Caribbean nations are calling on Britain to pay billions of pounds in reparations for slavery. Ahead of Prime Minister David Cameron's first official visit to Jamaica next Tuesday, Sir Hilary Beckles, chair of the Caricom Reparations Commission and vice-chancellor of the University of West Indies, has asked Cameron to start talks on making amends for slavery. Here's Sir Hilary's letter in full:

‘Haiti did not fail,’ writes Hilary Beckles, ‘it was destroyed by two of the most powerful nations on earth, both of which continue to have a primary interest in its current condition.' Buried 'beneath the rubble of imperial propaganda', says Beckle, is 'the evidence which shows that Haiti's independence was defeated by an aggressive North-Atlantic alliance that could not imagine their world inhabited by a free regime of Africans as representatives of the newly emerging democracy.’