AS he sits in the CHOGM summit in Samoa avoiding the glances of Bahamian, Barbadian, Jamaican and other Caribbean leaders, Keir Starmer will ignore the level of insult to the peoples of the African diaspora.

It is not a mere rebuff or a petulant oversight. We see him.

It fits with his own recent pattern of anti-Black racism which he showed by his appalling treatment of Diane Abbott MP – trying to expel her while she faced racist, sexist abuse from a Tory donor.

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It’s shown by his ditching the findings of Martin Forde KC’s report into UK Labour’s blatant institutional racism.

It’s shown by his glacial slowness to recognise the obvious – that this summer’s fascist-led riots were motivated by Islamophobia and racism stoked up by mainstream politicians.

For Starmer, anti-Black racism and Islamophobia come a poor second and third to the only form of racism he does take seriously – antisemitism. ALL racism is equally harmful and equally wrong. It is this mentality which is a major part of his refusal to condemn Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, the Occupied West Bank and in Lebanon.

But why such sensitivity about being challenged on slavery? Surely he should be able to handle uncomfortable factual conversations about Britain’s perpetrator role in the ongoing biggest crime against humanity (CAH) in recorded history?

In some ways, Starmer’s stance is actually worse than previous prime ministers’. At the bicentennial of 1807 (the year the British abolished human trafficking in enslaved Africans – the so-called “slave trade”) Tony Blair at least expressed “deep regrets” in 2007 about the UK’s slavery legacy while refusing to go so far as to offer an apology.

In 2010, David Cameron also deflected calls for reparations but offered “reparations” in the form of building a prison to replace Jamaica’s squalid General Penitentiary.

But why the defensiveness? Why the refusal to even entertain a discussion about it? Why such sensitivity when he knows that the finger of blame is pointed at the government of the time, not him personally?

I have often said that the racism of today is deeply rooted in the racism of yesterday – the slavery and colonial legacy of Scotland’s and Britain’s past as an empire.

Truth is that under 14 years of Tory governments, “culture wars” were launched in defence of empire nostalgia – a key ingredient of the Brexit fever that gripped England especially. Tories have attacked the facts uncovered by historians and scholars about the far depths that chattel slavery wealth reaches still today in the British economy and society.

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Labour, having inherited the offices of the UK state, are bound now to defend that state’s image of itself. After they won Tory seats by pandering to the inherent UK/English nationalism of Tory voters, it can’t be any surprise to see the ongoing denial of Scotland’s right to self-determination and the continuance of Tory muscular Unionism bypassing a Scottish Parliament that’s taken the exact opposite view on our colonial past.

The first step in achieving reparatory justice is acknowledgement. Reparation means not just repaying compensation but making repair to the peoples and societies damaged by slavery.

Scotland is home to a lively debate and written scholarship about that legacy spearheaded by Glasgow West India merchants scholar Dr Stephen Mullen of Glasgow University.

All our main cities and universities have commissioned reports and made formal apologies for their involvement in slavery.

Holyrood overwhelmingly backed plans to form a national slavery and colonial legacy museum after the Scottish Government launched consultations and formed reference groups in Museums Galleries Scotland.

Slavery legacy committees were formed in Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen as well as the cross-party Slavery and Colonial Legacy working group that I’ve chaired since 2021 at Glasgow City Council. We’ve made recommendations on street signs, statues, school curriculum and history teaching.

So with all this going on in Scotland, where are the similar processes going on in England under Starmer’s “changed Labour Party”?

African and Caribbean peoples and nations have been, and are still being, blighted by the chattel slavery legacy. The neo-colonialist relations Britain maintains of extracting African and Caribbean resources for its own economic benefit means that the “ongoing harms” of slavery haven’t yet ended.

The wealth stolen by Britain during the so-called slave trade era enabled Britain to develop economically and prevented the countries that wealth was taken from from doing so. Britain got a head start from their resources and those countries have never fully recovered.

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At COP26. our then first minister Nicola Sturgeon pioneered the concept of loss and damage compensation for climate change effects on developing countries having been caused by industrialised Global North countries.

To acknowledge slavery as a CAH and as an example of loss and damage is an obvious comparison to make. If we are ultimately accepting UK and Scottish responsibility for loss and damage, we must do the same for chattel enslavement of Africans by European powers which lasted 250 years.

To accept responsibility is clearly to accept guilt but also to accept legal liability. Apologies and acknowledgements (dealing with the facts) are only the initial steps.

However, in contemporary international human rights law, that means financial liability for compensation which is why Western perpetrator nations are so reluctant to offer even acknowledgement.

It’s understandable but it’s wrong and I’ve yet to hear a justification for it.

There are many precedents for nation states compensating victims of CAH and genocide. It is this that Starmer and the British establishment fear.

By even opening up the discussion, we are putting the UK on a pathway to reparations being demanded and ultimately being paid to African and Caribbean countries and descendants. That would be the right thing to do.

Currently, Starmer seems utterly incapable of saying or doing the right thing.

Today, I will speak at a reparations conference in London organised by a friend who is also a fantastic Labour MP and I will show solidarity with her. I just wish her party leader would do the same.

Graham Campbell is an SNP councillor for Glasgow’s Springburn/Robroyston ward