in Kingstown, St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Caribbean Community Heads of Government under the Chairmanship of Dr. the Rt. Hon. Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines met and among a varied decisions approved a ten point plan for reparations for slavery, according to the official communiqué from the meeting. It must be remembered that nothing was included in the Abolition of Slavery Act of 1834 to give our forebears a leg up. And so it is quite remarkable that we have been able to achieve the level of progress made in CARICOM countries, especially the former British, French and Dutch colonies, despite continuing exploitation up to the present day.
CARICOM leaders have seen it fit to place the issue of reparations for slavery squarely on the table for dialogue, discussion and negotiation particularly with the British, French and Dutch Governments. Should they fail in bringing those governments to the negotiating table, they will have to ponder the legal basis for taking the matter to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The reparations claim appears to be a long shot. Occasionally, long shots do beat the odds. As a minimum, it will generate increased debate on and analysis of the social, cultural, economic, political and psychological effects of the chattel enslavement of Africans in the plantation system of the European colonies in the Americas, particularly on their descendants and more generally on Caribbean society. It should stimulate alternative strategies to break the cycle of persistent poverty in Caribbean countries in the nearly 200 years since Emancipation.
THE CARICOM TEN POINT REPARATIONS PLAN
The ten point plan approved by CARICOM heads covers the following issues:
1. FULL FORMAL APOLOGY
It is held to be psychologically critical that the European governments that operated the system of slavery in their Caribbean colonies should issue a sincere and full formal apology for slavery. Some governments have issued Statements of Regrets. These are considered to be insufficient.
2. REPATRIATION
The transatlantic slave trade involving the transportation of 10 to 15 million Africans from Africa to the Americas, historically is the largest forced migration, unparalleled in terms of its brutality and inhumanity.
Some descendants of the victims of slavery wish to return to the African homeland. A repatriation programme should be implemented and persons wishing to do so should be assisted to resettle in African countries. Principles and best practices of international law and diplomacy should be utilized in this undertaking.
3. INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM
The European colonizing countries committed genocide on the Native American populations that inhabited the Caribbean, when they arrived. Estimated at over 3,000,000 in 1700, they were systematically decimated and also succumbed to diseases brought to the region with the European conquerors and colonists. The descendants of the original inhabitants are estimated to number less than 30,000 at present. A special programme for their development should be created and funded.
4. CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS
Descendants of the enslaved Africans lack their own institutions and do not have ready access to relevant institutions, such as museums, research institutes and varied societies and associations whose functions, aims and objectives are to explore scientifically and communicate their experiences from their perspectives.
5. PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS
The incidence of hypertension and Type 2 diabetes has been estimated to be the highest in the world among the African descended population in the Caribbean. This health crisis is partly attributable to the nutritional limitations, physical and emotional challenges and overall stress associated with slavery and its aftermath.
Major improvement in the health of the citizens of Caribbean countries is critical to the achieving economically and socially sustainable societies. It calls for more resources in health and related science and technology than the region can afford.
6. ILLITERACY ERADICATION
A significant minority of the working class and peasantry in Caribbean countries remains functionally illiterate, despite valiant efforts to erase illiteracy in the years since countries achieved political independence. This is a legacy of slavery, which the European nations that held slave colonies in the West Indies should help to end.
7. AFRICAN KNOWLEDGE PROGRAM
The forced transportation and systematic enslavement of Africans in the Caribbean has resulted in alienation and denial by their descendents of their African cultural identity. A structured programme of cultural education and knowledge transfer regarding the African roots of the populations and societies of Caribbean countries needs to be implemented on a continuing basis.
8. PSYCHOLOGICAL REHABILITATION
The psychological trauma suffered by the enslaved Africans and their descendants needs to be healed and repaired by long term, comprehensive initiatives.
9. TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
The Caribbean has been confined to the role of producer and exporter of primary goods. Today, manufacturing remains secondary. Education and production have failed to create a culture of science and technology. Transfer of technology and science for development must be a part of the reparations programme by European countries for Caribbean countries, which they developed as slave holding colonies.
10. DEBT CANCELLATION
The pressure of development and expense of public employment and social policies to confront the colonial legacies has resulted in states accumulating and being trapped in unsustainable levels of public debt. A programme to cancel much of this debt should be implemented as part of the reparations plan.
PROSPECTS
What are the prospects for success of this venture by CARICOM? CARICOM countries face severe obstacles. They have quite limited leverage in international relations and diplomacy. Britain, France and Holland possess much greater influence, power and leverage to resist CARICOM’s demands in the international community. Legal hurdles have to be overcome in establishing the claim in international law.
There are complex and practical challenges in pursuing this matter and building a solid case for reparations. They include the far removal in time of the occurrence of the crimes against humanity, represented by the African Slave Trade and chattel slavery on the plantations of the Caribbean from the present era, when the claim is made being made. Compensation by the European countries in any form is likely to have a spillover effects and set a problematic precedent. For example, this would have major implications for the Arab states that also engaged in African slavery. Determination of the quantum and form of the reparations and division of the benefits among those eligible to receive them would be a quite difficult task.
Reparations ares a long shot indeed, but as we say in Anguilla, nothing beats a trial but a failure (to try).
Each of us is left to ponder on these issues and reach our own a positions on them.
May God continue to watch over us all and bless us and enable us to value the freedoms we enjoy today, for which we owe a great debt to all those who have helped to expand our liberty over the centuries and especially at this time, those who brought about Emancipation and the progress we have made thus far. AMEN.
