The News
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has acknowledged the possibility of providing non-financial reparations to some Commonwealth nations, The Guardian reported, offering some form of retroactive justice for the transatlantic slave trade.
This could include the UK providing debt relief for countries with previously enslaved populations, running educational programs on the history of slavery, or providing economic and public health support. However, Starmer has rejected the possibility that the British government would issue a formal apology to its former colonies.
The call for greater acknowledgment of the former imperial power’s role in the slave trade and for reparatory justice came at a summit between 56 Commonwealth member countries in Samoa.
Caribbean countries are among those pushing hardest on the issue, the BBC reported, and have collectively set up a reparations commission with demands such as establishing cultural institutions that provide a “restoration of historical memory.”
It comes after an Indigenous Australian senator last week staged a protest about “stolen wealth” during King Charles’ visit to the country.
King Charles, who as British monarch is the head of the Commonwealth, acknowledged the “painful” history of slavery as part of his official address to member nations at the summit, but did not mention reparations.
SIGNALS
UK can no longer ignore reparations as simply a “thought experiment”
The “diplomatic ambush” by 15 Caribbean nations to force a conversation on reparations — despite a UK government spokesperson stating Thursday it was “not on the agenda” — not only left the Commonwealth looking divided, said Tortoise Media, but forced Starmer to take the proposal seriously, something country’s governments have managed to avoid for decades. However, a reckoning may be coming: A 2023 UN report found the total amount owed by the UK to 14 countries for over 200 years of unpaid labor equalled £18 trillion ($23 trn). “Global opinion has rallied around the idea [of reparations]… there is a case to answer and negotiations should be inevitable,” the chair of the Caribbean countries’ reparations commission told The Guardian.
Calls for former slave-owning nations to make reparations are growing
Few nations have actually moved to make reparations, but calls are mounting. In the US, a federal proposal to ascertain what such compensation might look like has been stalled in Congress for 35 years, according to Reuters. But this year’s Nobel Prize for economics went to three US professors who highlighted the enduring economic impact of colonization on nations, while the UN human rights chief in 2020 called for reparations during widespread anti-racism protests in the US that year, describing racial violence as one enduring legacy of the slave trade. In Europe, the only country to offer any kind of financial compensation is the Netherlands, which in 2022 set up a 200 million euro fund to benefit descendants of slaves, Reuters reported.