David Cameron is the descendant of a British slave owner who once held a lucrative sugar estate on Jamaica

Slave Descendant? Don’t Call Me Dave!

By Finian Cunningham

October 04, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - "SCF" - British Prime Minister David Cameron had some stiff upper-lip advice for Jamaicans while on an official visit this week to the Caribbean state. He was urged to make a formal apology for Britain’s historic role in the transatlantic slave trade and to consider monetary reparations for the descendants of African slaves, who account for the vast majority of Jamaica’s population.

However, Cameron said neither an official British apology nor reparations were forthcoming, and instead he told the islanders to «move on».

Cameron, who earlier this month garnered media headlines over a muckraking unauthorised biography, entitled 'Call Me Dave', told Jamaicans that the history of the slave trade was one of «deep wounds» and «abhorrent» practice.

But he advised that the former British colony should «move on from this painful legacy and continue to build for the future». In short, the Etonian old boy and Conservative prime minister of the United Kingdom was saying, «Don’t call me Dave».

A Downing Street spokesman added: «There is a longstanding UK position, true of successive governments in the UK, that we don’t think reparations are the right approach».

Cameron’s haughty attitude towards centuries of barbaric British slave trading provoked a storm of anger among Jamaican parliamentarians and campaigners.

Andrew Holness, the Jamaican leader of the opposition, told the parliament in Kingston that there «must be ways of repairing what is universally agreed to be the wrongs of the past».

Respected Jamaican academic Hilary Beckles, who chairs a reparations commission, wrote an open letter in local media addressed to Cameron, demanding: «You owe it to us as you return here to communicate a commitment to reparatory justice that will enable your nation to play its part in cleaning up this monumental mess of Empire».

It was also pointed out that David Cameron is the descendant of a British slave owner who once held a lucrative sugar estate on the Caribbean island. In 1833, Sir James Duff, a distant cousin of Cameron on his father’s side, was compensated by the British government for the loss of «slave property» when London finally abolished slavery in Jamaica. The compensation paid to Cameron’s relative would be equivalent to £3 million ($5m) in today’s money.

Read more here:
[link to www.informationclearinghouse.info]