The ghost of empire has returned to haunt Britain. Across the Commonwealth, calls for reparations are growing louder, forcing a reckoning with the nation’s colonial past and the enduring injustices of the transatlantic slave trade. Yet rather than engage meaningfully with these appeals, many UK politicians have resorted to dismissal and deflection.
Reparations: A Global Norm, Not a Radical Notion
Contrary to the incredulity expressed by some British leaders, reparations are far from an unprecedented or outlandish proposition. They have become an established norm in international human rights law, a standard recourse for addressing historical wrongs and their lingering impacts.
From Germany’s payments to Namibia for the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples to Canada’s settlement with survivors of Indian residential schools, examples abound of nations taking concrete steps to acknowledge and atone for past atrocities. The United Nations has even established guidelines for when reparations should be granted.
Britain’s Selective Amnesia
In light of this global context, the UK’s reticence appears increasingly untenable. Rather than engage substantively with the case for reparations, political leaders have largely opted for avoidance and dismissal. As one close observer noted, “The government’s woefully ahistoric stance looks even more untenable when we remember that Britain has already paid out reparations for slavery. Only these reparations went to the slave owners rather than enslaved people or their descendants.”
This selective amnesia regarding Britain’s slaving past is not just a matter of historical accuracy; it has real implications for the present. The wealth extracted through centuries of enslavement and colonial exploitation continues to shape economic and power disparities both within the UK and between Britain and its former colonies.
Reparations as Restorative Justice
Advocates argue that reparations are not just about monetary compensation, but about a deeper process of acknowledgment, atonement, and structural change. As legal scholar Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò suggests, reparations can encompass a wide range of policies aimed at redistributing resources and power, from global climate funding to reforms of international financial institutions.
Reparations are as much about the present as they are about the past.
Kojo Koram, Birkbeck, University of London
By proactively shaping the reparations agenda, Britain has an opportunity to not only address historical wrongs but to champion a more equitable global order. The alternative—a defensive posture of denial and deflection—risks further damaging the UK’s moral standing and relationships with the Commonwealth.
The Road Ahead
As the global conversation on reparations intensifies, Britain faces a choice. It can continue to treat the demands emanating from the Caribbean and beyond as a political inconvenience to be sidestepped and suppressed. Or it can embrace this moment as an opportunity for honest reckoning, good-faith dialogue, and a demonstrated commitment to building a more just future.
The path forward will not be easy. It will require confronting uncomfortable truths, negotiating complex questions of culpability and restitution, and reimagining long-standing economic and geopolitical arrangements. But as the ongoing efforts of the Gladstone and Trevelyan families demonstrate, healing begins with acknowledgment.
In the end, the case for reparations is not just about settling historical accounts; it is about the kind of world we wish to build—one where the burdens and benefits of the global order are more equitably shared. By facing its past and taking a leading role in the reparations process, Britain has the chance to be on the right side of history.
The reparations reckoning will not disappear by ignoring it. The question is not whether this conversation will happen, but whether Britain will be a constructive participant or a defensive bystander. The choice made now will echo for generations to come.
