In Part 1 of this reflection, some of the general issues arising in relation to justice for past wrongs were considered. In this second Part, specific issues arising in relation to reparations for transatlantic chattel enslavement are discussed.
Slavery and Reparations
If you are of a certain age and have a TV watching disposition, you may recall one of the episodes of The West Wing, during which a robust discussion about financial reparations for slavery takes place. The conclusion was that, while no amount of money would suffice to compensate for hundreds of years of chattel enslavement, none the less, reparations could be quantified at $1.7 trillion owed to African American descendants of those enslaved in the US. However, this issue is very far from being the stuff of fiction; the National African-American Reparations Commission now has a Reparations Plan in place for the payment of reparations to people of African descent in the US; furthermore, the NAACP (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) passed a Resolution in 2019 supporting reparations; and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s influential piece on “The Case for Reparations” rooted the need for reparations in the current day inequalities and discrimination widely experienced by African Americans.
When it comes to establishment conversations about British reparations for slavery, a few issues tend to dominate; firstly, a level of superiority that reparations are not owed at all because the UK was the “first” to abolish slavery, the so called “moral capital” of abolitionism; secondly, a tendency to dismiss reparations claims due to the assumption that countries which were colonised during the British empire were developed and improved; finally, a very belated element of collective shame, only after this became more publicly known, because, after the 1834 abolition of slavery, reparations were paid out, but to slave owners and not to enslaved persons.
This was a scheme set up under the Slavery Compensation Act of 1837 whereby the Slave Compensation Commission and the Bank of England administered the payment of slavery compensation on behalf of the British government. A sum of £20 million (approximately £17 billion today) was allocated and payments were made to 46,000 slave owners for the loss of their “property”, that is, around 800,000 enslaved African human beings. Notorious amongst the 46,000 payments are the £106,769 paid to John Gladstone (father of the future UK Prime Minister, William Gladstone) and the £4,293 paid to the Drax family, which still owns their Barbados plantation. It took almost 200 years, until 2015, for the UK Government to pay off the £20 million which they had borrowed in the 1830s to compensate the slave owners. Despite the long standing nature of this arrangement, and two centuries of British tax payers paying for it, it only came to public attention recently through research carried out by the UCL Legacies of British Slavery Centre, where a database of the amounts paid out is maintained.
As for the claims that Britain was in the vanguard of slavery abolition, it is first necessary to distinguish between the slave trade, which was abolished in 1807 (under the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act 1807) and slavery itself (and the emancipation of enslaved people), which was not abolished until 1834 under the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. But neither of these Acts were the among the first initiatives in slavery abolition; Denmark was the first European nation to end the trade in enslaved persons in 1792. Before that, in 1791, formerly enslaved Toussaint L’Ouverture led a revolution which resulted in Haiti’s self-liberation from slavery. The northern states in the US had also gradually abolished slavery between 1777 and 1804. Furthermore, as Eric Williams argued in Capitalism and Slavery, the British abolition of slavery could be said to have been motivated by economic concerns rather than by moral or humanitarian ones; as industrial capitalism began to expand within Britain at the start of the 19th century, eliminating the competition from wage-free slavery became economically advantageous.
Despite the reluctance of the current UK Prime Minister to engage with the question of reparations for the UK’s involvement in the slave trade, this is very much a live question in other parts of the world. CARICOM (the Community of Caribbean nations) announced in 2014 that it would be seeking reparations from “European governments [who] in addition to being responsible for conducting slavery and genocide, also imposed 100 years of racial apartheid and suffering on freed slaves and the survivors of genocide.” Since then, the campaign has gathered force and intensity.
A plan is underway to possibly bring this claim for reparative justice before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Former ICJ Judge Patrick Robinson has expressed the view that “The UK is required by history and law to pay trillions of pounds in reparations for transatlantic chattel slavery”. In a keynote speech at UNESCO’s 2023 Day for Remembering the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Abolition, Judge Robinson went on to say that the “UK’s £18tn slavery debt is an underestimation”. The American Society of International Law (ASIL) has also published a lengthy 2023 report on Reparations under International Law. This report is “focused on the legal framework for reparations and highlighted a report by The Brattle Group whose groundbreaking research created an economic framework to quantify reparations for transatlantic chattel slavery”.
The Brattle Group Report is a significant basis for the future of the debate on slavery reparations. Its findings are that “reparations [are valued at] $100–131 trillion. These reparations are for harms separated into two categories of damages: harm during the period when chattel slavery was carried out ($77–108 trillion) and continuing harm post-enslavement ($23 trillion). According to Brattle’s estimates, the harms during the period of enslavement were inflicted on 19 million people over four centuries, including Africans kidnapped and transported to the Americas and Caribbean and those born into slavery, for a total of 802 million years of life to be compensated.” This Report has been described as “the most comprehensive state-to-state reparations analysis [and it] identifies the reparations that are due in respect of 31 countries in which transatlantic slavery was practised.”
Within the UK, an All Party Parliamentary Group on Afrikan Reparations (the APPG-AR) is also actively promoting the reparations cause through Conferences and campaigns. Of note, also, is the African Union’s (AU) Theme of the Year for 2025 which is Justice for Africans and People of African Descent Through Reparations. This initiative is intended to highlight the AU’s “commitment to addressing historical injustices, including the trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonialism, apartheid, and genocide.”
Other slavery reparations related initiatives include Benin’s new citizenship law. In 2024, the Benin Parliament decided to make citizenship available to those whose ancestors were trafficked as slaves through Benin; “Benin’s citizenship law carries added significance in part because of the role it played in the slave trade as one of the main points of departure.” In Ouidah, one of the largest slave trading ports in West Africa, there is a “Tree of Forgetfulness” where those sold into slavery were said to be forced to forget their past lives. These days, the forgetfulness is instead conveniently located amongst those who would turn a blind eye towards slavery responsibilities.
At the end of this brief overview of this imperative ethical issue, some simple matters become clear; firstly, any consideration of slavery reparations will not be without complex legal and practical questions about the passage of time, who should receive payments, and how, and who should be required to pay? But, secondly, and significantly, the slavery reparations debate is unmistakably gathering force and substance, even if some may be too tone deaf to recognise that.
Part 3 of this reflection will appear on this Blog tomorrow and will consider some local, Aberdeen, implications of the Slavery and Reparations debate.
Suggested citation: Lyons, Carole (2025) Dealing with the past: a local and global imperative (Part 2), SLSS Research Blog (RGU), 2025/05. Available at: https://rgu-slss.blog/?p=2186
