hello. a very good thursday morning to you. now on bbc news, it s time for hardtalk with zeinab badawi. welcome to hardtalk with me, zeinab badawi, coming to you from barbados. i m on an historic sugar plantation where enslaved africans toiled in backbreaking labour during three centuries of the transatlantic slave trade. barbados was one of the earliest and most profitable of the slave colonies in the caribbean. this is the house on the grounds of the plantation, built in the 16505, where the slave owners lived in great style. my guest is barbados born eminent historian sir hilary beckles. he s vice chancellor of the university of the west indies and chair of a caribbean commission to gain reparations for the descendants of enslaved africans. what are his chances of success?
the white supremacy. this is a laboratory. from here, it moved across the caribbean, it moved to the united states. so, having this interview here, you have come to the source of the crime that we are trying to adjudicate today in the broad context of reparations. and i keep on asking you this, but you re not making much progress, are you. . . yes, we are making process. ..on a government to government level at all? we are making significant progress. we do not expect this to happen overnight. but you ve said you ve been arguing for it for 100 years. absolutely! so, what has the uk government, for instance, said on reparations to you? the uk government has always said that slavery was not a crime, that slavery was legal, we did nothing wrong, we re not going to apologise. well, you re not shifting minds, are you? well, we re trying, and we will always try. but here is the issue, zeinab it took us all of the 19th century to uproot slavery from the world.
in the house of representatives. so, do you sense that we are going to get some kind of movement on reparations in the united states, and if so, what will the impact be? well, let me say, it s a relay race. the caribbean at this moment is at the centre of this global discussion. what happened in the caribbean was very significant. civil society talking about this, demanding this. the rastafarian community, the pan african community speaking about reparations for over 100 years. what was critical in 2013 was that the governments of the caribbean finally came on board. the governments of the caribbean finally came on board and said we are now supporting this civil society movement. they joined the cause. when that happened in the caribbean, it had tremendous consequences for the us and, therefore, the us reparations movement was revitalised, re energised and, similarly, they formed a national african american reparations commission modelled on the caribbean case,
people are doing well, so many of them now have their own home, they have property. and then a percentage of them are free and they re doing so well. all you have to do is extend slavery longer and more and more enslaved will do better off, become better off. these are arguments, these are positions. so, there you are, chair of this caribbean regional commission, looking at these reparations. first step you wanted was a formal apology from the former colonial colonisers like the united kingdom and so on. you haven t got very far, have you? well, because there has always been two approaches to this matter. the oppressor class, the beneficiaries of these crimes against humanity, have always preferred to have a settlement approach. look what germany has just done in namibia. that wasn t reparations, that was a settlement. and here s how the settlement. that was what germany paid in regards to the genocide in the early 20th century. the genocide in namibia, in africa. the herero people.
so, reparations is really a partnership relationship that may lead to development, but importantly, it leads to the elevation of those who continue to suffer the harm. we don t want necessarily to be locked into a discourse around settlements. we want to speak about the process of reparations, the development consequences. development in all of the areas. so, development money for countries where there were. partnerships. ..enslaved africans descendants, that s what you want? yes! 0k. this is where the british established the model. what was the model? the british came here in the 1620s. the following decade, the british said all black people on this island and those who are coming here in the future will be classified as non human. they re going to be classified as property, real estate and chattel first step. second step, 1661, britain used this island as a laboratory for the constitutional development of slavery, which says all african peoples are of a violent, barbarous nature an