By George Alleyne, newsday.co.tt
December 6 2006
British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, can best demonstrate that he is serious with respect to his recent statement on slavery by having legislation drafted and introduced in the United Kingdom Parliament for the provision of reparations to former British colonies in Africa and the Caribbean, which were victims of slavery, the slave trade and/or de-industrialisation.
The reparations should take the form of debt forgiveness and in particularly hard hit cases financial and trade enhancement assistance as well. Blair’s Labour Government should grant most favoured nation status to the non energy and energy based exports to the United Kingdom of these countries for an initial period of, say, five years and urge fellow member states of the European Union which were engaged in the social and economic rape of ex-colonies to do the same.
Where, outside of lands that are still European colonies or are Departments of these nations, the principle of most favoured nation status cannot apply, then this should be implemented with tariffs set for these products at, say, three percent and in some cases none at all.
In this manner products of the specific former colonies with a slave and de-industrialisation past, many of them humbugged by outdated technology and de-motivation, will be in a far better competitive position against goods produced in the UK, the European Union and elsewhere than exists today.
I quote Article one of the February 28, 1975 ACP-EEC (now EU) Convention of Lome – Trade Co-operation – to advance my argument, “In the field of trade co-operation, the object of this Convention is to promote trade between the Contracting Parties, taking account of their respective levels of development, and, in particular, of the need to secure additional benefits for the trade of ACP States, in order to accelerate the rate of growth of their trade and improve the conditions of access of their products to the markets of the European Economic Commu-nity … so as to ensure a better balance in the trade of Contracting Parties.”
Any not dissimilar move by the Blair Administration and the relevant Administration in the European Union to specifically correct the history of slavery and de-industrialisation of former European colonies will add value, indeed crucially needed value to the products of these, for long disadvantaged countries.
Meanwhile, there would be no reduction of tariffs on manufactured or agricultural products entering the former slave colonies from Europe until directed by the expanding rules and regulations of the World Trade Organisation.
I had referred earlier to debt forgiveness. Admittedly, a few sub-Saharan countries have been beneficiaries of debt forgiveness by European creditor nations. Nonetheless, there should be a recognition of the need for their respective economies to be stimulated, lest they should fall back, as they would in the absence of being spurred on to acquire new and relevant technology.
Several European nations had, deliberately, set about not only to colonise and enslave, but to de-industrialise what is today known as the developing world. Indeed, Paul Bairoch in his Economics and World History: Myths and Paradoxes (page 383) published in 1992, pointed out in an indepth study of per capita industrialisation, that in 1750 today’s developing nations produced 73 percent of the world’s manufactured goods, while (today’s) developed nations turned out a mere 27 percent. In a brutally assisted reversal of history, by 1990 (today’s) developed nations were producing 83.3 percent and the developing nations – 16.7 percent. The European colonisers, and this should be taken to include the British, set about this economic reversal methodically.
After centuries of pursuing the economic and cultural rape of Africa and the Caribbean, Tony Blair’s Britain introduced and promoted the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund (CDEW) after World WAR II, and marketed it to the world as the symbol of Britain’s intention to redress the injustices of history and re-industrialise colonial possessions it had de-industrialised, or industrialise colonies whose industrial progress it had thwarted.
Walter Rodney on Page 233 of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa has exposed this hypocrisy and deceit by declaring that in the decade between 1946 and 1956, of the Colonial Development and Welfare funds assigned to Africa less than one percent had been set aside for industrial Development. The United Kingdom was not prepared to facilitate a resurgence of industry in the colonies lest this should pose a formidable challenge to British industry.
It is not enough for Tony Blair to mouth platitudes about slavery. He must start with debt forgiveness and the implementation of a most favoured nation status for goods from former slave colonies whose industrial development was hobbled by their British and other ex-slave masters.