Just trying to surmount the monumental obstacles of our modern-day world is difficult enough for developing countries, let alone having to worry about correcting historical wrongs suffered in the past, particularly at the hands of the colonisers.

It is our view in this space that smart countries would not allow the past to get in the way of their advancement and, moreover, would seek to leverage all past relationships that may be of potential benefit to the people of victim-countries.

British colonialism was extremely painful and left us with a legacy of brutal poverty, vestiges of which are still all around us. The call for reparation for forced labour and injury caused by slavery — to help correct some of that historical wrong — is therefore not unreasonable.

But achieving common ground between the descendants of slaves and the descendants of the colonisers is a venture that is fraught with uncertainty, and the gap is extraordinarily wide. Even the staunchest reparationist knows this to be so.

Our view continues to be that, while we not abandon the struggle for reparation, we must seek to squeeze every possible benefit that may be there for the taking from the circumstances of our unfortunate past.

This brings us to the matter of the state-of-the-art prison that was offered to us by the British Government in 2015, and which Jamaica refused on grounds that it was an insult for our past colonisers to offer us such an ignoble gift when we are owed so much more.

We are in complete agreement with Major Richard Reese, the former commissioner of corrections, and Mr Vincent Morrison, the veteran trade unionist, who were quoted in our Wednesday edition that refusing the prison was a terrible error of judgement.

Having told the British what to do with their £25-million gift prison, we then announced that we will be building an $8-billion state-of-the-art prison, with work slated to start this fiscal year. Where on Earth could this pass as good sense? When did we suddenly stop being so resource-poor that we can scoff at such a substantial offer?

We should be looking to milk every opportunity provided to benefit our country by Britain. In a previous editorial we mentioned the inestimable value of the Rhodes Scholarship which is named after a British colonialist. We must keep that.

There are several other gifts that remain valuable to us, such as the United Kingdom Privy Council, which doesn’t charge us to use the court’s facilities to seek justice as our final court of appeal.

Given the shambles that we are calling a justice system here, we must continue to exploit the UK Privy Council in our own best interest. Without the confidence that it is possible to get the best possible justice, people will continue to take the law into their own hands and the murder rate will remain abysmally high.

There is a reason our lawyers here who have distinguished themselves in international jurisprudence cling so tightly to their British designation as Queen’s Counsel (QC). We say continue to cling even tighter for the leverage it allows.

Simply put, let’s not, in the name of some idealistic notion far removed from our reality, throw out the baby with the bath water. Our past need not define our future.