by Craig Simpson, Telegraph
Group launched by Hungarian billionaire supports legal action by Caribbean and African activists
This is the final article of a three-part series exploring how African countries are renewing their battle to win slavery reparations from Britain
Funding from a group founded by George Soros has supported the slavery reparations campaign against Britain, The Telegraph can reveal.
The Open Society Foundations (OSF), established by Hungarian investor Mr Soros and now led by his son, Alex Soros, has donated vast sums from its $23bn (£17.2bn) endowment to progressive causes.
The foundation has provided hundreds of thousands of dollars to groups seeking to claim reparations from Britain for slavery and colonialism.
The OSF helped to found a joint Caribbean and African campaign, and supported organisations that are now considering international litigation that could heap pressure on the British Government.
Read also from Daniel Hannan on X:
Britain was early in banning slavery. But, unlike other countries, it did not stop there. It poured blood and treasure into a campaign to stamp out the foul business globally. It signed treaties with African kings, who were determined to keep the institution alive, and enforced those treaties. Even while engaged in a life-and-death struggle with Bonaparte, it diverted gunboats to hunt down the slavers. It closed down the traffic in human beings from East Africa to Arabia.
Abolitionism became a popular cause, with working-class families donating to missions. Between 1808 and 1867, Britain spent 1.8 per cent of its GDP on anti-slavery operations, the most expensive moral foreign policy in human history. What recompense does it get today? What recognition? Its reward is to be targeted by every shakedown artist, Third Worldist, grifter and halfwit. It is now seriously proposed that the country that stamped out the slave trade should pay reparations to the African states that took the slaves. Truly no good deed goes unpunished.