Calls for reparations for Britain’s slave trade are rooted in a dark legacy

LONDON – Debate over reparations for Britain’s role in the slave trade has been eclipsed Commonwealth Summit in Samoamany of whose member countries were once British colonies.

Britain insists it should not correct historical injustices, but both King Charles III and Prime Minister Keir Starmer addressed the issue obliquely at Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.

“None of us can change the past, but we can commit ourselves wholeheartedly to learning its lessons and finding creative ways to correct persistent inequalities,” Charles said.

The legacy of slavery permeates some of Britain’s wealthiest and most revered institutions, from the Church of England to London insurance giant Lloyd’s to the monarchy itself.

“Britain benefited from transatlantic enslavement,” said Olivette Otele, professor of the legacy and memory of slavery at the School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London. “The money and the money trail prove it. So we need to have these conversations much more openly.”

This is a debate that has been going on for a long time.

Charles, when he was Prince of Wales, spoke of the “horrific atrocities of slavery that forever stain our history” during a visit to Barbados in 2021. At the Commonwealth summit two years ago in Rwanda, he spoke of his grief over slavery and its legacy for indigenous people and said it was “a conversation whose time has come.”

That’s why this issue is getting attention now.

What was Britain’s role in the slave trade?

Britain became involved in the slave trade in the mid-1500s, following Portugal and Spain.

John Hawkins, one of the most prominent sailors and naval commanders of the 16th century, is considered one of the pioneers of the English triangle of the slave trade.

Goods were traded in West Africa for captured slaves, who were sent across the Atlantic to work on British sugar and tobacco plantations in the Caribbean and America. Goods produced in the so-called New World were shipped back to England.

In 1672, the Royal African Company, founded under King Charles II and managed by his brother Prince James (the future King James II), was given a monopoly on the slave trade.

The company sold 80,000 African men, women and children into slavery in America, and about 20,000 died en route before the monopoly ended in 1698, when any Englishman could trade slaves.

At its peak, Britain was the world’s largest slave trading country, transporting more than 3 million Africans across the Atlantic.

When was it cancelled?

The abolitionist movement emerged in England in the late 1700s with the support of Quakers, a few politicians, and some former slaves.

The slave trade was not outlawed until 1807. Even then, Parliament did not free slaves in its territories until 1833.

“But things didn’t go as planned,” Otele said. “The plantation owners, some of whom were absentee plantation owners because they lived in Britain, were extremely wealthy. Their ancestors had been trading for centuries, so they resisted and put pressure on Parliament… to pay them for the so-called loss of their property.”

The Compensation Act of 1837 resulted in £20 million being paid to plantation owners for the loss of their slaves, which at the time amounted to 40% of the national budget. It took the Bank of England until 2015 to clear the backlog of these payments.

What is the current discussion about?

The movement demanding reparations goes back decades.

Britain has never formally apologized for its role in the trade. Research estimates Britain will owe hundreds of millions to trillions of dollars in compensation to the descendants of slaves.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed deep sorrow in 2006 over Britain’s role in the trade, but stopped short of offering an apology or compensation to the descendants of slaves. Campaigners said Blair’s careful choice of words reflected the government’s fear of paying huge reparations.

In 2013, the Caribbean trade bloc, known as Caricom, drew up a list of demands including European governments formally apologizing and creating a repatriation program for those wishing to return to their home countries, which did not happen.

On Thursday, Bahamian Prime Minister Philip Davis said he wanted a “frank” discussion with Starmer on the issue and would push for reparations to be mentioned in the leaders’ final statement at the event in Samoa. All three candidates for the position of the next Secretary-General of the Commonwealth – from Gambia, Ghana and Lesotho – supported the policy of reparations for slavery.

Other European countries including the Netherlandsand some British institutions began to acknowledge their role in this trade.

Last year the Church of England announced a £100 million ($130 million) fund for projects “aimed at improving opportunities for communities affected by historical slavery”, although the church’s advisory group said it should increase it to 1 billion dollars.

Some descendants of slave traders corrected the situation.

A descendant of 19th-century Scottish sugar and coffee plantation owner John Gladstone – the father of 19th-century British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone – apologized to Guyana last year for his great-great-great-grandfather’s role as an absentee slave owner in what was then British Guiana. He received £100,000 in compensation for hundreds of slaves.

Having previously insisted that the Samoa summit should not become mired in the past and “very, very long and endless discussions about reparations”, Starmer acknowledged “calls to confront the harms and injustices of the past through reparations justice”.

Starmer said that “the most effective way to maintain a spirit of respect and dignity is to work together to ensure the future is not overshadowed by the past, but illuminated by it.”

Jacqueline MacKenzie, a partner at London law firm Leigh Day who works on reparations, said the issue of how to reckon with the legacy of the slave trade was a “complex one”.

“Reparations are not an easy task,” she said. “At this point, it’s a discussion among the elite, and the people who are descendants of the enslaved … aren’t really part of the discussion.”

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Associated Press writer Jill Lawless contributed.