Green Party conference backs reparations for slavery
The Green Party of England and Wales today became the first political party with representation in the UK parliament to support a policy of reparations for slavery. At the party’s Autumn conference – held online due to the coronavirus pandemic – 93% of members voted to back the pro-reparations motion.
The move sees the party calling for the UK government to commit to a “holistic process of atonement and reparations”. The full text of the motion read:
Conference:
Calls for the UK government to establish an All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth and Reparatory Justice.
Supports the calls from campaigners for the Government to commit to a holistic process of atonement and reparations, which adequately addresses Planet Repairs solutions to the ecocide arising from the climate and ecological crises, taking into consideration various proposals for reparation in accordance with the United Nations Framework on Reparations.
Instructs the campaigns and external communications coordinators to prioritise advocacy in pursuit of these two calls.
Greens have in recent years taken numerous actions to address the legacy of slavery. In 2019, the then Lord Mayor of Bristol Cleo Lake attracted national media attention after removing a portrait of the slaver Edward Colston from the Lord Mayor’s office.
After the passing of the motion, Lake told Bright Green:
The fact it has been backed by Green Party members represents a significant and historic milestone towards acknowledgement, justice and reconciliation over a painful shared history. The legacy of this history still plays out today through rife global inequality, racism, Afriphobia, and a ravaged planet that continues to be pillaged and disrespected.
I am pleased that the Green Party, through its membership, is the political party leading the way in its support for this movement towards holistic reparations by voting for this motion.
While we cannot change the past, we can go some way to heal and repair from it. And by taking decisive action, we can direct the future course of our shared humanity and planet.
The Green Party’s new position follows other moves from local councils to support the movement for reparatory justice for slavery. In July 2020, former Green MEP Scott Ainslie was successful in passing the first local government motion anywhere in the country that supported reparations through Lambeth Borough Council.
Ainslie also supported the motion at the Green Party’s conference. Speaking in advance of the conference, he said:
If Britain can own up to and properly address the legacies of its colonial and enslaving past, then it can truly deal with the root causes of our country’s socio-economic inequality rooted in systemic racism.
By engaging in a genuine process of reparative and transitional justice, we can begin to heal holistically and re-balance the past and present injustices inflicted by the few which cause endless suffering to the many.
The motion to Green Party conference was proposed by the Young Greens, Greens of Colour and a range of high profile Green Party members in addition to Lake and Ainslie, including London Assembly candidate Benali Hamdache and former party leader Natalie Bennett.
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Image credit: Jwslubbock – Creative Commons
We need to fight present wrongs, which are put upon the vast majority of the world’s population. The rich and powerful have always relied on the differences within the vast majority to continue their dominance.
Hallo WCG.
I think the big picture needs to come back a bit, after the emphasis there has been on minority issues of all sorts.
There is a danger that in trying to right all the particular wrongs, we forget the world “system” which drives looming ecological crisis and economic and social injustice.
Our society is heirarchical from the top down, from the so-called “queen” to the rough sleeper, and in part it stays that way because most people look at the people above or below them, and miss the big picture.
The traditional working class, the victims in the economic transformations of the last 50 years, need to be recaptured by the left, and all have to be persuaded that they have more in common than what divides.
I think the GP does not understand this, and that the current assault on the electoral system on ecological grounds to the exclusion of all but minority issues is a long-term blind alley.
PS Nice to know someone reads what I fire off into the ether! Thanks WCG!
Oh look, a Nazi infiltrator being Nazi. You chaps really need to learn to spot the stormtroopers in your midst.
I think we all know what the ‘world system’ is that ‘Bernard’is railing against.
I believe in action, not words.
No-one living today bears responsibility for the past actions of
“our”(?) government or ancestors.
What we are responsible for is our own opinions and actions today.
By all means the symbols of past oppression like statues should be pulled down.
But compensation? Please, how do you compensate for that, when we now are not responsible?
Our duty is to fight for a just world, through a massive redistribution of wealth within our own state, and on a world scale.
Bernard current policies on global justice, economic equality, challenging stuctural racism already would compensate for structural racism if implemented. The phrase “reparations” will just fire up the right and make it harder for those policies to be implemented. People need to grasp that what you call a policy effects how hard it is to implement it.
global repartions for slavery is provocotive… Global social justice social fairness… words like these can have the same policy behind them with out activating the same level of opposition..communication is everything and this is poor communication.