UK woman pays US$500K in reparations to UWI
Bridget Freeman, 70, an accomplished musician, bequeathed her properties worth half a million US dollars to a scholarship programme at UWI and noted that her grand piano is being kept in tune for the Cave Hill Campus as a contribution to the University’s new Faculty of Culture, Creative and Performing Arts.
‘I was horrified’ about evils of slavery- Bridget Freeman
Vice-Chancellor of UWI and Chairman of the CARICOM Reparations Commission, Professor Sir Hilary M. Beckles said the University welcomes Freeman’s endowment describing it as “an honourable demonstration of personal reparation and moral leadership on behalf of her family”.
He added that her commitment to turning her awareness into action is deeply appreciated and will go a long way to providing freedom and fulfilment through the gift of education for many Caribbean students.
Freeman has also accepted UWI’s invitation to get involved as a co-patron of Global Giving 2021. “It is about reparation” she said. “We owe it. Once you see the ships of the slave trade, the giving back just seems so obvious”.
According to Loop News on August 20, 2021, it was a series about the Atlantic slave trade on the BBC that shocked Freeman, whose uncle was married into a family that owned plantation and slaves in the Caribbean.
Up until then, she knew almost nothing about the plight of free Africans who boarded ships and were taken throughout the world and sold into slavery.
“I was horrified and it touched me and I thought dear God, this is not right” she said.
Further research led her to UWI and UWI Global Giving— the regional university’s annual crowdfunding campaign which was established in 2016.
Reparation
Reparation is a word most frequently used in relation to money - given as an apology or acknowledgement that something was wrong or unfair.
When slavery was legally abolished in Britian in 1838, slave owners were given money by the British government to compensate them for the loss of their slaves, which in those days were considered "property". These payments were known as reparations.
The some £20 million paid by the UK treasury to some 3,000 families that had owned slaves was finally paid back in 2015, by UK taxpayers.
But the former slaves didn't get any money for all the work they had done under slave labour, their lack of freedom, or the horrible conditions they'd suffered.
UK refusing to pay reparations to VI
In 2013 and 2014 several Caribbean countries called on the UK and other European countries, including France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Norway, and Sweden, to pay reparations to their governments.
At the time the UK foreign secretary, William J. Hague said he "did not see reparations as the answer".
On Monday, September 7, 2020, a day after the 3rd anniversary of the destructive Hurricane Irma, the then Governor Augustus J. U. Jaspert sparked community outrage when he said the United Kingdom's (UK) position on paying reparations to the Virgin Islands for acts of slavery and the slave trade was not something that was being considered, hinting that the VI should expect nothing.
He also called for relics of slavery still present in the territory to be preserved despite community calls for those relics to be renamed so that it can reflect the legacy of Virgin Islanders who shaped the territory.
Despite calls for an apology, Mr Jaspert refused to apologise but instead saddled the Virgin Islands with a controversial Commission of Inquiry called during the coronavirus pandemic mere days before he exited the territory.
Meanwhile, Premier and Minister of Finance, Honourable Andrew A. Fahie (R1)in November 2020, said he too backs the rest of the region in its attempt at seeking reparations from Britain.
Premier Fahie bemoaned the fact that slave masters were compensated by the United Kingdom yet the descendants of slaves have yet to be paid.
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30 Responses to “UK woman pays US$500K in reparations to UWI”
The people brought to the Caribbean were referred to by one slave ship captain as "The People of the Book." Blame? The Most High outlined our plight in Deuteronomy 28. The Bible is about the Black Hebrews. We just forgot and continue to forget. The Europeans, on the other hand, knew exactly who we were and who we still are......
I think Britain will wait until they are forced (by Africans) to do so. Reparations will follow. Then their humiliation will be complete. We Africans will have it no other way.
Secondly you all have to stop perpetuating the lie that Africans are to blame at all. When the white men showed up with guns against spears whoever didn’t cooperate were killed wives daughters everyone abused.
That is an evil lie obviously told for Americans & Europeans to feel better about the barbaric transatlantic slave trade.
Many people never made it across the ocean alive and died in the sea. now we wonder why black people aren’t fond of the sea.
It’s too much to ponder the horror of it all. Anyone perpetuating an ‘Africans are to blame’ story should be ashamed. That’s like saying the Jews were in some way to blame for the holocaust, shameful. Africa was nearly colonized in full by European nations.
Now we are under the thumb of the late Ronald Reagan who said “I now have absolute proof that smoking even one marijuana cigarette is equal in brain damage to being on Bikini Island during an H-bomb blast”
Absolute lie more accurately.
What a world where we are continually lied to economically and spiritually oppressed by people & their manipulations.
Currently Britain is holding on to place names of slavers and holding the cannabis licensing act above our heads while all our representatives voted for it. Continually stifling economic advances and personal freedoms.
To take it into the realm of educated conspiracy about the war on drugs what will they jail minorities & peacemakers for if they’re legal?
In the end it’s a failed war similar to Afghanistan they create the criminals they wish to jail.
There is more info when you look into the specifics of colonialism from the Caribbean to India, China and Afghanistan yes the British have a colonial past in Afghanistan.
The ‘war on drugs’ is really a war on people. Those are the tools they use and I think they don’t want to let go of their stick.
It’s surprising that people can be uneducated about it back in England, but if your friends owned a few estates they probably aren’t funding education on the source of their fortunes....
The Staple Singers
Go listen to it where ever you get your music. Youtube etc.
the Lord will forever bless you and your family for your kind venture.
Moreover, under the Abolition Act of 1833, the UK borrowed £20M to compensate slave owners for the lost of their chattel property; this £20M equated to 40% of the UK budget at the time; loan was paid off in 2015, meaning that Black Britons were helping to pay off a loan whose purpose was to compensate slave owners who owned their ancestors.
The hard truth is that the only people that have not benefited from slavery are the slaves and their descendants. Up to this hour, neither slaves nor descendants have received a farthing for the fruits of slave labour. Reparations is a divisive word for many descendants of slave owners. The excuses are many, ie, 1)slaves descendants are looking for a free check, 2) it will bankrupt the UK, 3) slavery was so long ago and it is time to move on, 4) no one today owned any slaves, 5)descendants should not be held liable for the egregious behaviour of ancestors.......etc. All of this is an old canard that is not going to fly. Here is a news flash. Slavery created a classist society and special unearned privileges for slave owners and their descendants. They enjoyed special unearned privileges in healthcare, education, employment/jobs, housing, sports, military, houses of worship, dietary choices ....etc. Ms. Freeman contribution is a good gesture and good first step.Nonetheless, a comprehensive reparations programme is needed to make slave descendants whole. Reparations is much more than cash payments; it should include plans, programmes.....etc.