Submitted by the People’s Democratic Congress (PDC)

In its column in the Weekend Nation edition of Friday, March 30, 2012, the PEP is seen making the case for reparations for what it calls, “the plundering of the tax revenues of Barbados by the British Monarchy between the years 1663 and 1838”.

But, while the PDC is entirely supportive of those local and international efforts aimed at making sure that many of those Western countries and corporations, which would have  taken part in, or benefitted, from the enslavement of Black Africans by White Europeans and Americans in many parts of this Western Hemisphere from the 16th to the 19th Century, pay political material financial reparations to the descendants of such African peoples, and while the PDC do  make its own calls for present day African countries to pay reparations to the said present and future generations of African peoples on account of some of their ancestors roles in helping to put many millions of Africans into European enslavement, this party does not support the call that the PEP is currently making with regard to asking for reparations for Barbados as a result of “the plundering of the TAX revenues of Barbados by the British Monarchy between the said years 1663 and 1838”.

Now, let us make it crystal clear to the BU family why we do not support such a call.

First, we do not support such a proposal for the very reason that to do so would be to implicitly validate and justify the criminal and despicable ideology and policy of that of the imposition of TAXATION on the incomes, payments and transfers of persons, businesses and others by any governments any time anywhere.

Second, for us to do so would be to be in direct and substantial conflict with our very unchallengeable and unbridgeable NO-TAXATION ideologies, philosophies and policies for Barbados.

Thirdly, the way how the PEP has been found to be writing about “the British Monarch plundering the tax revenues  of Barbados” in such an emotional and unempirical manner (What was the name of the tax and what was the King’s reason/s for the tax?, etc), in such a loose historical context (without stating a non-tax methodology/objective criteria for assessing and determining this type of reparations), is yet  another reason why we think that the PEP will fail to convince us that it has been able to  present  a strong case for this type of reparations for Barbados; and based on the possibility that some persons would today tell the PEP  that “the British Monarch was the sovereign ruler of the colony of Barbados, and that every subject  had a duty to obey the laws of the Monarch”, “that the British Parliament alone – with the British monarch as head –  had the sovereign right to legislate for the affairs of the colony of Barbados, and that therefore the colony had to comply” – we believe that that party would have a hard time responding to those points.

Alas, some would even tell the PEP that the 41/2% was reasonable having regard to the entire financial circumstances of the colony then. Anyhow, the PEP did not in its column clearly adumbrate strong counter posing evidence/arguments to show that the principle behind the 41/2% imposition was legally or politically wrong.

Fourthly, there is no way that the PDC could support such a call for that type of reparations, when in the PEP’s making of such a proposal, it, too, has not been able to avoid implicitly justifying the scandal and the barbarism associated with the British imperial government/ the local ruling classes and their supporters,  blatantly mis-categorizing our black enslaved forbears as chattel that was so-called on par with manufactured goods and crops – under the former plantation society system of Barbados;  and chattel, from which much money was supposedly derived when there was this so-called trading of these forbears along with goods, and through which there were circumstances where levies were superimposed on the incomes of the white controllers, and in the name of a  taxation system that stupidly disrespected our forbears as chattel to be beaten and bruised.

SO RATHER THAN CONDEMNING SUCH A TAXATION SYSTEM and not wanting to have anything to do with it, THE PEP seeks to defile our souls with calls for a type of reparations that focussed on what was stolen from certain others via Taxation.

SO WE WILL HAVE NONE OF THAT. OUR ENSLAVED FORBEARS WERE HUMAN BEINGS JUST LIKE THE WHITE ENSLAVERS!! AND OUR ENSLAVE FORBEARS HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE BRINGING ABOUT OF SUCH A TAXATION SYSTEM, SO WHY THE YELPING FROM THE FOURTH PARTY IN BARBADOS?

Fifthly, for the PEP to make such a call will also imply the fostering of the muck up thinking that some of the present and future generations of whites who have been and will yet be the descendants of those whites who enslaved blacks in Barbados, would still be the only racial group in the country that would have to be so entitled,  to benefit from that form of reparations the PEP is calling for Barbados. For what though? For esp. those whites whose fore-parents introduced and maintained a system of TAXATION that was part and parcel of the maintenance of a very cruel and inhuman enslaving system that many of their fore-parents cruelly used in turn to help terrorize and brutalize many of our black forbears here in Barbados?

So why must they be favoured in this type of reparations under the relevant PEP proposal, esp. when their ancestors were part and parcel of the overall governmental apparatus  of the country then? Indeed, it is clear that the PEP has not properly thought through these questions and arguments. For the PEP cannot appear to be seeking an intercession in this day and age in this 21 century purportedly  on the behalf of Barbados – but ostensibly where whites should be the only ones putting forward a claim to benefit from such (only racial group per se that was taxed then) – in regard of  TAXATION matters that would have substantially involved the criminality of the British imperial government taxing the local whites, and too that would have equally substantially involved the savagery of the local ruling classes who TAXED, to whatever extent, portions of the incomes that were absolutely owned by whites in Barbados ( but which were primarily derived through the enslavement of Blacks), and still be on the side of the very ungrateful and exploitative local ruling classes of those times.

Oh, what a very tangled weave the PEP has placed itself in?

Its declared position (the PEP’s position) that “so onerous was this imposition on Barbados, that on no less than 10 different occasions over the life of the tax, the Barbadians (sic) ( which ones?) officially appealed to the British Monarch to relieve them of this unjust burden”, is enough to prove an attempt to intercede.

For whilst it is true that the British Monarchy and the British imperial government benefitted significantly over the years from the supposed 41/2% TAXATION policy, and true that they would also have been benefitting most corruptly  from the proceeds of other locally imposed taxes, and from actual money/wealth and assets that were taken out of Barbados from then until now, the PEP cannot be taken so seriously, in this article, when the remainder of the 4 and a half per cent – a whopping amount ninety something percent –  was left in the hands of a corrupt and parasitical and undeserving bunch at a time when no blacks were paid.
Surely, the PEP must continue to argue strongly for monetary material and political reparations for present and future generations of Blacks/Africans, from those Europeans and Americans – natural or legal entities –   the British Monarchy and the British government included – who would have enslaved our African peoples in the various parts of this Western Hemisphere many years ago,  and from those who are the inheritors of wealth and assets directly derived from the enslavement trade and the African holocaust, and must insist on present-day African states also making reparations for their role in it too.

So, the PEP must NOT get side tracked and confused by those types of earlier highlighted false arguments.

Finally, the PDC must ask, why with all the money that remained in the hands of the local planter class, would there have been such a great deficit and insufficiency of infrastructural and institutional development in Barbados since emancipation? Why was there the 1937 rebellion? Why was there mass poverty amongst our blacks after emancipation? if, as the PEP suggests, there was ninety something per cent that was still left in the  hands of the local political economic ruling classes?