LSE Law alumna Mia Amor Mottley became Barbados’ eighth, and first female, Prime Minister in 2018 and was re-elected in 2022. She returned to LSE in December 2023 to deliver a public lecture with Esther Philips, the first Poet Laureate of Barbados. In a talk calling for a real conversation about reparations for the slave trade and her work toward this in Barbados, Mia Mottley also spoke about sprawling effects on society today including poverty and the climate crisis.
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Interim LSE President Professor Eric Neumayer welcomed Mia Mottley and Esther Phillips at this public event organised by Oxfam GB with the International Inequalities Institute and the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equality at LSE.
Esther Philips began with a poetry performance – “My ancestors gifted me their silence”. Addressing the conspiracy of silence around the subject of slavery, female ancestors observing a young girl, speaking from beyond the grave.
Mia Mottley:
“What can I give you in return in these late years? A late awakening, a pledge of my voice.
“We gather today to continue the journey of allowing the voice to reign supreme. And we do so because, for too long and for too many, the conspiracy of silence has diminished the horror of what our people faced for more than four centuries. We didn’t control the printing presses, we didn’t control the narrative, we didn’t control the government. We became independent, and we started to tell our story. Here. There. Everywhere. But always in muted tones. And always as if it didn’t matter.
“And in case I thought it was us, then I remembered last year in June, when the Commonwealth heads of government meeting took place in Rwanda, Kigali, and I couldn’t attend because I had that dreaded COVID. But my colleague the senior minister, the foreign minister, they went. And the high commissioner, who is here, can attest to it. And your king, King Charles, delivered himself of some words that we would do well to recall. And we would do well to recall them because, in his own words, he indicated, that quite simply ‘If we are to form a common future that benefits all of our citizens, we too must find new ways to acknowledge our past. Quite simply, this is a conversation whose time has come.’ And he referred in that conversation to the example of what was happening in Canada with respect to the reconciliation conversation between the indigenous people and the government, and it referred to the pain that slavery brought for centuries. And he had the courage to ask that this conversation take place. I wasn’t there, and therefore I relied on the media to tell his story. But not even the media wanted to tell his story. And that cemented to me the difficulty that we confront. A future king of England speaking as head of the Commonwealth, acknowledging in Africa that this was a conversation whose time had come and it did not make the front pages of the very famous British literary establishment, which is known to cover everything.
“I say this because these conversations are painful and these conversations may offend some, but they ought not to because we are mature and we must have the capacity to have mature conversations because we are not children. And that ability to have conversations, even when we are directly complicit, must never escape us. That was the example of Nelson Mandela, in is determination that there should be a truth and reconciliation commission that would allow people the opportunity to share and to breathe. And I say today that the silence is anchored not just in a conspiracy but it is a silence that is born out of shame.
“For many of our people the shame is too great a burden to carry. I cannot count the number of times that when people watch or are about to watch movies, some leave the room. 12 Years Slave. I’m a Star. You can go on and on. And there are so many Caribbean people who I know who say, ‘I simply cannot watch it.’ The notion that persons could be treated as subhuman. The notion that persons were chattel. The notion that you could have not just lashes on your back but your nose would be snipped and your face burnt and that that was a legitimate penalty in the 1661 Slave Code passed by the parliament of Barbados, the parliament that I now have the honour and privilege to lead. And the parliament that passed the first ever codification of slavery in the western world.
“Many countries would come to follow Barbados’s legislation. The British Atlantic colonies, many others in the Caribbean. And those that didn’t mimic the legislative framework directly used it as the basis for the control of human beings for the next few centuries. We talk today of atrocities, as we must. But we talk about it as if it is new to the western world, without recognising that the western world was built as we know it on these atrocities. And we do not have the luxury of changing the course of history, but we do have the solemn obligation to right the wrongs and to allow people to be able to breathe and to live in a space. And not until then. Not until then will our relationships and our capacity to manage this difficult environment in which we find ourselves. Not until then will it change.”
Esther Philips performed a poem about the experience of enslaved mothers in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Mia Mottley:
“But even now she knows what cannot be, she must not fetter her son with tenderness. Remember your name.
“There is no institution in the western world that had endured greater pain and tribulation than those who were either the subject of genocide or those whose bodies were enslaved. And we have come to take it for granted because the children of those who were the victims, some of them well and some of them appeared to be making it. But when we stop and study how families have been torn apart and we understand, in the case of slavery, the source of it. They were torn apart in Africa, they were torn apart in the middle passage, they were torn apart on arrival, they were torn apart even on plantation. And centuries of being torn apart, as we’ve just heard, conditioned mothers and fathers to prepare their children for the inevitable. To understand that even the name they gave them would not survive. Unless they kept it deep in their bosom to pass on to another generation. And after a while not even that survived because there were just too many generations for it to pass down. We have healing to do. And families of the black world, in particular in the Americas, started with the tragedy and travesty that many just didn’t make it across the water.
“The Brattle Report, which was released in June of this year [2023] in this country speaks specifically to those numbers. In the case of my own country, 454,342 people were said to have embarked from Africa to Barbados. 375,874 arrived. 78,468 that were sent to come to Barbados just did not make it. And my friends, that death in the middle passage haunts us. But then there were those who were simply born into slavery, 151,447. Leaving the total that is estimated of 605,789 people who were affected by the institution of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. If I were to take the entire region including the US and British, Dutch and French overseas territories. If I were to look at all of the transatlantic slave trade and not that of the UK, we would see that the numbers suggest, in this report, and they vary because of the quality of the materials that exist, but this report suggest 9,294,183 people left Africa to come to this, what was called the new world. 8,730,165, with 1,221,018 dying in the Atlantic ocean. Another 10,607,825 people were born into slavery. With a total therefore of 19,902,008 people, one third of the population of this nation.
We have to determine what matters to us. And I want to share and suggest to you this afternoon that I don’t speak of that which we are not prepared to do in our own country. Last week, Tuesday, in the space where Lord Nelson stood, even before he stood in Trafalgar Square here, we replaced his monument with a monument paying tribute to the family. Our family. Because less than feet away from where that monument stands, families were separated when they arrived from across the Atlantic. We believe that that monument is only one aspect of what we must do.
“One month before, in Golden Square, Freedom Park, a park that commemorates our own modern uprising in 1937 to bring honour and basic rights to our people, we launched a one family initiative because, as Co Chair of the United Nations sustainable development goals and the champions, I am deeply aware that as much as we set out to fight poverty there are more people in most countries outside of the circle of poverty. But the difficulty comes in the belief that it is only the obligation of governments to get rid of poverty.
“We believe fundamentally that the problems are so deep and so systemic, and it is not only economic poverty but poverty of mind and poverty of spirit and the other aspects of poverty that downpress and suppress people that must equally be fought. And we as a government have determined in my own country that if one out of every five people lie below the line of poverty then the corollary is four out of every five are not. And that what is required is the unleashing and unlocking of that communal effort irrespective of burden, initially because we are where we are today and we must work with each other. In my humble opinion not just in Barbados but across the world, to create a movement that sees people, that feels people, that hears people, that understands that when all others and all other things are gone, the family ought to be that nurturing unit that takes our children and helps shape them, that roots them in the values that determines what is right and what is wrong, that speaks to them owing to the fact that there is nothing to be gained by retribution but that what is required is never to forget but always to aspire to moral strategic leadership.
“Not because it sounds good to say so but because it is necessary to reduce conflict and to work together on the things that matter in this hour. We believe that that conversation that anchors the family therefore is one of the most important conversations that we must have. And we recognise that the values of the modern world particularly in the western world do not necessarily reinforce those values. And in fact reinforce a level of individualism that discounts the benefit of those values. And between individualism and consumerism, the character and integrity of the families that are necessary to reinforce resilience are continuously being undermined. As to what and how we move from here equally requires mature conversation.”
Esther performed a poem dedicated to the memory of George Floyd, called “He Called for Momma”.
Mia Mottley:
“400 years of hate. And a white man’s knee on the neck of her son. Nine minutes 29 seconds until he’s still. She knows this kind of stillness, she’s seen it many times. I can talk to you about the victim that George Floyd was. And God knows the world has talked about it and risen up in defence of him on that day. The problem is they rose up too late to save him. Or I can talk to you about what would cause someone to believe that you can literally constrain the breathing of another human being for nine minutes and 29 seconds and not expect something bad to happen. It is the latter that I want to concentrate. Because not until we understand what would drive that can we begin the process of completing the healing. Not until we understand what drives that can we complete the process of redemption. And redemption of those who oppressed is perhaps one of the most important missions that we must undertake. We must never forget the past but we must seek to heal and to allow for redemption. Because without that we are at risk of perpetuating the behaviour that will lead to it again and again. And we are seeing before our very eyes that even when people are victims they regrettably do not necessarily learn how not to make others victims. And that is the travesty of human civilisation.
“The conversations to repair the soul have not happened so that the honesty that must be brutal does not allow us to learn from our mistakes. The efforts to repair the family remain unattended as we just heard. And whether it is the continued belief in single parent families being the best way forward for most of our people in the Caribbean to survive because of learned behaviour for centuries, or whether it is a failure to overcome that consumerism and individualism to which I referred just now. Or whether it is an inability for persons to have frank conversations without shame, without rancour, but recognising that if we don’t have those conversations, nine minutes and 29 seconds will be repeated over and over and over and over. There can be no serious conversation and healing without understanding why redemption is necessary. And for those who say “it really wasn’t me, it really wasn’t me”. But. You can have that shaggy moment.
“But the truth is that the unconscious bias which George Floyd and Black Lives Matter pointed us to is very much permeated in everything that we do. Our language. “Black Friday”. “Girl, your hair too hard, why you don’t try to straighten it”. “Boy, what you doing out in the sun so long, you know you’re going to get dark”. Any Caribbean child, regardless of English, French, Spanish or Dutch can relay those stories to you. And you must ask yourself why. Because the institutionalisation of racism became a standard for the establishment of modern civilised America and the Caribbean. And it is up to us to deconstruct it. And it is up to us to reframe it. But we can only do that if we first acknowledge the wrongs of the past. And if we first say sorry. When Earl Lovelace wrote his book Salt, which those of you who have not read it should do, it won the Commonwealth Book Prize, it took him over a decade to write because the pain and anguish in trying to express.
“We’re not begging for an apology but human moral behaviour demands it. An apology doesn’t work if it is insincere. It can only work if it is sincere. And it can only be sincere if there is a genuine desire to seek redemption. We have a lot of work to do. And regrettably as you will hear me say in the next engagement, is that it will require a multi-faceted approach. What is necessary however is that all parents and all people ask themselves the simple question: ‘what could cause you to stay on top of a man’s neck. A man larger than you. To stay on his neck. Until. Until. Until.’ And when we start to answer that question then we will begin to deconstruct the unconscious bias and the patent acts of racism that are continued to be allowed in our midst. Recognising that racism is not only white on black or black on white, white on Indian, Indian on black, black on Indian, Indian on Chinese. What stops us from recognising the humanity in each other.
“And that’s why in 2018 and consistently since then on behalf of my nation, we call for global moral strategic leadership. Because what the world needs now more than ever is people who understand than principles must guide actions. And that principles only mean something when it is inconvenient to stand by them. Because none of us are made perfect and therefore there will be times when we will fall short. But it’s that ability to acknowledge it and to seek redemption that will define us as a civilisation, and our ability to move on in strength rather than anguishing in the shadows of a disgraceful history.”
Esther Phillips performed a poem dedicated to her great great grandmother and her sisters.
Mia Mottley:
“And you looked and you saw how armed with a pen her words and her voice one of your own blood had started her journey back through the years to follow your footsteps to write your story. Write to right your story.
“Wandering towards justice. What does that road look like? And how does that liberate us to work together to do that which humanity and our planet demands of us now? Do we go into battle with a quarter or a third or a tenth of who are eligible to fight? When we need as many as possible to fight the battle of all civilisation. To save our planet and our biodiversity. Do we continue to retreat as war and rumours of war are replaced, with all due respect to Gregory Isaac, the realities of war, are not rumours any more. What do we do and what does it look like. One of the significant realities of the post-George Floyd Black Lives Matter movement is that it stirred the conscience of the world. Perhaps for the first time, the world recognised that we could no longer continue to ignore the trauma of four centuries of enslavement. Of four centuries of barbarism. Of four centuries of denying people their very humanity.
“And that’s spawned many actions, some planned and some as we recall very much unplanned. Statues were torn down. Apologies were made by some. Reports were commissioned. Commitments were given. And it certainly took us to a place where we had not been thus far. But did it take us to a place we needed to be? No, it hasn’t. And there are a few things that we need to point out. Not in acrimony, not in anger. But out of reality. Much of what was done we appreciate the sensitivity. But in many instances it ignored the agency of black people. It was not done after conversation. It was not done through negotiations or discussion. It was done full stop. And I want to thank those who did it because I believe that they didn’t have to do it. They really didn’t. I want to thank the Church of England for commissioning the study. And I want to thank them for agreeing to a £100 million gift. The only difficulty is that there was no conversation. And the difficulty remains that that may not in any way come to close the gap.
“I say all the time as we discuss climate globally, that we in the region face double jeopardy. That it was our blood, sweat and tears that financed the industrial revolution across Europe and in the later years with the United States of America, if we move through that very seamless journey of slavery to colonialism and empire of imperial. And when we recognise that we then begin to understand that the extraction of wealth for centuries led to the enrichment of individuals, families, companies and countries. We accept that while that transpired there was a determination that at all costs the industrial revolution would drive economic activity.
“And many don’t know that the science that we listen to with greater regularity today was equally available to the world before the end of the 19th century. Not 20th but 19th. That what the industrial revolution was doing to the world would have the impact that it is having. That it would cause those of us who grew up listening to 96 degrees in the shade would understand that that which was supposed to be a horrific temperature is actually now seen as a cool temperature in some parts of the world. And that we live, as I like to say now, in the age of superlatives. The hottest, the driest, the wettest. Every week we break a new record. And we do so regrettably with the majority of former colonies on the front line. We do so regrettably however with not only the former colonies on the frontline but almost all of humanity now knows what it is to be a victim of a climate crisis.
“I don’t speak about climate change because change does not reflect the crisis that we are in. I say these things because we’re asked to play our part to build resilience and to adapt to this new reality. But upon becoming independent most of us never even had a compact. But upon emancipation the planters received £20 million. Indeed, that debt was only finally paid for in this century. And it just goes to show us almost two centuries later the significant amount that they received as compensation for profiting. But it wasn’t only the £20 million it was also the £27 million in free labour that they received between 1834 and 1838 in the period of apprenticeship. £47 million given to the benefit of the planters who claimed the right, and we don’t have the time this evening to read it, you can read it yourself, in the 1661 Slave Code where as I told you if a black slave assaulted somebody, you know the penalty that I told you, but if a white slave, a white person assaulted them or killed them, all that was required of them was to pay a fine into the public treasury. Unless they were the property of another person, to compensate the owner and to pay the fine into the public treasury.
“My friends, you can’t educate people across the world and ask them not to think and not to reason for themselves. And we see the evidence of it all over the world now, with the democratisation of news and even fake news regrettably. And that has therefore meant that more often than not populations are leading governments. And where governments believe that what they’re doing is tolerable, as we are seeing coming out of the middle east, populations have risen to be able to say, ‘that which you are doing, cannot be done in my name’. I say these things because, as King Charles said, if we don’t have the conversation, and if we don’t seek to appropriately contextualise apology, and appropriately contextualise the repairing of the damage in tangible ways that will remove the cycle of poverty then we will pay the price in ways known and unknown in the future.
“I want us to go back to the same Brattle report which came out in June of this year. And which informed us that on the basis of standard measurements of damage, one the loss of life and uncompensated labour jointly foregone earnings. Two the loss of liberty. Three personal injury. Four mental pain and anguish. Five gender-based violence. Of which the whole system was premised on. That on the basis of these standards of damage they have come up with indicative sums as to what is the scale of the damages if we were to repair. And in this the total scale, attributed to Spain, $17.1 trillion. And to Britain $21.4 trillion. To France $9.82 trillion. To the Netherlands $4.886 trillion. To the US $26.7 trillion. To Brazil $4.4 trillion. Significantly, this study did not include those who were in the United Kingdom but focused on the Caribbean, central America, North America. In our own case of Barbados, the debt estimated because we were the home of modern racism. That’s where it was first institutionalised, on a small rock in the middle of the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean. 166 square miles. More or less the size of the Gaza strip. $4.9 trillion. And in 1625 when the British settlers first landed they continued without interruption until independence in 1966 and when we became a republic two years ago.
“These numbers, if taken out of context, can appear to be staggering. But if these numbers are placed in context, not in relation to one year’s GDP of a country but in relation to the total wealth accumulated over a period of time, the numbers are actually miniscule. But what we understand, and what we always understood, and in the year 2000, as a young minister of culture and education, youth and culture, I had the honour of representing my country in the first proprietary committee for the world conference against racism that was to take place in Durban in 2001. And we went to Chile and every country in the hemisphere, and in the Americas I should say, with the exception of Canada and the US, understood the need for reparations. For a financial development package to ensure that the deficit that occurred through centuries could be repaired and that countries could be given a fair chance.
“We went then to Geneva a few months later and no one gave us any chance. And the irony was that it was the same week that the Germans were seeking to compensate the Jews for the holocaust. And there were riots in this country not from Caribbean people but from Asians. And the rest of the world joined us in solidarity. With the exception of western Europe, the USA and Canada. I would like to believe that the sequence of events since then and the reality of the clear evidence of institutionalised racism and unconscious bias almost 20 years later would lead to a different narrative.
“And I want to salute the king for having the courage to understand that this is a conversation whose time has come. Like with everything else, conversations will be difficult and will take time. And we’re not expecting that the reparatory damages will be paid in a year or two or five because the extraction of wealth and the damage took place over centuries. But we are demanding that we be seen, that we be heard and that we be felt. And we do so not because of us alone even, but because in repairing the community as we must, and in repairing the nation as we must, that we recognise that the world needs more and more as a global village to ensure that there is a fairness and a level playing field for as many countries across the globe. We have come to point in the world’s history where there has never been a clearer need for the establishment of global public goods, because what happens in the smallest of nations can undermine the quality of lie in the largest of nations.
“As we speak, with COP 28 continuing behind us, we know more than ever the need to ensure the ones who are not the ones who spawn the current crisis ought not to be the ones who accumulate debt or deny their citizens the right to development because of the immediate exigencies of having to repair the damage of the climate crisis. Whether that damage is drought or floods or storms or hurricanes or as niggling or as chronic as sargassum seaweed on coasts preventing those who sell their labour to others wanting to benefit from tourism or restaurants, persons not being able to go there in order to be able to enjoy themselves. This reality is one that requires the majority of the world’s population functioning together. And in part and parcel of the repairing of the damages therefore, they cannot only be at the nation state level. It has to be equally at the global level. It is critical that we have the conversations and recognise that settlement at a developmental level must happen to allow countries to play their own part, such that the nations not only conserve the needs of their people but can also meet the obligations as global citizens. It is equally important that we settle on a mechanism that allows non-state actors, many of whom have access to considerably larger balance sheets than two thirds of the countries of the world, to be able to be required to play their part in saving the world. Many of these actors, equally when we investigate have linkages or anchors or benefits that come out of the same imperial order which caused decimation.
“And I ask us today to reflect on the fact that it should not have to take another nine minutes and 29 seconds to cause action to be taken. Morally, it is the right thing to do. Strategically, it is the right thing to do. And why? Because if you accept that Africa will have the great demographic of this century then one in every four children living on this planet, one in every four adults living on this planet, by 2050 will come out of the continent of Africa. If we accept that small countries can cause and do things that can undermine the public health of their citizens and by extension with global air travel can undermine the health of the entire world, then we can’t leave ourselves open to that possibility by denying them the opportunity to be able to provide the best class of public health that they can to their citizens.
“And we can’t continue to ignore the reality of the digital divide that can’t even get off the ground in Africa because 600 million people don’t even have access to electricity, far less tablets. We live in a world that if we do not pause and start to address issues of equity and to unravel the points of racism that have continued to keep an imperial order in place we will suffer the consequences. We cannot talk about repairing the community and repairing the national state without equally talking about repairing the governance mechanisms at the international level. The United Nations cannot continue to have at the core of its security council five nations who more reflect an imperial order than it does reflect the diversity of the 193 nations of the world today.
“I want to salute the head of the IMF, for agreeing to give sub Saharan Africa a third member on the board, but equally there needs to be greater levels of representation in all of the international financial institutions that reflect equally the diversity of the world in which we live today. We can talk a lot more, and there’s so much more to be read and to be shared. But I am conscious that what I do here this evening, with the help of Esther, is to cause you to start to think. Because not until then, not until we start to reframe how we see each other, not until we start to demand fairness and equity at the core of our international system. Not until we understand that there is only one human race on this planet. And that unless we have, as I say often, a plan to live on Mars, which we have not shared with people, then we have an obligation to define what is the role of each and every one of us.
“In the greatest battle that humanity must face each of us will be required to carry weight, even those who are victims. And that’s why the issue of redemption and apology and all of these things need to be put one side because the world more than ever needs us to act with singular purpose. The world more than ever does not have the luxury of going on pause with the climate crisis. Because of wars in the middle east, Europe or Africa. The world more than ever needs us to be able to rise up and change our behaviour. We know without a doubt now that methane will do far more to save us from that dreaded 1.5 degrees than any other single action that we can do. For example, controlling methane saves 85 times the damage that CO2 would give to the Earth. But if we are busy and do not talk with one another and not work with one another then we will find that even that will become a bridge too far for us. Not until then when we see each other.
“In the words of Haile Selassi, popularised by Bob Marley, not until there are no first class and second class citizens of the world can we truly put forward the best effort to save humanity. This is not about saving the north Atlantic countries or saving Africa or saving Asia. This is about saving the planet Earth. And not until then will we give ourselves the best chance. It appears to be a small start, considering the facts of history are irrefutable. Considering that the voices who now recognise that the conversation is legitimate from all sides. But I ask us as we leave this room today to recognise that each of us has a role in legitimising the conversation to repair the soul. To repair the family. To repair the community and nation. And to repair the international order that has done so much to leave us on our knees. We do not need another nine minutes 29 seconds to rise above and to act as one and to save our planet. Thank you”
Esther Philips performed a final poem, “Not Until Then”.
Read more in the Black History Month collection of LSE History Blog posts
