Frank Phipps
The complexion of human rights
Member of Parliament (MP) Mike Henry was able to secure a unanimous decision for his private member’s motion on January 27, 2015, seeking reparation from Great Britain for slavery in Jamaica under British colonial rule. It is up to us now to realise that objective to satisfy the dire need for improvement to mental health, education, justice, and personal security services in the country.
Eight months later, September 2015, I provided an opinion for MP Henry in which I understood the decision was a request from the people to their Queen and head of State to pursue their claim for equal rights and justice and to correct the denial of fundamental human rights under colonial rule by the procedure set out at section 4 of the Judicial Committee 1833 Act for a referral of the claim to section 3 for The Queen’s advice on a high constitutional point that cannot go through the courts.
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Mankind’s greatest tragedy
The case concerns the denial of fundamental human rights and justice for people in Jamaica under British rule, disallowing them the protection of law for the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual, facilitated, carried out, and condoned by successive governments of the United Kingdom without remorse or apology. There was even a satirical offer of a prison by a former British prime minister rather than responsible advice from an exalted individual whose family in the past owned slaves in Jamaica.
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This was a period for the forcible abduction of people from their native land in transnational trafficking in human beings, chained together in the horrors of the slave ship crossing the Atlantic to land in the Americas, a journey for the further enrichment of Britain from the wickedness of plantation life in Jamaica. The enslavement, the unpaid work when the enslaver was paid at Emancipation in 1833, with nothing for the freed worker — nowhere to live and no way to feed themselves and their families.
There was no offer of redress or reparation long overdue to heal the pain and humiliation from enslavement and social discrimination that lasted for hundreds of years — a period celebrated by some as the time of Britain’s greatest prosperity, a period bemoaned by many as the time of mankind’s greatest tragedy
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Thirty-two years later, during the Morant Bay Rebellion, the cry was for land to feed themselves and on which to build shelter for their families. It is the same cry today, when shelter without food security is a paradise for fools.
Further particulars for reparation
The society in which people live is the most extensive and longest lasting victim of crime, more so for deeply rooted enslavement.
The warfare, riots, and rebellions throughout the island as good trouble protesting enslavement, they also provided a legacy of violence passed on from one generation to another in which children who were born slaves in the society inherited physical and emotional damage. This was the school of distance learning for disorder and deadly violence that must now be urgently considered for reparation. Professor Frederick Hickling advised ‘Owning our madness’.
The loss of nationality for the abducted people, loss of family and friends, religion and culture, language and name as distinguishing features for their humanity cannot be assessed in pecuniary value, but they must weigh heavily in the scales for reparatory justice.
Jamaica is an English-speaking island, a former slave colony of Britain on 4,240 sq ml in the Caribbean, with an estimated population of 2.8 million. The overwhelming majority are descendants of people abducted from the west coast of Sub-Saharan Africa, identified predominantly by the dark colour of their skin, called black, thereby evoking the statement: “Human rights have a skin colour, and the darker you are, the less human rights you have,” from Swedish MP Abir Al-Sahlani when speaking at the European Parliament on February 27, 2024.
Jamaica was granted Independence by the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Northern Island and Wales on August 6, 1962 and is now a member of the United Nations as a free and independent nation of mixed English, East Indian, Chinese, Lebanese, Syrians, and Jews contributing to the development of Jamaica.
Before abolishing The King as head of State for Jamaica, we must remember it is through The King that the UK is called on to contribute substantially to complete the building of a nation, Out of Many One People, fully accepted at home and abroad for equal rights and justice, renowned as it is for music and sports.
The application to The Queen, pursuant to section 4, was later adopted by the National Council on Reparation (NCR), which advanced the position in recommendations to Minister of Culture Olivia Grange as an initial approach for reparatory justice through the Privy Council on behalf of the people of Jamaica and generations past and generations yet unborn.
MP Henry received strategic support from a team of lawyers outside Jamaica, in the United Kingdom, led by Lawrence Cartier and Edward Fitzgerald, King’s Counsel, aimed at giving effect to the resolution passed by the Jamaican Parliament in 2015. The team offered to provide professional services to MP Henry in support of his position. The NCR embraced the British team and together arrived at a position which, in the view of the council, would aptly represent the Jamaican position on reparation.
Section 4 was approved by Cabinet as the procedure to be sent to Parliament for acceptance going forward, with the claim to The Queen for reference to the Judicial Privy Council for reparation.
Nothing now remains for a decision on the referral of the application that will provide first, the advice of the monarch on an important constitutional matter of law and human rights that cannot go through the courts; second, the right of the people under British colonial rule to have access to their head of State for redress of crimes against humanity; third, the obedience of the Government of the UK to the decisions and orders of its monarch announced by the Privy Council in public.
Ultimately, the most outstanding human rights violation is in the stigma of global tolerance for social discrimination, creating a lower class of people by the colour of their skin. A parody on humankind.
Frank Phipps, King’s Counsel, is a former senator and former president of the Jamaican Bar Association.
The most outstanding human rights violation is in the creation of a lower class of people because of the colour of their skin.
