What could reparatory justice for slavery look like?

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Calls for the UK to provide reparations for its historical role in the slave trade have reignited ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth countries on Friday.

While Sir Keir Starmer said reparatory justice would not be on the agenda, Commonwealth leaders have defied the prime minister and plan to move towards a “meaningful conversation” on the issue.

The UK has long faced calls to provide reparations for its role in the Atlantic slave trade which saw millions of Africans enslaved and forced to work, largely on plantations in the Caribbean and Americas.

The chancellor told the BBC the UK would not be “paying out” reparations – but might there be other forms of reparations to consider, and how likely is it that the UK would commit to them?

Reparations are measures to make amends for past actions deemed wrong or unfair.

From 1500, the British government and the monarchy were prominent participants in the centuries-long slave trade, alongside other European nations.

Britain also had a key role in ending the trade, through Parliament’s passage of a law to abolish slavery in 1833.

As part of that law, British plantation owners were paid for the loss of their slaves, to the tune of some £20m.

The UK only finished paying off the debt it incurred to cover the payments in 2015.

Reparations for the benefit of those who suffered as result of slavery can take many forms, from financial to symbolic.

The United Nations says they must be “proportional to the gravity of the violations and the harm suffered”.

Here are some of the forms they can take.

Money

This is the most commonly understood form of reparatory justice – where a state gives money to a country whose communities it enslaved.

A 2023 report co-authored by a United Nations’ judge concluded that the UK owed more than £18tn to 14 countries in reparations.

The difficulty is that most European countries would struggle to find sums as astronomic as that.

The UK government, for example, spends a total of about £1.2tn every year.

Even if governments could find the money, it would be politically unpopular to spend so much on reparations and consequently less on schools and hospitals at home.

Some campaigners answer these points by saying reparations could be paid over time.

But many demands for straight cash payments are considered unfeasible by Western governments.

So for others, the debate about financial reparations often focuses instead on the question of debt relief.

Many developing countries which suffered from slavery owe large sums to Western countries.

The cancellation or reduction of that debt could lift a massive economic burden from a developing country at little political cost for a donor country.

Apology

On the face of it, this could appear relatively straightforward.

It does not cost anything, just a public act of atonement for past sins.

Some institutions – such as the Church of England – have apologised for links to slavery.

The difficulty, though, is that apologies can sometimes act as a declaration of legal responsibility for which there could be a financial cost.

Which is why states are often reluctant to take that step.

Earlier this week, former Prime Minister Tony Blair suggested it was wrong for states to apologise for historic wrongs – despite himself saying “sorry” in 2007.

“You can go back over history, and you end up in a completely absurd position”, he told Newsweek on Wednesday.

“The most important thing we can do for countries that have been marked by colonialism is to help them now.”

Few states that played a historic role in the slave trade have taken steps towards reparations.

Education

This includes educational institutions acknowledging their own connection to slavery and how they might have profited from the slave trade.

It can also involve teaching the history of slavery, as well as creating institutions for the study of slavery.

There are also calls for supporting schools to tackle low literacy levels and other issues that some argue date back to the slave trade.

Some campaigners say school exchanges and cultural tours would also be beneficial.

The countries pushing hardest for reparatory justice from the UK are in the Caribbean – and their collective organisation, known as Caricom, has its own reparations commission with 10 demands.

Three of these deal explicitly with education and culture, saying a “restoration of historical memory” was required.

Caricom said states involved in the slave trade had a responsibility to “build educational capacity and provide scholarships”.

Health

Some argue that reparatory justice should also include health – where European countries fund clinics and hospitals.

Medical evidence shows a high rate of type 2 diabetes in the Caribbean which some suggest is associated with centuries of poor nutrition due to past enslavement.

Historian Sir Hilary Beckles told the United Nations’s UN News earlier this year: “If you look at countries with the greatest incidence of chronic diseases, black people have the highest proportions of diabetic adult patients in the world.”

He argued high rates of diabetes on his own island of Barbados “cannot be a coincidence” given it was “the first island to have an African majority and an enslaved population”.

Barbados’ government has moved toward exploring the historic impact of slavery on its population’s health.

Caricom is calling for European countries to invest in science, technology and capital toward improving hospitals, healthcare, and mental health support for the descendants of enslaved people.

Is the UK likely to provide reparations?

The UK government has never formally apologised for slavery or offered to pay reparations – and Sir Keir Starmer has not shown any intention to break the mould.

It is not Labour Party policy to introduce reparations.

Ahead of the Commonwealth summit, the prime minister explicitly said he would not provide an apology or financial compensation for slavery.

He said he wanted to focus on present issues, like the climate, rather than the past.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves doubled down on Thursday afternoon, insisting the UK would not be paying reparations.

“I’d rather roll up my sleeves and work… on the current future-facing challenges than spend a lot of time on the past”, she said.

In 2023, then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak likewise refused to provide compensation or an apology for the slave trade.

“Trying to unpick our history is not the right way forward”, he said.

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