I was invited to a conference today, to be held on November 10th and 11th at the Brunei Gallery in London under the auspices of Essex University, SOAS and QMUL. It's title is "Colonialism, Slavery, Reparations and Trade: Remedying the Past?" The flyer states the "Conference focus" thus:
"This Conference focuses on reparations for the African Holocaust.
The aim of the Conference is to show how colonialism and the slave trade wrought economic devastation on those countries where these events took place, and the causal connection between this and the state of affected countries' economies today.
Such causality could form the platform for justified demands for reparation, including calls for a change in trading rules."
Now I am all in favour of academic debate, including having academics argue for things that I disagree with, even for things that make me uncomfortable. I have no problem with my taxes going to pay for that. If some academics want to argue that colonialism is the cause of poor economic performance in Africa today, then I disagree - but good luck to them!
But that doesn't seem to me to be what is going on with this conference. This conference is not about debate. It states explicitly that it "aims to show" that there is a causal connection between colonialism and current problems, and it has issued a "call for papers" that show this. Further, it hopes to establish a "platform" for "justifed demands for reparation"! So my taxes are being spent so that a naked political lobbying group can try to claim "compensation" from the British government for alleged ills from hundreds of years ago.
I have no objection to such lobbying activities going on, even though I disagree profoundly with their objectives. But why should I have to pay for it?!
