Opposition parliamentarian Mike Henry on Tuesday stormed out of a meeting of the Bicentennial Committee on Slavery with visiting British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, after describing as condescending, Prescott’s reported position that a formal apology for slavery was not necessary and that Britain should be concentrating its reparation efforts on Africa.

“How is it that you are prepared to pay the slave owners but not willing to compensate the slaves?” Henry, a longtime reparation advocate, asked in a news release issued yesterday. “It is a patronising approach by the deputy prime minister.”

Henry said Prescott was disrespectful to the feelings of the descendants of slaves in the Caribbean because he never paid a courtesy call on the House of Representatives where the issue was being debated.

“He didn’t even visit the committee which is now discussing the issue,” Henry said in an interview with the Observer yesterday.

Last night, an Observer source said that the meeting, held at the University of the West Indies, was stormy. The source did not give details.

The majority of Jamaicans are the descendants of slaves who, between the 16th and 19th centuries, were transported from West Africa across the Atlantic in cramped, unsanitary conditions on sailing ships to the Caribbean and the USA. Sometimes, as many as half of a ship’s load died during the journey that lasted several weeks.

Historians say that the trade of between 10 million and 28 million Africans was abolished in British colonies in 1838. However, the practice – often described as one of the worst examples of man’s inhumanity to man – persisted until the latter half of the 19th century in some non-British colonies as well as the United States.

Since the start of this year, the local Bicentenary Committee has been staging events to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery. Prescott’s visit, which ended yesterday, was one of those events.

Last November, in a column in the New Nation, a Black community newspaper, British Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged that it was right to recognise the active role Britain, its ports and its industry once played in the trafficking of human beings.

“I believe the bicentenary offers us a chance not just to say how profoundly shameful the slave trade was – how we condemn its existence utterly and praise those who fought for its abolition – but also to express our deep sorrow that it ever happened, that it ever could have happened,” Blair wrote.

In March this year, the BBC reported Prescott as saying the emphasis should now be on helping African nations rather than formal apologies.

In April this year, Henry tabled a Private Member’s motion on the issue of reparation for the trans-atlantic slave trade in Parliament. Yesterday, he blasted Prescott for what he described as his insensitivity to the feelings of the Caribbean people on the subject of reparation which, he said, had not been included on Prescott’s itinerary here.

“We all know what happened and how we feel about it, so why should we entertain this British official on our front lawns without him being prepared to discuss this matter which is of such heart-wrenching concern to us?” Henry asked.

He said that unlike some people, he was not prepared to play the hypocrite on the issue, hence his public stance on the matter and his non-acceptance of a patronising visit being carried out with great disrespect to the country’s Parliament.

The Observer was unable to get a comment from the British High Commission yesterday as no one in authority was available to speak.

Henry, in his news release, said Prescott’s visit was being castigated by the British media, yet a small band of Jamaicans were welcoming him without questioning the appropriateness of his stance.

“It was not without serious consideration that I brought the motion on reparation before Parliament,” said Henry, “and it is with the same degree of focus and concern that I take strong exception to Mr Prescott’s visit.”