SG Soomer: 75 Years After Capitalism and Slavery, Work Still Important

Secretary General Dr. June Soomer delivered a paper to mark the anniversary of the publication of Capitalism and Slavery, the seminal work by Dr. Eric Williams, former Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister.

“This paper seeks to demonstrate that the calls for recognition, justice and development articulated in the UN’s International Decade for People of African Descent since enslavement must be underpinned by the solid reasoning for the restitution hinted by Capitalism and Slavery. Moreover, the paper is a chronological demonstration that since 1944 this seminal work was critical in advancing a more consolidated reiteration of the reparations movement in the post-independence. The unintended in the end gave the force to the struggle.”   

She delivered her discourse at a two-day symposium on Capitalism and Slavery. The event was put on by the CARICOM Reparations Commission in collaboration with the UWI Centre for Reparation Research and the Faculty of Humanities and Education, UWI St. Augustine. 

Since the 2016 Declaration of Havana, the ACS has supported the 10-point Action Plan of the Reparations Commission of CARICOM, and the urgent need to establish compensatory and reparatory effective resources at an international level.