Our grievance is legitimate. Our memory is necessary. Our demand for justice is neither begging nor charity; CARICOM itself frames reparatory justice in terms of recognition, accountability and transformation. But beyond grievance lies a nobler embraceable possibility. Let Britain atone — not by paying backwards, but by helping the Caribbean move forwards.

This is not an argument for indiscriminate punishment of contemporary Britons. Quite the contrary. It is an invitation to British institutions to investigate themselves honestly, and the documentary ground for doing so is unusually solid. Legitimate standing to negotiate reparations should belong to the injured and their descendants, not to intermediaries who have discovered a profitable enthusiasm for ancestry, rural Jamaican-accented vocabulary and darker complexions. Ima

The question is not whether the enslaved created wealth. They did. The question is whether the beneficiaries of that wealth ever fully compensated its unwilling producers. They did not. And if the debt was never repaid, then the moral and institutional question remains: Who still owes—and what would genuine repayment look like?

Who supplied the energy and intelligence that made the extraordinary accumulation of wealth from chattel slavery possible?

Britain compensated slave-owners £20 million at emancipation. The formerly enslaved got nothing. That compensation became public debt—only finally repaid in 2015. This is not inherited guilt. It is unfinished justice.... Read Online

“If the judges cannot get along, how can we trust them to settle our disputes?” That question may be unfair. But it is real. And public confidence is not built by telling citizens that they are foolish for asking difficult questions. It is built by answering those questions. I therefore write this not as an opponent of the CCJ but as a Caribbeanist who desperately wants it to succeed. I want the CCJ to become the trusted final court of the Caribbean. I want our child