Britain should pay reparations

THE EDITOR, Madam: The notorious fact that Britain shamefully paid enslaving planters for the loss of forced labour continues to haunt the descendants of those who were treated like discarded plantation animals. Slavery was based on racism practised at its worst. It was chattel enslavement, launched on African people and unmatched by any other form of slavery known to man. The Magna Carta, Britain’s bill of rights – its human rights charter – was implemented in June 1215. This was some four centuries before we were criminally extracted from our homeland and trafficked across the Atlantic. The British, who engaged in this massive human trafficking, were at one and the same time protecting their citizens with their centuries-old bill of rights. Its citizens were protected from the arbitrary powers of the king for centuries, because the Magna Carta enacted into law that the king and his government were not above the law, and were prohibited from oppressing or enslaving its people. After being restrained by law, the said king of England, James II, in 1685 spearheaded the birth of a shipping line called the Royal Shipping Company. This company, owned by the predecessors of ‘our’ current King Charles II, shipped...