by Nigel Biggar, spiked
Britain’s role in the slave trade was minuscule compared with Arab and African nations.
The pressure on British taxpayers to start coughing up money to fund reparations for the historic enslavement of Africans by some of their ancestors is mounting. In February, the African Union adopted a resolution proposed by its champion for reparations and Ghana’s president, John Dramani Mahama, which identifies slavery as a crime against humanity. In March, the UN General Assembly passed Ghana’s resolution describing transatlantic chattel slavery as ‘the gravest crime against humanity’ and calling for reparations as ‘a concrete step towards remedying historical wrongs’. While 123 states supported it, only three (Argentina, Israel and the US) opposed it, and 52 (including the UK) abstained.
This week, Jamaica has formally petitioned King Charles III, urging him to request legal advice from the judicial committee of the Privy Council – the final court of appeal – on whether Britain is obliged to provide a remedy for slavery and its enduring consequences. At this November’s gathering of Commonwealth leaders in Antigua and Barbuda, the former prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, has declared it ‘inconceivable’ that the issue of reparations won’t be at the heart of it.
Those pressing Britain from without have allies within. In March 2023, Labour MP Clive Lewis – supported by colleagues Nadia Whittome and Dawn Butler – called for the UK government to enter into ‘meaningful negotiations’ with Caribbean countries about reparations. The following month, Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy demanded that then prime minister Rishi Sunak apologise ‘for our country’s role in slavery and colonialism’. And, since 2023, the Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien has been funding a parliamentary lobbying campaign for slavery reparations based in Lewis’s office.