The legacy of slavery is vastly underestimated. Almost every behaviour of populations around the planet owes some psychological of engrained idea from the centuries of slavery and colonialism.

Some campaigners think that there should reparations from the beneficiaries to the  victims. While there is no denying there are victims, for most of the population of the world are victims even today, it is still a big call to decide who should “accept” any reparations, never mind what would constitute reparations.

In the world where capitalism has won it would be relatively simplistic, actually just plain simplistic, to attempt to place a value on what adequate reparations should be.

Having said, the foregoing, it is worth noting that reparations were agreed way back when slavery was “abolished”.  Relatively recently the British Government finished paying “reparations” to the descendants and estates of former slave owners, perversely using tax money which included victims’ descendants’ contributions! The argument about the appropriateness of reparations is spurious and the British establishment is somehow hoping to get by on their “authority and integrity” or the elusive “British sense of fair play”.

This writer is of the opinion that the value of “reparations” for the evil of slavery is infinite for the enduring effects it has had and continues to have. That the final “reparations” paid to slave owners and their descendants were so recent that the source of those payments included taxes from [descendants of] victims of  slavery says something about the offenders’ values than the victims. Tragically, they were able to determine financial values for the lives of the people those paragons of British Imperial society held as property.  For the victims it is impossible to place a value on the reparations that must be paid, or decide where the reparations show be spent. The worst aspect of it is the idea that reparations could be  the end of the story, so maybe it is better to keep learning lessons, but while learning those lessons, the West needs to stop operating proxy colonies to continue to practice latent slavery.

Today the trade which allowed human beings to uproot other human beings from the homes and transport them to “lives” as property and being valued less that beasts of burden persist on a daily basis as psychologically broken populations of the world take perilous journeys on their own effort, attempting to gain self-imposed status as slaves in the lands of the people who first built their economies and empires literally from the blood and toil of their [today’s self-transporting slaves] forebears.

They borrow all they can to fund the perverse new trade where todays slavers trade in boats and the ultimate culprits somehow “don’t” know how to defeat the traders.

Reality is that the boats and commerce can be traced very easily and halted if anyone really wanted to halt it, but today’s declining empires, despite their protestations still need the free labour that immigrants bring. It is more and more obvious that the declaration of human rights so often cited is only for the humans it was for when it was first made with many slaves still in captivity.

The King said “lessons should be learnt”, speaking at a gathering of Commonwealth Heads of Government.  The lessons we learn from the Commonwealth do include the obvious one that “good governance and human rights” are only for the white parts of the club.  The established pattern is that human rights abuses and corruption are tolerated in many “less white” Commonwealth member countries. This reinforces the idea that those privileges are only for the people the human rights declarations were meant to benefit, for during those declarations and  afterwards and onto today, the black populations can be spared to be tortured or abused and the Commonwealth declares those abuses tolerable and measures “progress” towards democracy.

In La République du Cameroun one of the best artists was recently humiliated when the secret service published footage of him being tortured in the same week when the nominal head of government of La République du Cameroun, Joseph Dion Ngute is attending the CHOGM. As LRC is a black country, that does not matter much.  So in Britain, Elton John got a knighthood and became Sir Elton John as he should, but in the darker end of the Commonwealth in 2024 his counterparts and frightened for their lives. Longue Longue is that victim.

Nor is the obvious link between such poor governance and the migrant boats so obscure. It is only common sense that better just societies around the world would drastically cut the numbers of people who fee compelled to travel thousands of miles in search of better economic opportunities even when they are elusive in reality. Instead, the King is literally patronising crooks and tyrants while asking for lessons to be learnt, by who we cannot tell.

It has been eight years now since La Republique du Cameroun has been actively killing youths in Southern Cameroons who are suspected of being separatists. Resident slaves from that territory many of who would dearly like to vacate Britain and reduce the migrant crisis, have been to the Commonwealth Secretariat to count on the club’s “values and objectives” and met with no support.

Meanwhile the head of the club has been to pose with dictator Paul Biya and receive gifts. When leaving afterwards, they applaud he progress that La Republic du Cameroun is making towards democracy! A veritable slap in the face for all those people who used to be subjects of the Queen in  British Southern Cameroons.

What lessons should they learn?

The club is expanding. The neighbouring dictatorship to La Republique du Cameroon, despite being a French colony, with no colonial link to Britain, is progressing, no pun intended, towards membership of the Commonwealth. Their citizens could be forgiven, if on reading the CW charter, their imagined their lives were about to improve.

Lessons should be learnt!

The King is right about lessons and not attempting reparations. In the current world system any reparations would go in a few pockets and end up in back in European banks.

The lesson to lean is to improve the governance in the south so that more of them stay at home. But where would that leave the NHS and other western health systems? Slavery has  not gone yet! It is not time to talk reparations even if an appropriate magnitude could be ventured.