JANUARY 2000 
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      SLAVERY 
      COVER STORY   
      For whom the bell tolls
      This is the conclusion of Lord Anthony Gifford's paper on slavery and reparations. We published Part I in our last issue. Here, he begins by asking: Who are the claimants for reparations?
      The broad answer is that all Africans, on the continent of Africa and in the Diaspora, who suffer the consequences of the crime of mass kidnap and enslavement, have an interest in this claim.

      I am opposed to any divisiveness in the formulation of the claim. If, for example, we plan for an Africans-on-the-Continent claim and a separate Africans-in-the-Diaspora claim, we will already have begun to splinter into fractions. 

      All Africans around the world have been affected in some way by the crime of slavery. Even those who have succeeded in a business or a profession have had to face racial prejudice at the least. And while there may be some whose families enriched themselves by collaboration with the slavers, that should not be allowed to undermine the overall truth that the rape of Africa impoverished all Africans, both those who were taken and those who were left behind. 

      Who should process the claim on behalf of so many? This is a matter which transcends national governments - but governments are the chief implementers of social programmes, as well as being responsible for the repayment of their country's foreign debt. They should neither be excluded from, nor have sole control over, the prosecution of the claim. 

      In any case, African-Americans, African-British, French-Africans and others who are in a minority in the country where they have settled, have no government which could speak for them. 

      Some form of appropriate, representative and trustworthy body will be required; its size and composition, and the mechanisms for setting it up, will become clearer as the movement for reparations develops. 

      5. The claim would be brought against the governments of those countries which promoted and were enriched by the African slave trade and the institution of slavery

      Who is responsible for paying reparations? Here it is more appropriate to concentrate on the governments of the countries which fostered and supported the slave trade, which legitimised the institution of slavery, and which have profited as a result. 

      It would be possible to identify individual companies which could be proved to have made vast profits from slavery. There are plantation owners in Jamaica, and titled families in England, whose living heirs owe their wealth to slaving. Should such companies and families be targeted as individual defendants to a reparations claim? 

      In my view such an approach would create more problems than it solved. Enormous research would be needed to identify the companies and families, to determine how much money was made by their ancestors, and to calculate how much should be forfeited by the present shareholders or family members. The process would inevitably be somewhat arbitrary, and potentially oppressive, and it would be rejected both by the targets themselves and their governments. 

      I would however make one exception, when it can be proved that a work of art or an artefact, now in a public or private collection, was originally obtained illegally in the course of an invasion or plundering exercise in Africa. 

      In this one case, the international law concept of restitution in kind could be applied. The reparation process must include the restoration of identifiable treasures to the country which most closely represents the people from whom they were robbed. 

      In reality in these cases of restitution, the individual owner would lose the work of art, but would most probably receive compensation for its value from his own government. 

      This is because the restitution would have been made with the co-operation of the relevant European or other government; and it is a normal principle that compensation must be paid when private property is taken away by act of a government. 

      The reasons why the "defendants" to the reparation claim should be governments, are in my view that it is governments which have some measure of control over their national wealth, through their reserves and their taxation powers; it is governments who must in the end be persuaded that reparations are to be paid as a matter of justice; it is governments who can determine whether Africa's debt burden should be unladen from its shoulders; and it is governments which are responsible for making international treaties and implementing them through the passage of laws. 

      Historians will advise as to which countries have profited most from slavery and the slave trade. The major European maritime trading nations and colonisers can be easily identified. So can the United States, as a country which grew rich on slave labour and the exploitation of African-Americans. However, as the next section indicates, the assessment and evaluation of responsibility will be a vast undertaking. 

      6. The amount of the claim would be assessed by experts in each aspect of life and in each region, affected by the institution of slavery

      The assessment of what should be claimed is perhaps the most pressing and onerous task to be faced by the reparations movement. Each affected country will have to be studied, and perhaps even each people within each country. Different considerations will apply to the peoples of the African continent; the peoples of the now independent countries where slavery flourished; and the peoples who are now minorities in Europe or North America. 

      The damage may be classified and researched under different headings. There is economic damage, cultural damage, social damage and psychological damage. 

      To put monetary figures on any of the elements of the claim raises questions to which I have no answers: how do you assess the value of the loss to an African people of a young person, kidnapped and transported over 200 years ago? 

      What figure can be placed on the psychological damage inflicted by a system which is still deeply racist? 

      Can it be proved that the slave system destroyed old and flourishing African civilisations, and if so, how is their value to be measured? 

      What level of restitution is appropriate for the African peoples of the Diaspora? 

      Another approach, perhaps to be adopted in parallel, is to measure the amount by which various European nations were directly enriched by the institution of slavery. 

      In the Report of the Inquiry into Racism in Liverpool, which I conducted in 1989, I quoted the historian Ramsay Muir, who wrote in 1907. He described the slave trade as: "The pride of Liverpool, for it flooded the town with wealth which invigorated every industry, provided the capital for docks, enriched and employed the mills of Lancashire, and afforded the means of opening out new and ever new lines of trade. Beyond a doubt, it was the slave trade which raised Liverpool from a struggling port to be one of the richest and most prosperous trading centres in the world." 

      Similar evidence could be uncovered about Bristol, London, Bordeaux, and many other ports. And naturally the wealth generated through the ports spread into the whole country. 

      But here too, even if the general picture is clear, the detailed evaluation is not easy. Is it possible to work out the amount of profits which poured into the ports of Europe? If so, how should that amount be translated into present-day money? Is the process any easier in the case of North America and the Caribbean, in relation to the profits of the plantation-owners? 

      Fortunately there are many seekers after truth who are trying to find answers to all these questions through careful research. Any figures put on the various elements of the reparations claim will at best be estimates made from a basis of sound historical research. However the research process itself will have a value far beyond the calculation of figures. It will be an educational process through which the horrors of the past will be re-examined. 

      The more the details of the slave system and its consequences are exposed, the more understanding there will be, among African people and white, of the justice of the reparations claim. 

      7. The claim, if not settled by agreement, would ultimately be determined by a special international tribunal recognised by all parties

      There is at present no court which would be competent to hear a claim for reparations for Africa and Africans in the Diaspora. The International Court of Justice is competent to hear claims by one state against another for breaches of international law. But this claim is on a much vaster scale than a claim between states. It would need a new mechanism, commensurate with the unique and massive issues of which I have spoken. 

      The absence of a court is no impediment to the reparations claim. In the examples given earlier, the legitimacy of the claim was recognised and embodied in an agreement, without there having been any pre-existing tribunal to deal with the grievance.

      As part of the agreement, a mechanism for dealing with individual claims has been established. The nature of the court which makes the binding decisions will depend on the issues at stake and the negotiations which have preceded the agreement. 

      For example, the agreement made between Iran and the United States for the payment of reparations set up a nine-member commission, consisting of three American judges, three Iranian, and three from countries not involved in the dispute. It sat in three chambers of three judges, and made adjudication's on nearly four thousand claims. 

      At this stage, therefore, it is premature to consider the composition of any commission or tribunal which might ultimately adjudicate upon the African reparations claim. The adjudicating body will only carry authority if it has been set up with the concurrence of all parties to the dispute. The international recognition of the justice of the claim is a condition precedent to the setting up of any judicial machinery. 

      This, then is the great task in which lawyers have a specific but significant contribution to make. They are only a small part of the panoply of forces which will be needed - historians, archaeologists, artists, writers, politicians, sociologists, psychologists, and beyond them all people of good will, of all races, who perceive that the crime of slavery was a monstrous evil, for which atonement and reparation is long overdue. 



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