CHOGM 2024: Britain facing calls to pay billions for its role in slavery and climate change
During a visit to Britain in 2005, Desmond Tutu visited the Hull home of William Wilberforce, the English statesman who overcame incredible odds to bring about the end of slavery and the slave trade
By Trevor Grundy
Around 3,000 delegates from 56 countries representing 2.7 billion people will gather at Apia, Samoa from October 21-26 to attend the 2024 Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) bi-annual conference which will be opened by King Charles 111.
Cynics say that CHOGM stands for Comrades Holidays on Government Money which is of course not the view of its well-heeled delegates or the monarch.
This is the first time the biennial summit has been held in a Pacific island state and the first attended by Charles as head of the Commonwealth, which his mother, Queen Elizabeth11, held together for so long, so well.
British delegates are urging their Commonwealth counterparts to step up to the plate in a world where liberal democracy is threatened by the growing strength of two former Communist giants – China and Russia.
What a glorious moment that would be.
Stepping up to the plate.
All as one. All at the same time, too.
They also want “Club” members to remember the days when the Commonwealth was a vital part of the lives of million of people in Africa.
For years – roughly from1961 to 1990 – white- ruled-Rhodesia and apartheid-strangled South Africa dominated the talks agenda.
But now the world’s hungriest continent is free and post-colonial/imperial challenges must be met – or invented.
Sadly, the Club’s image is not good.
A few years ago, I spent a day talking to students at Kent University and asked what they thought about the Club.
Many hadn’t heard of it.
One asked if it was a football club.
In an article by Trevor Phillips (The Times (19 October) this well-known and widely- respected commentator said: ”The Commonwealth right now looks like a club of nations brought together by a passion for cricket, netball and bowls and whose most frictional moments amount to a mild tut tutting when members decide to kill gay men for no other crime than being gay.”
One of the better-known Commonwealth authors, Philip Murphy, said a few years ago: ”The problem is that an organisation in decline can only survive on its glorious memories for so long before the dysfunctional present starts to shape perceptions of that cherished past.”
- The fight against Ian Smith’s Rhodesia.
- The battle against John Vorster’s South Africa.
Glorious moments. Of course they were. For some.
The common touch: Kate Middleton and other British royals reach out to ordinary people during their meet and greet tours of Commonwealth countries.
Charles looks happy enough and he ends his tour of Australia with wife Camilla.
He is up and alert and ready to go with the public delighted that he is doing so well and looking so good after being diagnosed with a form of cancer.
Hopefully, for him, it will be bright carnations rather than rotting carrots that will be thrown at him (metaphorically, of course) after his conference opening speech in Samoa
If media reports are accurate, most Club members want more than words and apologies when it comes to the subject that could be on the CHOGM talks agenda – reparations for the slave trade in which Britain played such a major role.
At a time when Britain’s new Labour government has outraged millions of old age pensioners by ending their winter fuel allowances some Club leaders are demanding up to £200 billion (rpt. billion) as reparation for Britain’s involvement in the slave trade and £6.2 trillion (rpt. trillion) in climate change reparations by 2050 because of carbon emissions since 1960.
Philip Davis, the prime minister of the Bahamas, told The Observer newspaper (20 October, 2024) that the Commonwealth is the ideal forum for making progress on repatriations. Question is this : Will his voice be heard loud and clear at this year’s CHOGM in Samoa?
This at a time when the British Government is angering the public by planning tax increases to fill a debt hole created by Boris Johnson and a collection of Conservative Party clowns for something between £20 billion to £40 billion.
Britain has insisted it will not pay repatriation and doesn’t want to discuss this explosive issue in Samoa.
Not now. Not ever.
At the last CHOGM in Rwanda – a country well known for the cavalier way it treats its political opponents – Charles stopped short of making an apology but expressed his sorrow for slavery.
What’s more, he commissioned research into the royal family’s involvement in the trade.
Sadly, he has not shared the outcome of this inquiry.
But he will of course. One day.
And there’s bright light just around the corner. Just you wait and see.
Soon, there will be a new Commonwealth Secretary-General. And delegates can choose what they want to talk about.
Even if that is about British reparations?
“The Commonwealth has historically facilitated frank conversations about difficult issues that have resulted in positive outcomes,” said a spokesperson for the London-based Commonwealth Secretariat.
That must have been some reference to the attempt by Margaret Thatcher to avoid a punch-up with other the Club members after she opposed sanctions against South Arica in the 1980s.
In recent years one would be hard pressed to recall any of the Club’s “glorious memories.”
But leave it to well-paid media hacks to remember them over the next week or so when they’re not talking about Camilla’s hats, skirts and high heels.
What we need are some more glorious moments.
Anyone for a game of bowls?