Boosting Caribbean-Africa links essential, says UK-based historian

A United Kingdom-based community activist and guerrilla historian has urged Barbados and other Caribbean countries to boost trade and establish direct air links with Africa as a matter of priority.

Anthony Warner also insisted on the payment of reparations as a step towards correcting one of the world’s great injustices – the transatlantic slave trade.

Touring the newly redone Golden Square Freedom Park in Bridgetown during a visit to the land of his birth, Warner told Barbados TODAY that trade between the Caribbean region and the African continent will be the main highway for nations to finally leverage the expertise, wealth, and connections fostered among people in the African diaspora over the last several decades.

“This links back to the whole European colonisation, because when they set up their colonies, they made sure the trade routes went between, let’s say, Cuba and Spain, Barbados and England, Haiti and France. It made it exclusive, whereas us now in the 21st century should be working together across the Caribbean and, in fact, linking closely with Africa,” he said.

“A lot of the flights that fly from here to the UK could go to Africa directly, but for a lot of people if you want to go to Senegal or Nigeria now, you have to go to France, you have to go to England, and of course that is making them rich. Each time a plane lands, they are paid landing fees, so we could cut out all of that middleman money making by going directly to Africa.”

Warner, who is also an author and diversity consultant, addressed the issue of reparations, saying while there are various levels of support for or opposition against the idea of large sums of money being set aside as recompense for the act of slavery, the case for reparations was made long ago by the beneficiaries of slavery themselves.

“The biggest case has already been made. The British Government literally paid GBP$20 million in the 1830s to plantation owners. So, for the people who lost their enslaved property, they were given money for their losses; the people who were kidnapped, forced to work for hundreds of years, got nothing at all.

“GBP$200 million in 1834 is worth something like GBP$6 billion in present day society that is only one part of it. Think of the hundreds of years of free labour and how that helped to advance Britain, France, and Spain, because they all [benefitted] from the same slave practice which enriched them. That money is still there in the streets, in the architecture, in the universities, in schools, in hospitals, because the money that came from the Caribbean effectively built up Europe,” he contended.

Warner, the founder of Black History Walks – a group which explores the Caribbean and African history of London via guided walks, talks, films, courses, bus tours and river cruises – also touched on the prevalence of racism in Europe.

He said it was demonstrated in cases of police brutality but also went beyond that and could be seen in financial systems, housing projects, and workplaces.

“There is always that idea that racism is not a thing…. The average person in Europe does not really understand how widespread it is, how you can find it in housing, in education… in art and in culture.

“I would like to see more embedding in the curriculum of European schools and universities, this history we have right here. It’s part of their history but the way it is treated, it’s as if it’s something that happened [in the past], it’s nothing to do with us,” Warner contended. (SB)