will you ever see freedom in your lifetime? i would wager that the majority of enslaved people who had been enslaved for 200 or 300 years would have said we will never see freedom. let s just look at the legacy of slavery. you ve outlined some of the economic grievances. let me tell you what a french african historian says, amzat boukari ya bara. he says young people of african descent in france today are insurrectional because their history has never been taken into account. so, the question i want to ask you is this how far do you think there is a difference between africans, or people of african descent, living in black majority countries, such as barbados, and those living in white majority countries, such as france. there s always a kind of volatility on the diversity of knowledge and content. when i was growing up as a teenager in the british high school system, we were never taught anything about british colonial history, imperialism. i went through the british university syst
they appealed to the monarchy, they appealed to the government, there was silence because that is the history. but let me tell you, there s a photograph on the cover of my recent book, britain s black debt, and it shows queen elizabeth visiting the bell sugar plantation in 1966, february, on the eve of independence, and what did the queen do? she came to barbados to visit a sugar plantation that was owned by herfirst cousin. and here is the earl and the queen on the sugar plantation in barbados in february 1966. a plantation that was bought by the family of the earl in 1782 with 300 slaves! so, it s the symbolism of that kind of act. it s a powerful symbolism! what about the commonwealth, though, because there are many who say that it. philip murphy, director of the institute of commonwealth studies, says the commonwealth has an admiral record of progressive causes, most noticeably the struggle against apartheid. would you want barbados
of enslaved people who had been enslaved for 200 or 300 years would have said we will never see freedom. let s just look at the legacy of slavery. you ve outlined some of the economic grievances. let me tell you what a french african historian says. he says young people of african descent in france today are insurrectional because their history has never been taken into account. so, the question i want to ask you is this how far do you think there is a difference between africans, or people of african descent, living in black majority countries, such as barbados, and those living in white majority countries, such as france. there s always a kind of volatility on the diversity of knowledge and content. when i was growing up as a teenager in the british high school system, we were never taught anything about british colonial history, imperialism. i went through the british university system, we were never taught anything about british imperial history. and so there is a
theme music plays professor sir hilary beckles, welcome to hardtalk. tremendous honour, pleasure to be here. so, we re here in the part of barbados that is your ancestral land, your great, great, great grandparents worked on sugar plantations just nearby. what is the legacy of that history of slavery here in barbados? this is where the global world and a small island came together 400 years ago. this is barbados, the first slave plantation economy in the world. this is where slavery plantations, british capitalism all came together. a small place becoming a centre of the financial world of the west. it s a tremendous history.
by the realisation that this long journey, this 394 year journey with the british monarchy has done us harm. we have not had any benefits to be associated. what harm does the queen do as being head of state? she is a very benign presence. no power. look at what happened to the windrush people. we fought for the british empire in the second world war, we kicked the butt out of hitler and his third reich, we won the war, then we were invited to britain, my parents generation came to britain to clean up the mess that the british had experienced from all the bombings of the germans, and the first opportunity they were surrounded by deepening institutional racism that hurt those caribbean people to the core. they appealed to the monarchy, they appealed to the government, there was silence because that is the history.