Welcome to Rip-Off Britain.   A country remade by privatisation.  Our latest project — Who Owns Britain? — explores how a radical experiment transformed our society and shapes your life. 🧵

“The vast scale of US global military infrastructure continues to block the effort required to mitigate the climate crisis”. Lorah Steichen wrote for the @FT about how the Pentagon has stockpiled critical minerals needed for the energy transition. https://t.co/sLVFeKJDOf

NEW: Read @stephensemler on how the expansion of the US warfare state has made the working class less secure. Prioritising everyday security over military expansion is a better electoral strategy for progressives. https://t.co/gWy0cYI3nY

The Pentagon’s planned cobalt stockpile “could be used instead to produce 80.2 gigawatt hours of battery capacity — more than double the existing energy storage capacity in the US”. Our research manager Lorah Steichen wrote for the @FT. https://t.co/sLVFeKJDOf

“We all live in a world forged by empire. The question for all of us is – how do we remake it?”. Eleanor Shearer in the Guardian on the launch of our reparations project. https://t.co/EF6rTzFrl6

Reparative justice is possible. But it must be grounded in history, led by affected communities and oriented toward building the conditions for real sovereignty and flourishing. Explore the map and timeline in full at our website. https://t.co/RZT4bzU2NA

Across the Caribbean and the UK, demands for reparations go back centuries. Caricom’s Ten Point Plan and calls for a UK Truth & Reparatory Justice Commission reflect a growing consensus: reparations must address land, culture, finance, climate and, crucially, self-determination.

The consequences of slavery and colonialism consequences shape our present: wealth, health, climate vulnerability, state capacity and global power. Just like the harms it unleashed, justice must too be multifaceted.

Today, Barbados has one of the highest per-capita sovereign debt burdens in the world. This is a direct legacy from the centuries of extraction. Debt servicing drains resources needed for housing, education, nutrition, sanitation and resilience against climate change.

After slavery, Black people in Barbados were pushed into low-wage plantation labour. By the early 1900s, infant mortality in some parishes was nearly three times that of England and Wales. Instead of fading away, inequalities were compounded.

Enslaved Africans *built* this economy but received little to none of the wealth they created. By the 18th C, almost 80% of export value in the Americas came from their labour. They received nothing at emancipation. Slave-owners, however, were compensated.

Environmentally, the story is the same. From soil-leaching sugar plantations to wasteful coral-bleaching cruises, the Caribbean has been an extraction zone for centuries. It's now the world's 2nd most hazard-prone region, despite contributing <0.3% of historic global emissions.

Tourism — now the region’s main export — continues this exploitative pattern. For every US dollar spent in the Caribbean, around 80 cents *leaves* the region, captured by multinational cruise lines and hotel chains. Extraction didn’t end; it simply changed its form.

Missed out Robinhood Presents: YES/NO? Here's a replay for you.

Decolonisation didn’t undo this reality. Caribbean economies were instead folded into a US-led neoliberal order, defined by foreign ownership, unequal trade and debt constraints that limit genuine sovereignty.

The structure of this system was deliberate: colonies produced raw goods while Britain kept the high-value industries. White planters certainly grew rich, but two-thirds of the value of the sugar chain flowed back to Britain. The Caribbean was made peripheral by design.

Empire wasn’t something that happened “over there.” It built Britain itself — from Liverpool shipyards to London banks, Birmingham gun factories to Bristol sugar refineries — all fused into an economy with sugar and enslavement at its heart.

Historian Sir Hilary Beckles dubbed Barbados “the birthplace of British slave society.” It is a microcosm of European imperialism: systems designed to generate incredible wealth for a few through extraordinary suffering for many.

In 1625, English captain John Powell landed on a largely uninhabited Barbados — with its Indigenous communities already displaced by Spanish slave-raiding. By 1627, English settlement began. What followed was centuries of extraction and environmental devastation, permanently

We map this history from early sugar plantations to modern-day cruise ships and explore how resistance movements from slave rebellions to reparations activists have pushed for justice.

Supported by @FProvFoundation, we’ve created an interactive visual map and timeline exploring how wealth has been extracted and people exploited in Barbados.

Slavery & colonialism are not merely things that happened far away & long ago. We continue to live with their consequences. Our new project visualises extractive capitalism in the Caribbean. 🧵 This is how empire shapes Barbados, Britain & the world. https://t.co/RZT4bzU2NA