King Charles has acknowledged the “pains of the past” in an attempt to smooth over the ongoing row about reparations for Britain’s role in the slave trade.
Speaking on the first full day of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm) in Samoa, the King called for “ways to right enduring inequalities” but avoided taking sides in the diplomatic dispute between Sir Keir Starmer and Caribbean leaders calling for compensation.
He said: “I understand from listening to people across the Commonwealth how the most painful aspects of our past continue to resonate. It is vital therefore that we understand our history to guide us to make the right choices in the future … None of us can change the past, but we can commit with all our hearts to learning its lessons and to finding creative ways to right inequalities that endure.”
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Editor: the responses to the Kings comments should not surprise!
As a series of Labour MPs called on the government to discuss reparations, chancellor Rachel Reeves was asked on a trip to Washington if Britain could afford to pay them. She replied: “No”.
Sir Keir is expected to be pressed on the issue personally while in Samoa, after the prime minister of the Bahamas Philip Davis said he wanted a “frank talk” with the PM on the issue, while Fred Mitchell, his country’s foreign affairs minister, said it was “only a matter of time” before the Labour leader changed his position.
At the summit, Sir Keir said that this generation should have a conversation about the history of slavery but said that the UK should be “forward looking” in its stance on reparations.
He told the BBC: “We should look at what are today’s challenges in this group of countries represented here today.
Asked if he thinks this generation can be held responsible for the actions of their forebears, Sir Keir told the BBC: “I think our generation can say the slave trade and practice was abhorrent, and we should, you know, we talk about our history. We can’t change our history, but we should certainly talk about our history.”
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And ex-shadow chancellor John McDonnell, currently suspended from the party after he voted against the government to scrap the two-child benefit cap, told The Independent: “The argument Keir Starmer is putting forward is that the Commonwealth should focus on the present and future fails to understand that addressing the past is not a distraction but is essential to dealing with the future.“
“To have a Labour prime minister and foreign secretary simply repeating the policy of the Conservatives virtually word for word is extremely disappointing.”
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Editor: there is no difference between the Tories and New Labour except for Corbyn wing of the Party, long since purged, yet it’s ghost still hold sway on issues like reparations, as John McDonnell’s wan quote demonstrates?
Rootless cosmopolitan,down at heels intellectual;would be writer.
'Polemic is a discourse of conflict, whose effect depends on a delicate balance between the requirements of truth and the enticements of anger, the duty to argue and the zest to inflame. Its rhetoric allows, even enforces, a certain figurative licence. Like epitaphs in Johnson’s adage, it is not under oath.'
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v15/n20/perry-anderson/diary
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