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RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: july/august 2018 :: RMTnews
26
FIGHTING FOR
REPARATIONS
Isis Amlak of Global
Afrikan Congress uk
demands reparations
for the enslavement of
African people and the
associated crimes
against humanity
T
his year’s annual Trade
Union Congress will feature
a fringe meeting on Reparations
organised by RMT, the Black
and Ethnic Minority Members
Advisory Committee (BEMMAC)
and Black Solidarity Committee
(BSC).
For over ten years RMT have
held an annual Reparation now
conference on August 23, the
international day for the
remembrance of the slave trade.
African people have actively
fought against enslavement and
colonialisation since the first
Arab and European invasions
and kidnappings.
Resisting this forced
migration, trafficking, referred
to by some as the ‘trans-Atlantic
slave trade’ continued unabated
by way of mutiny, uprising, and
revolution, most famously
exemplified by the Haitian
Revolution that began on
August 23 1791. It was this
historical event that defeated
Napoleon's armies and founded
the world's first African
Republic outside of Africa.
It was the impetus for the
abolition of enslavement.
Renowned activist, author,
scholar and speaker at the first
conference, Professor Raymond
Winbush writes ‘the reparations
movement has been an integral
part of the African struggle for
redress since Europeans first
captured them in 1441’.
The system dehumanised and
monetised Africans’ and
enslavers profited. David Barry
Gasper writes ‘when Antiguan
enslaved were executed for
crimes, or when they were
hunted down and killed as
Glenroy Watson speaking at AGM