Crawford rejects Warmington’s argument on Africans’ role in slave trade

KINGSTON, Jamaica — A suggestion from Government Member of Parliament (MP) Everald Warmington that Jamaica should seek answers from the Africans who captured and sold their fellow citizens to their white enslavers instead of pursuing reparations from Britain, was swiftly corrected and shut down by Opposition MP Damion Crawford.

This unfolded during Tuesday’s sitting of the House of Representatives shortly after Culture Minister Olivia Grange informed that Britain’s King Charles has referred Jamaica’s petition for reparations for chattel slavery that was filed on September 7 to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.

“We are awaiting directions from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as to the next steps to be taken in the case. We will keep the Cabinet and the Parliament updated on the developments,” she said. Grange also said the attorney general will argue Jamaica’s case before the Privy Council with the matter now being a legal one.

Following the statement by Grange, the floor was open for questions. When he rose to speak, the usually rowdy Warmington declared that, “No one speaks for me in reparations. My route is here in Jamaica not in Africa.”

Deputy Speaker Heroy Clarke immediately told him to stick to questions and to refrain from making statements.

Responding, Warmington, the MP for St Catherine South Western said, “I must say that I’m embarrassed at the spectacle of the photo ops in London. We went there and [it] remind me of this nursery rhyme: Pussycat, Pussycat where have you been? I’ve been to London to see the King. Pussycat, Pussycat what did you do there? I left a petition on the empty chair.”

“That’s what it reminds me of,” added Warmington as he continued to make a statement before he was again interrupted by Clarke who told him, “Member, you are going to stick to questions only. No nursery rhymes here.”

As he attempted to continue, Clarke insisted that, “You’re going to stick to questions.”

When Warmington protested that, “You did not allow me to ask a question,” Clarke responded with, “Because you weren’t asking any question”. With his microphone cut, Warmington could be heard off mic telling the deputy speaker that he was “out of order”.

With Clarke being a three-term MP, it was not clear who Warmington was heard telling that “you’re new here”.

With Opposition MPs often having their microphone muted as the speaker insist that they ask questions rather than make statements, the member for St Catherine South, Fitz Jackson was heard telling Warmington, “Now you feel what we go through, you feel what we go through now.”

Warmington eventually got to a question, stating that, “The question I’m asking, we keep on speaking of the buyers of the slaves but nobody speaks of the sellers of the slaves. That’s what I want you to answer.”

Continuing, he said, “The white man didn’t go to Africa and pick up slaves and take them cross here, they were caught by black people who sold them to the white man to come here.”

His remarks forced the intervention of the deputy speaker who again told him that he was making a statement.

“What’s the question,” Clarke demanded.

“The question I ask [is that] we keep on speaking about the white man who bought the slave and refuse to ask when are we going to ask about the black man in Africa who sell the slave to white man. They didn’t go there and catch slave.”

When he rose to ask his questions, Crawford, the MP for St Catherine North West quickly dismissed Warmington’s argument.

“If you are aware that while the selling of slaves in Africa was not state sanctioned, the slave trade was state sanctioned by the British,” he said.

“And would you therefore agree that a similar strategy could not be achieved by seeking the African commitment [to reparations] when it was not state sanctioned as we would when we seek the British commitment as it was state sanctioned through Parliament, laws and strategies for 400 years,” Crawford added.

Turning to Grange, Crawford said, “Would you therefore agree minister that the argument about the selling of slaves in Africa is therefore misplaced, irrelevant and destructive to the effort that we seek to achieve?”

—  Lynford Simpson