A pamphlet from Caribbean Labour Solidarity
Britain’s Industrial Revolution was, in large part, made possible by the capital accumulation generated by the “business of slavery,” and the genesis of Britain’s banking and insurance industries can be traced to this same “business”.
The enclosure of common land in England was often financed by the profits from slavery. The effects of slavery are still with us. Sugar, the foremost product of the Caribbean colonies, has left a worldwide legacy of ill-health. And the fossil-fuel based industry, which the profits of slavery helped create, has caused the current climate crisis which threatens us all.
Slavery, through deforestation an soil exhaustion, has deprived the former Caribbean colonies of reasonable possibilities of development, and for this, along with the unpaid wages of millions of slaves over centuries, Reparations are both necessary and justified.