February 9, 2025 - 2:20pm
“As Caribbean people we are not going to forget our history, we don’t just want to hear an apology — we want reparations,” said David Lammy to Parliament in 2018. Now, in 2025, he is the Foreign Secretary that, according to the Telegraph, might hold talks in April with representatives from Caribbean nations which have demanded trillions of pounds as reparations for the Atlantic Slave Trade.
The Labour government has denied such reports and repeatedly stated that Britain will not pay reparations and it is not on the agenda. Yet, the argument isn’t going away anytime soon. And the more intense the calls for reparations become, the Labour government might crumble to its activist base.
The argument for reparations is a simple one. It is argued that since the UK was the most important single driver of the Atlantic Slave Trade, it is justice for the country to atone for its sins. This would mean the descendants of black slaves are recompensed for the centuries of unpaid labour and exploitation that Britain profited from, especially as it was the slave owners who were compensated for the loss of their “property” when slavery was abolished.
And, advocates argue, reparations can be a useful tool in redressing the poverty and inequality produced by colonialism and neo-colonialism that are still noticeable in many African countries, or indeed in Afro-Caribbean communities in Western countries. As Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Afrikan Reparations, put it: “Reparations at its core is about equality and justice.”
But the crude redistributionist logic of reparations ironically locks in the same paternalistic relationship that undergirded colonialism. All the power and agency is in the hands of the former colonial power who must pay up to their former subjects, who can only plead or admonish them to exercise it while powerless themselves. In effect, it will become a kind of racial noblesse oblige. This is no relationship of equality.
In any case, a huge amount of money has already been given in aid over decades to poor African countries which experienced both slavery and colonialism in order to help modernise their economies and accelerate social development. In part, this was because it was recognised that something had to be done to redress the abject condition of many African countries in the post-colonial era. But the effects have been exiguous. Just as the system of international development aid has become a means not of alleviating inequality, poverty and dependency but of merely managing it, the same fate will befall reparations no matter how it is branded or the “radical” rhetoric that accompanies it.
There is an uneasy history that British people have to come to terms with, as do the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Belgians and many other nationalities. Indeed, the proliferation of books, films, TV shows and debates on imperial history is proof that an attempt is at least being made. Whether one accepts it or not, transatlantic slavery and its abolition are both part of British history. But reparations is ultimately the wrong way to come to terms with the untold misery inflicted on millions of people hundreds of years ago. No one alive is morally culpable for it — the dead have no claim on us. As the French Afro-Caribbean post-colonial writer Frantz Fanon once said, we bear no guilt and owe no reparations for crimes committed long before we were born.
As a society, we must transform our history from a burden that haunts us into an inspiration for a better, freer society for future generations. This would honour the sacrifices made by people of all ethnicities that brought us the freedom and opportunity we have now, and only now. Blood was shed in order to abolish slavery, and abolish it forever. That was reparation enough. Can anyone put a price on that?
Ralph Leonard is a British-Nigerian writer on international politics, religion, culture and humanism.
buffsoldier_96
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeWhat a stupid article even by Unherd’s standards. Lammy is the activist base of the Party. How can Labour succumb to what the Foreign Secretary has campaigned for?
How much Lammy must hate us. And Starmer too.
Is there a people in the world that haven’t been involved in slavery at one point in time?
Still ignoring the Chagos debacle Unherd.
> advocates argue, reparations can be a useful tool in redressing the poverty and inequality produced by colonialism and neo-colonialism that are still noticeable in many African countries, or indeed in Afro-Caribbean communities in Western countries
I have very rarely been familiar with any situation in which an individual came into a large sum of money in which their situation or life had improved much at all in the long run. Unearned funds often result in a temporary period of lavish extravagance followed by the later state being worse than the former.
To that end I do not see why a nation would be immune to this, anymore than an individual or family. Except the extravagance of a state is often spent in arms and armament to be used against those they deem “undesirable”, rather than luxury cars, and fine jewelry.
David Lammy is not a “Caribbean person”. He is a British MP and Minister, and any reparations would have to come out of the same British tax revenues which pay his wages. If Caribbean and African nations are entitled to reparations, then so too is Ireland, whose land was stolen, and where tenants were forced for centuries to pay rent and tithes to foreign landlords and an alien Established Church. When that system ended, the landlords and the Church were compensated, not the tenants. Then again, independent Ireland just got in with it, and made itself more prosperous than its former colonial overlord. Caribbean and African countries, not so much.
Stupid headline. Lammy is asking for reparations. How can he reject them?
Surely a person of Afro Caribbean descent such as Lammy, born in the UK, is as much a beneficiary of any continuing benefit the UK has from the slave trade, if it’s in vague terms of infrastructure, advancements of various kinds, etc etc? Or is his position that he’d take the cash and move back to where his parents or grandparents came from?
This is well worth a look as a comprehensive debunk of the reparations concept
https://youtu.be/Zr0wMmbVk5Q?feature=shared
Has there ever been a UK government which so obvious hates its own people, its own flag, its own history as this Labour government?
The British people have ‘come to terms’ with the darker sides of our history. We acknowledged it back in the 19th century, as did the governments of the time.
It’s only elements within our current government that haven’t got the bandwidth to ‘come to terms’ with it.
And besides: it’s not up to David Lammy to accept or reject reparations – the British people reject David Lammy; not because he’s a Labour minister, not because of the colour of his skin, but because he’s a downright hypocrite.
Not sure we did acknowledge it entirely LL. We all got taught about William Wilberforce but not how much we compensated the Slave owners and not the Slaves. We knew that was uncomfortable so generally it wasn’t mentioned.
I’m not for reparations though. That’s twaddle.
It wasn’t uncomfortable to them. Compensating slave owners wasn’t about rewarding them. It was a necessary compromise. It was the only way to get abolition through in a world where property rights were sacrosanct.
Decontextualised, time travelling morality that ignores the progress of the day is typical of leftists. It’s basically a form of hate because you only do it when you want to denigrate British or European history.
The fact is, at the time, given the historical moment, abolition was an astonishing achievement, unprecedented in history. Not only did they abolish it in their own empire, the British played a leading role in abolishing it everywhere else.
After 10 thousand years of slavery being legal, normalised, it now no longer is…BECAUSE OF BRITAIN!
Just one positive comment would do.
I agree it was compensation for lost property. But the point is VJ we weren’t taught that were we. We just had the hagiography about Wilberforce.
I agree that even with that it was a mark of how the UK was ‘civilising’ ahead of most others and represented the morality of the time. But that does not mean we didn’t also get selective in which bits we taught our kids as quite quickly the payments looked morally wrong. We are strong enough to take the full story.
What a strange education you must have had!
I refer you to my earlier response….you weren’t taught it.
I couldn’t have articulated it better.
We never hear all of these anti reparations arguments when it comes to the Holocaust. As a Black American my taxes continue to be paid for an atrocity that was not committed in or by my country.
While I have no problem with that, I do find that discussions about reparations for slavery are always accompanied by a special brand of mocking, as if even debating the issue is ludicrous and a middle finger to the people whose families are affected by it.
In the UK, the ancestors of most white people lived in grinding poverty up until very recently. These are the people who built Britain, literally. Their struggle is ignored. I think that’s what is so offensive about the reparations argument. I think people would be more receptive to reparations for slave descendants if reparations for the descendants of the white working class were also on the table.
What I and many others struggle with is the simpl3 fact that slavery existed in Africa long before Europeans got in on the act, be it the Arabs in Zanzibar, Shakespeare Zulu in Southern Africa or the Benin Empire in West Africa. Buying and selling slaves was an essential part of the African economy, arguably it still is with over 3 million people living and working in slave conditions in 21st century Africa. The silence surrounding all this is deafening and hypocritical. It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that demands for reparations are motivated by opportunism and a sense that Europeans are a push over.
Well done for rejecting the reparations nonsense!
I’m not sure whether I just had some fantastic teachers, who taught me outside of any curriculum. Or that my parents were massively “enlightened” but I knew about compensation of slave owners as a teenager. The argument for compensation has always baffled me. As a lover of history, in many forms, I have never been aware of a single time that slaves have asked/demanded anything other than freedom. I’m always prone to imagine a scenario where a group of slaves, shackled before their owners and enforcers pronounce ” what do we want? Our compensation!”
Maybe the U.K. can offer to pass on all of the Reparation money we receive from the countries whose slavery activities negatively impacted Britain before our later involvement ? Obviously we should also deduct all of the money we spent on eliminating other people’s slavery activity before we pay anything.
David Lammy comes across as a malcontent. He’s said terrible things about the US President recently. This man is not a leader. Perhaps he should study to be an accountant where he would just have to interact with numbers and not people?
What makes you think that he has the ability to be an accountant?
Any honest discussion of reparations – and why would politicians single out that particular subject for honesty?? – would collapse in a mish-mash of cross-cultural claims. Kamala Harris, for example, is a “Person of Color” whose ancestors were Caribbean slaveholders. Most – but certainly not all – black Americans hold the advantages of their European heritage along with the historical disadvantages of their African ancestry.
The very reason that Blacks in the Anglosphere and most of Africa today are NOT subject to slavery or its threat is Great Britain and the history of its powerful navy. But as I say, realizing all this would take an *honest* discussion, and that does not describe anything around the issue of race, in my lifetime.
Interestingly no mention of the African brothers (and sisters) who sold their contemporaries into slavery… how convenient.
Nor any mention of the slave Labour markets of North Africa, the Ottoman Empire or Arabia and Persia. Many more Slavs were taken and transported to the Mediterranean and Middle East than were ever removed to the Americas. The great African empires we are taught about during Black History Month were entirely slave based for Labour and made military forays to gather ever more victims. Slavery always has been and remains endemic around the world. ‘Modern slavery’ is just slavery; no different to any other form of slavery. The Caribbean nations might pay more attention to the organised crime in their own jurisdictions who buy and sell slaves for Labour and prostitution. David Lammy might act a little more like the imperialists who ended the worst slave trades globally and try to prevent further victims instead of revelling in a self-indulgent national guilt trip.
Agree JT and whilst the ‘eastern’ trade is difficult to estimate because unlike the Atlantic there are few records, we know it existed and continued for many years after slavery ceased in the West. In fact my Grandfather often recounted his RN experience of the interception of boats in the Gulf taking essentially indentured slaves from Africa or India to Middle East sultanates in late 40s, early 50s.
But the historical picture is full of complexity too. For example Nigeria was a colony from 1890s, yet we allowed the Northern territory there to remain under local leadership for pragmatic reasons and where slavery continued until 1936.
Thanks for the information about your grandfather. Always good to hear actual testimony.
Just listen to the news. Leftist media outlets always leave off half the story; they never seem to roundly (or accurately) address an issue.
The government has no mandate to decide on reparations.
Fritz Fanon is right. We aren’t responsible for what people in the past did. Neither for the harm they did, nor the good. And I do notice that the undoubted good British colonialism did in some areas in so many of these countries is never entered into the balance. Which tells you quite a lot.
I really don’t get these leftist progressives. On the one hand, they claim to believe we are all blank slates. On the other, they claim that special subset groups of society bear some hereditary guilt for the past failings of others – while other groups do not. So which one is it ? It can’t be both.
The whole reparations graft is a nonsense in any case. Why stop at paying reparations to former colonies ? There were millions of exploited people in the UK in those times.
As for this:
“In part, this was because it was recognised that something had to be done to redress the abject condition of many African countries in the post-colonial era.”
I’d be most interested to read a proper account of what progress was made in health, education and living standards in these countries from [say] 1880 to 1960 compared to 1970-today. I’m not sure it’s quite as black and white as the author implies. To suggest that Britain did nothing before 1960 (many of the institutions still exist !) just doesn’t ring true.
I never checked this, but I read somewhere, that average life expectancy in the Caribbean is higher than in the African countries from where the slaves came from. This is due to British institutions: rule of law, economic institutions etc. So, while Caribbeans of today can feel sorry for their forebears, they might feel relieved that they themselves have benefitted from the past wrong.
Hermer has been advising the Caribbean nations. Another big fee coming his way….?
Hermer. A word in your ear Starmer. I can cut you in if you like…
What like the Chagos?
Mum’s the word.
Matrix Chambers will have two new offices soon. The Chagos wing and the Caribbean Club.
I have another simple argument around reparations. The British decided to abolish slavery, globally, and spent the better part of 40 years and 2-3% per annum of GDP doing so. Indexed up into current money, that is a very large sum indeed, greater than the entire world’s annual GDP. So, before the UK pays anyone reparations, the affected nations can first pay us back for our trouble. No? Then eff off.
It’s hardly a slow News week is it. So why such a non-story where it’s all about amplifying a bit of silly rage? The Govt already said it’s not happening.
For a start we’re skint! But even if one had some sympathy for the notion, (and v few do) the politics and practicalities make it a total non-starter. You don’t need to ponder it long to appreciate that.
The fact a few Caribbean politicians push the contention is no different from Trump banging on about taking Canada or Panama. It’s performative twaddle for their Base. One shouldn’t get too worked up by it. Here’s a guarantee – come 2029 and Trump leaves White House, and let’s say Starmer perhaps does or does not leave No.10 later that same year, Canada and Panama will still have the status they have now and the UK will NOT have paid any reparations.
Understanding and better appreciating the complexity of our History is important but separate to silly reparations debate.
The Starmer government can just say NO instead of might but then all those NGO’s would miss out on that oh so sweeet taxpayer cash.
You are probably right. However, the problem is that Britain is represented by a man who has argued in favour of reparations in the past and who is happy to pay billions of pounds which we can’t afford to Mauritius which never owned the Chagos islands to retain benefits we already have as a result of a former Labour government expelling the actual Chagos Islanders from their homes. We can’t rely on either good sense or fairness from such a man and his “boss” Starmer.
Lammy’s comments some years ago are obviously embarrassing to him and he was probably immaturely playing to a crowd back then.
But you know the Leader of the Western World right now got alot of statements he’s made in the past hasn’t he. Do you believe he’s going to do all of them?
Starmer made a lot of statements in the past. None of which turned out to be true.
Err I distinctly remember him saying a few years ago Labour can still win the next General Election? Many laughed then, even on his own side. And yet…
Realistically he didn’t win the election the hopeless and time-expired Tories lost it. It’s a trueism that most elections are lost rather than won.
It’s also the case that FPTP elections can lead to strange outcomes when there are several parties with large support and the turnout is low.
Labour therefore got a huge majority with a third of the vote from just over 20% of the eligible voters.
And I do understand that democracy is done by those who turn out to vote…
With the narrative clearly being drawn in this direction, I have latterly woken up to the idea that Labour is the Starmer/Heaver show, where the sacred cow is upholding international law.
The far-left have an institutional dictatorship in the UK. They control almost every institution outside of democratic oversight, pushing a hate-filled, revisionist narrative about Britain’s past. They spew out lies and obscene exaggerations about the financial importance of the transatlantic slave trade without pushback.
That’s the issue that needs to be challenged. Britain’s ‘wealth’,had virtually nothing to do with the slave trade. Slave labour is human labour—it has no magical properties. The vast majority of the labour that built Britain, both historically and today, has come from the ‘white working class’. And even then, it wasn’t this labour that made the empire ‘wealthy’—it was technological genius and the resulting machine labour, powered by coal and iron ore, both mined and built in Britain by the ‘white working class’.
Also, It’s important to point out that the British state didn’t own slaves. The world was different then—there wasn’t even an income tax, and people were largely free to do as they pleased. But Britain did abolish a trade that had always been seen as normal in human history. Ending slavery wasn’t inevitable by any means. It was unique British moral achievement. At the time, many across the world, including slave traders from the Ottoman Empire, African kingdoms, and beyond, saw it as an affront to their freedoms.
For the amounts they claim we owe we’d have to transfer the NHS and benefits budget there for about 100 years, plus it would make every Caribbean person a multi millionaire. There is no precedent for ‘trillions’ and most the UK population didn’t have the vote at the time. And a lot of the UK population now didn’t even have ancestors that lived in the UK at the time.
Surely if reparations are to be paid they should be paid in part by those who sold the slaves to the British. The Africans. They too are as much responsible as any Europeans. The Europeans did not invent the African slave trade. Africans did.
Secondly, the reparations argument seems to punish the British for not doing as Arabs did who bought even more slaves from the Africans than the British – that is the British did not castrate the males slaves. Whereas the Arabs did. And they have no one asking them for reparations…
Lastly, does paying reparations mean there will be no further claims or mention of the subject? If not, why bother paying anything at all?
The ex British Caribbean countries have been given some of the most beautiful real estate in the world, if reparations are made can we have it back? I note that the French have retained all of their Caribbean and other territories as I believe have the Dutch.
The British halted slavery in the 1830’s, no? Twenty-five years before the USA ended up sacrificing 500,000 men to do so as well. Reparations is just a shakedown. It’s shameful to even consider. Blacks have to ‘move on’, look forward, not backwards, forge ahead and prepare for the future. They are lucky they live in the UK – and if they are unhappy, there’s always the Caribbean to go back to, or Africa as well – so many options. No one is tying them down.
They say you can’t choose your parents, and neither can you choose your more distant ancestors. Many descendants of slaves are also descendants of slave-owners. Perhaps they could just pay each other.
Fanon had it half right: we are not responsible for the condition of non-whites around the world.
The part he missed was that we can’t fix their condition either.
Once you realize both of those truths you will be immune to the moral extortion tactics of non-whites, which is what Mr Leonard is discussing.
“There is an uneasy history that British people have to come to terms with, as do the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Belgians and many other nationalities. Indeed, the proliferation of books, films, TV shows and debates on imperial history is proof that an attempt is at least being made. Whether one accepts it or not, transatlantic slavery and its abolition are both part of British history.”
WTAF???!!! Black people also have to come to terms with the uneasy history that they sold millions of black people AND white people into slavery. They also fought wars to be able to continue enslaving black people AND white people, while the British fought wars to free people.
FXCK OFF THE WHOLE LOT OF YOU CHANCING LYING CONNIVING ENSLAVING RACIST BIGOTS. That clear enough Lammy? you ret.ard.ed tw.at.
whet they really want is money for nothing
Colonialism and slavery are primarily responsible for the dysfunction of the African and Afro-Caribbean nations, it is alleged.
This is an illustration of what is called “Ockham’s Butterknife.”
“Ockham’s Butterknife” holds that when the real answer to a problem cannot be said, any crazy-ass answer can be entertained.
Maybe the Italians, Scandanavia, Germany (Saxony), France should pay backdated reparations to the UK for its invasions, not to mention the Black countries of the Barbary Coast that abducted from the UK shores and sold into slavery White Brits into the slave markets of North Africa.
Since WW2 Africa has received some $2.6 trillion in foreign aid handouts. ow much of that staggering largesse has produced visible sustainable results? Nobody would disagree that a substantial proportion of that sum has been routed into private Swiss bank accounts, luxury property investment in the most desirable locations around the world and been trousered by countless NGOs that virtue signal their ‘care’ for Black Africa while its people are starved, tortured, killed and exist in extreme poverty for the most.
Not one cent more should be the policy from now on! Let them sort their self-made problems as they deem fit. We’ve enough problems of our own to solve, without interfering any longer in their way of doing things.
The very concept of inter-generational reparations is nonsense and should be firmly rejected as such. There is no justification for taking money from today’s British people (who themselves are not involved in slavery) to give to today’s residents of the Caribbean (or elsewhere) none of whom are held in slavery. Why should struggling low-income families in Britain be taxed so money can be sent to the populations (including the wealthy) of other nations?
And if one wishes to point fingers of ‘guilt’, then one should start with the native African chiefs and the Muslim Arabs who actually organised and ran the slave trade. It was they who brutally enslaved black Africans and transported them (those who survived) to coastal ports where they would be sold to passing ships from Europe or America.
Also, why focus only on black Africans? Slavery has been endemic in human societies for millennia, over which time many more non-black people have be enslaved than blacks. Shouldn’t reparations be paid by the Arab countries of North Africa to the descendants of the British and Irish people who were captured in slave raids all during the 18th and 19th Centuries?
Irrespective of the “moral ” arguement for or against (full disclosure-its nonsense!) surely the correct response is-look,we’re running a deficit of 100% GDP but its worse than that-we need to add in outstanding PFI and unfunded public sector pension liabilities so our real debt is somewhere close to 3 trillion-ie we’re skint-brassic-stoney broke.So here’s the deal-when the UK manages to achieve solvency in terms of a public sector surplus (capital not revenue) we’ll sit down and listen to your proposal and look forward to scrutinising your spreadsheets supporting your claim.
Should kick it into the long grass for a few hundred years.
Why just the Europeans ? This was universal and BC {before colonialism }.
African slave traders ? History Happens.
…Transatlantic Slavery is a “part of British history”…rather importantly…in that we abolished it in 1807 and over the next century the Royal Navy put it down at a very great cost in blood and treasure…not just in the Atlantic, but in the Indian Ocean…and indeed in the interior where many African Rulers (including the Oba of Benin, of Bronzes fame) were more than willing to fight us to the death maintain the Trade…especially into the Islamic World…because it gave them both great wealth and power over their fellow Black Africans…
…just as the Empire is part of our history, and indeed Africa’s…where we left elected legislatures, functioning governments and judiciaries, modernising infrastructure (from roads and railways to universities, schools and hospitals)…police forces sufficent to keep the peace, and armies to protect the frontiers.
What came after had a good deal more to do with choices made by those who took over from us than anything we had hoped for…
I might add I feel pretty strongly about this, because somewhere about the family we have an “Am I not a Man and a Brother” plaque by Wedgewood…sold to progressive people in the C18th to show support for the Anti-Slavery movement, in which they were active. Fund-raising at home, and in one case fighting at sea with the West Africa Squadron…
The same is by no means true of current West African elites, numbers of whom are much more likely to be descended from slave raiders and traders than from their unfortunate victims…
‘As Caribbean people…we want reparations.’ And I thought Lammy was British, representing the people of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. How wrong I was…
Has any research been carried out into the amount of money sent by immigrants of the former British Empire back to their families now and in the past? Might be instructive as it is a form of reparation.