Actor Danny Glover has called David Cameron’s suggestion that Jamaica should “move on” from slavery “outrageous”, and said it shows the UK prime minister’s “ignorance” of the issues.
In comments reported by the Gleaner, Glover – best known for his role in the Lethal Weapon movies, but also a long-term left-leaning activist on a wide variety of causes – said: “To make such an outrageous statement is an insult ... it’s outrageous ... and it just shows his ignorance.”
Glover was visiting Jamaica as part of a campaign for reparations for slavery, and addressed an editorial meeting at the Gleaner, the country’s best-known news publication. Glover told the meeting: “I’m not holding out for the reparations, but I think certainly that reparations provide an opportunity for us to organise in different ways around the question itself ... If you don’t bring up the issue, the brutality of it, you don’t get a discussion around it.”
Glover also responded to the UK government’s plan to use foreign aid money to build a prison in Jamaica and transfer large numbers of Jamaican-born convicts there. Glover said Jamaican authorities should tell Britain to “keep your prison, give us schools, give us infrastructure, not prisons”.
