Commonwealth head proposes race summit

Leaders risk repeating events of the Empire’s bloody past without open debate, says baroness

The secretary-general of the Commonwealth has proposed a truth and reconciliation-style summit on race as a way of dealing with what the Duke of Sussex has called the “wrongs” of its past. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Baroness Scotland addressed the issue after race protests in the US, the Black Lives Matter movement and a global reckoning of the legacy of colonialism, which led to the removal of statues in countries including Britain and the US.

THE secretary-general of the Commonwealth has proposed a truth and reconciliation-style summit as a way of reckoning with what the Duke of Sussex has called the “wrongs” of its past.

interview with The Daily Telegraph, Baroness Scotland said the association of 54 member states had “never been frightened” to have “uncomfortable” conversations about race and Empire.

She made the comments in the wake of race protests in the US, the Black Lives Matter movement and a global reckoning of the legacy of colonialism, which led to the removal of statues in countries including Britain and America.

In July, the Duke, whose grandmother is head of the Commonwealth, said its “uncomfortable” history must be addressed to “right the wrongs” of the past. Lady Scotland said one option could be a mechanism similar to the Truth and Reconciliation Committee set up in South Africa after apartheid.

She said: “Ministers are all saying this is an issue which we are going to have to deal with, and there is a lot of support. The debate doesn’t go away because you shove it under the carpet.

“But this is where the Commonwealth is great, because the people and countries involved are all on that journey. It’s not just talking to one side – we’re all the sides.”

She stressed that the Commonwealth had confronted race and equality since its inception. It was born as an association of equal states after the fall of the British Empire as former colonies became independent nations.

Any summit would have to examine atrocities committed at the time of Empire – from slavery to Partition, the bloody division of British India into India and Pakistan ahead of Indian independence, which displaced millions and led to two million killed. Events such as the 1919 Amritsar massacre, in which 379 unarmed Indian civilians were shot by the British Indian Army, could be addressed.

“We have never been frightened of this conversation,” said Lady Scotland.

“You can’t say to young people don’t talk about this, don’t talk about colonialism – not about where we have been. It has never been for us black or white, rich or poor. This has been a conversation we had to have in order to create the Commonwealth.” It led the way in opposing apartheid in South Africa in the Eighties, said Baroness Scotland, and she remembered as a child watching the 1976 Soweto uprising in which police brutally suppressed protests led by black schoolchildren.

“I remember not understanding – why are they doing this? These kids look like me, and I was watching them get mown down,” she said.

“I wouldn’t have thought we’d be having this conversation in 2020, but if we don’t understand our history we are doomed to repeat it.”