His Majesty’s Reparations

THE PRIME MINISTER of Barbados, Mia Mottley, doesn’t mince words. On a state visit to Britain in December 2023, she met King Charles III.

Mottley’s message was unambiguous: it’s time to pay up, she told Charles, for the crime of slavery Britain in­flicted on Africans. Millions were kidnapped, shackled in chains, and shipped for the brutal 60-day journey across the Atlantic Ocean. They were disgorged at British colonial ports in the Caribbean and America to be sold to the high­est bidder for a lifetime of slavery.

Barbados under Mottley has led a new global campaign for reparations from European powers for the centuries-long transatlantic slave trade. The campaign gained traction when the African Union (AU), comprising 55 sovereign African nations, joined the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in the call for financial damages from former colonial powers.

Ghana’s president, Nana Akufo-Addo, said at a recent summit of African and Caribbean states: “The entire period of slavery meant that our progress, economically, culturally, and psycholog­ically, was stifled. The entire continent of Africa deserves a formal apology from the European nations involved in the slave trade.”

King Charles had listened careful­ly to Mottley’s speech delivered on December 6, 2023 at the London School of Economics (her alma mater). “The conspir­acy of silence,” she said, “has diminished the horror of what our people faced.”

Would Britain pay reparations for its leading role in transatlantic slavery? “No,” said Indian-origin Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in parliament, toeing the official British line. “You can’t unpick history.”

What are the sums being computed as slavery repara­tions? Kenneth Mohammed, writing in The Guardian, ex­plained: “Delving into a deeply unsettling chapter of histo­ry and seeking to reshape the discourse, a groundbreaking report, Reparations for Transatlantic Chattel Slavery in the Americas and the Caribbean, has calculated that Britain owes a staggering sum of £18.6 trillion.

“In February, the American Society of International Law and the University of the West Indies hosted a symposium on the calculation of reparations from transatlantic chattel slavery. The economic consulting firm Brattle Group was en­gaged to build an economic framework to help achieve this. Its meticulously analysed 115-page report dissects the com­plex aftermath of slavery, calculating the true cost—not only economically but also the intangibles: the harrowing loss of liberty and life; the stolen potential of forgone earnings; and the deprivation that reverberates across centuries.

“Sceptics argue that the current generation are absolved of blame for their ancestors’ actions—societies aren’t culpa­ble for past wrongs and shouldn’t bear the burden. Critics of calls for reparation say responsibility should be confined to those who directly perpetrated the crimes of slavery and co­lonialism. But the legacy of slavery and colonialism contin­ues to shape our social, economic and political structures, entrenching inequalities spanning generations. Western so­cieties have inherited benefits from his­torical exploitation, building genera­tional wealth while dismantling that of the enslaved, and consciously engineer­ing inequalities.”

Won’t a simple apology do? In his book on whether Britain’s economically destructive colonial rule of India should also justify reparations, Congress leader and author Shashi Tharoor said an apol­ogy and a token compensation by Britain of £1 a year for the next 200 years for 200 years of British colonialism would do.

He wrote in the preface to his book, An Era of Darkness: The British Empire In India: “India should be content with a symbolic repara­tion of one pound a year, payable for 200 years to atone for 200 years of imperial rule. A simple sorry would do as well. Minhaz Merchant computed what a fair sum of repara­tions would amount to—$3 trillion in today’s money, larg­er than Britain’s entire GDP.”

Tharoor didn’t deal with African slavery reparations in his book, writing that it was a horrific crime but he would leave it to others to do justice to it. The time for that has come. The 55-nation African Union (now a member of G20) and the Caribbean countries through CARICOM have said they are seeking, if necessary, to litigate for reparations.

King Charles has never apologised for slavery or colo­nialism even though he has expressed great “personal sor­row” at the “suffering of so many” in the atrocities of trans­atlantic slavery.

The royal family, Charles conceded, was part-owner of a lucrative slaving firm, the Royal African Company. He will follow with great care how the Caribbean and African Union campaign for reparations unfolds.

British colonialismBritish royal familyHis MajestyKing Charles IIIReparationstransatlantic slavery