Jamaica Is Calling on Visiting David Cameron to Pay Slavery Reparations

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The Prime Minister will make his first official visit to Jamaica today amid increasing calls for the UK to fork out billions in slavery reparations. David Cameron will address the Jamaican government this week and meet with his Jamaican counterpart, Portia Simpson Miller, as part of his trade trip to the Caribbean island.

If ignored, the contentious issue of slavery reparations threatens to eclipse Mr Cameron's stay in the country. Jamaican MP Mike Henry told the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper that he and other colleagues plan to turn their backs on the Prime Minister during his visit, should the issue of reparations be absent from his political agenda. Political leaders in both Jamaica and other Caribbean islands want Britain, the Netherlands and France to provide compensation for the negative and ongoing effects of the Atlantic slave trade.

Downing Street expressed that slavery reparations are a "longstanding concern of theirs" in a statement. An official told The Guardian that successive UK governments have found reparations to be the wrong approach to the concern, and that Mr Cameron's focus will be on the future: "We are talking about issues that are centuries old and taken under a different government when he was not even born," they said. "[The Prime Minister] wants to look at the future and how the UK can play a part now in stronger growing economies in the Caribbean."

Ahead of his official visit, Leading Barbadian academic Sir Hilary Beckles called for Mr Cameron to open the issue for debate, referencing his own ancestral links to the slave trade in the Jamaica Observer. The chair of the Caricom Reparations Commission wrote: "You are a grandson of the Jamaican soil who has been privileged and enriched by your forebears' sins of the enslavement of our ancestors. You owe it to us as you return here to communicate a commitment to reparatory justice that will enable your nation to play its part in cleaning up this monumental mess of Empire."