Thread by @paddydocherty

A thread about Establishment wealth, reparations, & why the Tories will *always* defend the statues of slavers & Empire racists… 🤨✊🌹🇪🇺 #Colston #reparations #ColonialViolence #resist #slavery #BlackLivesMatter

This chap is Richard Drax, Tory MP for South Dorset since 2010. His full name is Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, and he comes from a long line of Tory MPs and other assorted Establishment figures over the centuries. 😋✊🌹🇪🇺 #Drax #ScroogeMcDuck

He owns c14,000 acres of Dorset, making him the largest private landowner in the county. Pic shows his country seat, Charborough House. 🧐 #NiceGaff #Dorset #CountryLife

Drax is, rather predictably, a Brexit nutjob… This ⬇️ is the parliamentary gibberish he uttered about our prospects under a No Deal exit… 😖✊🌹🇪🇺 #FFS #Brexit #GibberGibber #ToriesOut

Happily, Labour MP @WesStreeting at least pointed out that Drax was making no sense whatsoever… It is, however, difficult to shame someone without a conscience... 😋✊🌹🇪🇺 #resist

Drax has an exceptionally regressive voting record in the House of Commons, and in his remarks in opposition to marriage equality he demonstrated the mental agility of an antique hatstand. 🙄 #gross #backwards #NotTheSharpest

Along with many other Establishment families, Drax is a direct beneficiary of the slave trade. His family owned a slave plantation in Barbados, & when slavery was wound up in British territories in the 1830s, they received compensation equivalent to £3m.

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan…

The freed slaves, of course, received nothing. The Drax slave money is clearly identified in the landmark UCL project “Legacies of British Slave-ownership”:
😠✊🌹🇪🇺 #ToriesOut #slavery

ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/

Drax is far from alone in this, and many other British people alive today have benefitted directly (and ALL of us indirectly) from the long period during which we enslaved millions of African people. 😖✊🌹🇪🇺 #history #slavery #ColonialViolence #BritishEmpire

Indeed, Professor Catherine Hall, who leads the UCL project, has expressed her surprise at how deeply embedded slave ownership was in British society. 🤨✊🌹🇪🇺 #slavery #BritishEmpire

ucl.ac.uk/lbs/project/ca…

A valuable intro to the project and its findings is provided by @DavidOlusoga in this 2015 @bbc programme:

😖✊🌹#slavery #BlackLivesMatter

https://twitter.com/bbcarchive/status/1271370405463445506

Despite the clear historical evidence and expert involvement, however, many beneficiaries of slavery are keen to avoid the topic… In the BBC article above, it mentions that the Drax family “refused to comment”… 🧐🌹 #Drax #secret #NoComment #ColonialViolence

During the 2010 election campaign, Drax had this to say about the family slaving fortune… You will notice that this is deliberately dishonest: the salient events were NOT 300-400 years ago, but in 1834. He is keen to ignore the whole issue… 🙄✊🌹🇪🇺 #ToriesOut #Drax

This reticence is common in the families who have gained financially from the enslavement of other human beings. Is it due to embarrassment? A sense of shame? To some extent, of course… 😳 #BenAffleck #slavery #UnderTheRug

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

More powerfully, though, I think the driving force behind the determination to avoid the subject is one overarching terror: the fear of reparations… or, more accurately, a fear that the reparations debate may undermine their claims on wealth & power more broadly. 😧✊🌹

As Professor @kehinde_andrews sets out in his book “Back to Black”, our wealth is built on imperial exploitation, including of enslaved African people, making reparations an undeniable necessity for any honest person who considers it properly 😠✊🌹🇪🇺 #reparations #BritishEmpire

Moreover, this exploitation did not end alongside the slave trade, nor with the formal end of European colonial empires, but is ongoing… The debt is still owed. 😔✊🌹🇪🇺 #BritishEmpire #history #Reparations #BlackLivesMatter

When events happen to highlight Britain’s exploitation of enslaved Africans, discussion of reparations is the logical next step:

🤓✊🌹🇪🇺 #Reparations #history #slavery #BlackLivesMatter

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

So, Drax and his chums are just worried about having to hand over a bit of their pile of cash, right…? Actually no, the figures involved are eye-wateringly large, and this is what troubles them… 😧🌹 #Cripes #Reparations #BritishEmpire

Thomas Craemer (a professor at @UConn) has recently done some landmark work on calculating the reparations owed to African American slave-descendants… ⬇️ His conclusion is staggering… 😮🤯 #reparations

For context, the entire UK economy was worth $2.83trn in nominal terms in 2018. The amount owed to African American slave-descendants is therefore enormous… Moreover, Craemer’s calculations are just for descendants of enslaved people in the USA. ✊🌹🇪🇺

If we start to add up the wealth extracted from enslaved people in other parts of the world, and through other methods of imperial exploitation, the numbers quickly become eye-watering. 😧✊🌹🇪🇺 #ColonialViolence #history #reparations #BritishEmpire

Consider, for example, this calculation of the wealth extracted by the British during their rule over India… ⬇️ The economist Utsa Patnaik estimates this to be fully $45trn between 1765 and 1938… @jasonhickel @AlJazeera 😮✊🌹🇪🇺 #India #ReparationsNow

aljazeera.com/indepth/opinio…

It is because of the staggering size of the sums in question that the Establishment seeks to suppress discussion of reparations, & employs a battery of dubious arguments to defend itself & its continuing systems of exploitation. 😖✊🌹🇪🇺 #racism #ReparationsNow #BlackLivesMatter

To be clear, reparations are not some socialist dream of redistribution but rather the return of what was *stolen*. 😠✊🌹🇪🇺 #ReparationsNow #history #reparations #BlackLivesMatter

Drax claims that he can’t be held responsible for wrongdoing by his ancestors. Since he continues to benefit financially from precisely these acts, however, I think he CAN and MUST be... 🧐✊🌹🇪🇺 #ReparationsNow #history #TakeResponsibility #ColonialViolence

Given the enormous amount of money involved, genuine reparations would require a wholesale revision of the capitalist system as we know it: a comprehensive social revolution and #SystemChange… 😃✊🌹🇪🇺 #XR #resist #ReparationsNow #Rethink

Because reparations – undoing the damage that western imperialism has done to the world – are a moral imperative, making the changes necessary to deliver them are *also* a moral imperative… 🤓✊🌹🇪🇺 #resist #SystemChange #ReparationsNow

Justice requires reparations, so we must reorganise our society to be capable of delivering justice. This means an end to the exploitative system in which Drax and his friends continue to live on the suffering of others. 😖✊🌹🇪🇺 #ffs #SystemChange #XR #ReparationsNow

This is why the Tories will always defend the statues of slavers & Empire racists: they will fight tooth & nail to hang onto money & power, so must prevent any serious discussion of reparatory justice. 😠✊🌹🇪🇺 #ReparationsNow #justice #history #BlackLivesMatter

The Tory party must therefore be destroyed at the polls for us to have any chance of achieving a decent world...
😃✊🌹🇪🇺 #resist #ColonialViolence #ToriesOut #ReparationsNow #history #racism #BlackLivesMatter