British Elites Lose Their Minds Over Reparations

The British right wing is aghast. Leaders of the Commonwealth nations, most of which are former British colonies, met at a summit in Samoa recently, where they collectively suggested that, maybe, it’s time for the United Kingdom to consider paying reparations for its leading role in the centuries-long transatlantic slave trade. Maybe it’s time to soberly reflect upon all the theft, kidnap and murder that this government-and monarchy-supported system, meant for those people who suffered underneath it. Maybe it’s time, in 2024, to carefully, maturely, consider what the nature of the British empire really was.

Or, according to British elites, maybe it isn’t.

“It may not feel like it,” Robert Jenrick, the wannabe leader of the Conservative party, wrote in the Daily Mail recently, “but many of our former colonies — amid the complex realities of Empire — owe us a debt of gratitude for the inheritance we left them.” It is a point his sole rival for the Tory leadership post, Kemi Badenoch, would surely agree with, as she considers the notion of reparations to be a “scam.” Boris Johnson, the former Tory leader and prime minister, whose mismanagement of the U.K. during the COVID pandemic is widely recognized to have caused tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths, has also re-emerged from the political abyss to pen a piece for the Daily Mail in which he argued that, well, China hasn’t paid reparations for causing COVID, so, therefore, it would be absurd for Britain to pay up because of slavery.

This is, of course, precisely the sort of culture war-tinged bollocks we should expect from the contemporary Tory party, but what of Labour and its leader? “Slavery is abhorrent… there’s no question about that,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said recently, with all the cutting-edge insight and moral grace the British public have come to expect of him. “But… I’d rather roll up my sleeves and work with [Commonwealth countries] on the current future-facing challenges than spend a lot of time on the past.”

As with almost every substantive issue that is ever put to him, Starmer is effectively aligned with the Tories on this one, though he does manage, as he speaks about it, to sound vaguely conciliatory while looking very earnest indeed. But his broad point remains: the British state will never face up to the crimes it committed in the name of its empire.

The British right — and, to be sure, Starmer’s Labour sits firmly on that side of the spectrum — is determined to frame the issue of reparations as backwards-looking, but this is willfully dishonest. The height of the British empire may have been some decades ago now, but its toxic effects endure to this day. Many former colonies remain underdeveloped in the 21st century, trapped in a vicious cycle of debt and subject to an exploitative system of neocolonialism. Perhaps most pressingly, the islands of the Caribbean and the countries of Africa are profoundly vulnerable to climate breakdown, much more so than the U.K. itself, which is disproportionately responsible for having induced it in the first place.

In 2023, a much-publicized report calculated that the U.K.’s slavery debt to its former colonies amounted to about £18.8 trillion, though this figure was, according to one of the report’s own co-authors, likely an “underestimate.” It is unrealistic to think such a debt could be paid off in one go, but reparations can be made in all sorts of ways. A strong tax could be imposed upon wealth bearing close links to slavery, with the resulting revenue being redistributed to those who are owed it. The debts of former colonies could be canceled and voting rights in international institutions like the World Bank and IMF could be distributed more fairly, rather than being weighted so heavily in favor of Western nations. The U.K. could directly invest in climate adaptation and healthcare in the countries it owes a debt to.

British elites are attempting to frame reparations for slavery as an impossibly absurd notion, which, given a very particular history, is purposely misleading. Britain has paid out slavery-related reparations before, except then the money went to the perpetrators rather than the victims. In the years after the practice was abolished, former slaveholders were handsomely compensated by the British taxpayer for the bother of having their “property” taken away from them. The £20 million that was paid would be equivalent to about £17 billion today, and it was only paid off by the public in 2015. When there is a will to pay reparations, then, there is a way.

But there is, of course, little will among Britain’s contemporary ruling class to grapple with the sordid business of slavery. Their very status within the society is built upon it, so to truly acknowledge that the British empire did terrible things to people — slavery, imprisonment in concentration camps, genocide — is to acknowledge that their inherited wealth and power is soaked in blood. It is to acknowledge that systems of exploitation endure to this day and benefit them at the expense of formerly colonized peoples. It is to acknowledge that the illusion of British liberal benevolence is a lie, and that it always has been.

King Charles III — it’s always worth reminding oneself that the U.K. and 14 other Commonwealth “realms” literally still bow to a feudal king — was at that summit in Samoa, where the notion of reparations was raised. “None of us can change the past,” he said in his address, “but we can commit with all our hearts to learning its lessons and to finding creative ways to right the inequalities that endure.”

He’s right. Perhaps abolishing the monarchy and redistributing the billions of pounds it holds — as well as challenging the wider aristocracy which remains so powerful in Britain today — would constitute such a “creative way” of righting those inequalities?