Wednesday briefing: How to fight the right on reparations

Good morning. Happy Black History Month! We are now a week into a time of reflection on the richness of Black history and culture in the UK. Yet, too often one of the main aspects of that history – the debate around reparations for transatlantic enslavement – feels stuck in a loop. When the question of redress is raised, the backlash swiftly follows: too complicated, too divisive, too unfair.

We saw this happen last year, when Keir Starmer became the first sitting British prime minister to visit a Pacific island nation. He hoped to leave with upbeat headlines about new Commonwealth partnerships. Instead, the trip was dominated by demands for justice for historic wrongs.

It was unsurprising that those descended from the victims of transatlantic slavery raised reparations. More striking was the bluntness of the response: Starmer insisted it was “not on the agenda”, while the then-foreign secretary David Lammy, once outspoken on the subject as a backbencher, was notably quiet.

Reporting on that moment, I was struck by how often the two sides seem to be speaking past each other. The public debate dwells on myths and caricatures, overlooking the serious work being done to define what reparative justice could look like beyond simple cash payments.

To understand the demands around reparations more clearly, I spoke to Kojo Koram, a lecturer at the School of Law at Birkbeck, University of London. That’s after the headlines.

Five big stories

Politics | Keir Starmer has criticised Robert Jenrick’s comments complaining about “not seeing another white face” in parts of Birmingham, saying the shadow justice secretary was “hard to take seriously”.
France | Édouard Philippe, a former French prime minister and one-time ally of Emmanuel Macron, has said he favours early presidential elections given the gravity of the political crisis rocking the country.
Music | Prosecutors will appeal against a court’s decision to throw out a terrorism charge against the Kneecap rapper Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh. The 27-year-old was accused of displaying a flag in support of the proscribed terrorist organisation Hezbollah at a gig last November until a technical error in the way he was charged led to the chief magistrate ruling he could not try the case.
Business | The EU has announced it will match Donald Trump’s steel tariffs, doubling levies on imports to 50% in a move condemned as “an existential threat” to the industry in the UK.
Gaza | A new Gaza-bound aid flotilla has been intercepted by the Israeli army, days after the detention of activists on board vessels bound for the war-torn territory caused international outrage and widespread protests.

In depth: ‘The movement is only gaining momentum’

It was only five years ago that the UK was in the middle of a profound racial reckoning. More than 260 towns and cities held protests in June and July 2020. Historians described as the most widespread anti-racist demonstrations since the abolition of slavery.

At the heart of that movement was a call for Britain not only to confront its role in transatlantic enslavement but also to pay reparations. To this day, the UK has never issued a formal apology for slavery. (In 2006, Tony Blair expressed “deep sorrow” and said “we are sorry” at a 2007 press conference, but Caribbean nations did not recognise this as an official apology from the state.)

Several British institutions did act in 2020. The Bank of England issued an apology, while Lloyd’s of London, Greene King and the Church of England went further, pledging to pay reparations. The Guardian also apologised and committed to a programme of restorative justice, as well as launched the Cotton Capital series. Yet what looked like the beginning of a reckoning soon stalled. The trickle of apologies and pledges never grew into a wave; instead, an intense backlash ensured it petered out.

It might be tempting to think the momentum around reparations has long faded. But as a recent report by the leading anti-racist thinktank the Runnymede Trust shows, historians and activists such as Kojo Koram, who contributed to the report, keep pressing the issue.

“People in the government should be more attuned to because it is clearly not going away,” Koram told me. “Not in the Caribbean, and not here in the UK. The movement is only gaining momentum.”

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In debt to the enslavers

The figures attached to reparations are staggering. One authoritative study published in 2023, the Brattle Group’s Report on Reparations for Transatlantic Chattel Slavery, concluded that the UK alone would owe $24tn (£18.8tn) in reparations across 14 countries.

Instead of treating those numbers as a measure of the vast wealth Britain extracted, not to mention the brutal cost in human lives, many seize on them as proof that reparations are impossible, unprecedented and even absurd.

But as Koram pointed out to me, Britain has already paid reparations for slavery. It just paid them to the enslavers. “When slavery was abolished, the people who owned “property” – of course that property was living, breathing human beings: men, women and children with their own hopes and dreams just like all of us – considered abolition to be an injustice to them. They argued they were due compensation for the loss of their “property”, Koram said.

The British government agreed. It borrowed £20m to pay enslavers, 40% of the Treasury’s annual income, according to Tax Justice UK, equivalent to £450bn today.

Taxpayers in the UK footed those payments until 2015, a fact the Treasury once, bizarrely, tweeted about with pride.

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Architecture of inequality

When Keir Starmer was pressed on reparations, he focused on “current future-facing challenges” such as climate resilience and debt restructuring. He has kept well away from the topic since.

It was frustrating to watch Britain’s political class dismiss the issue so quickly, especially when even a cursory glance at the demands by campaigners shows that the very challenges Starmer highlights are at the heart of the reparations movement.

“When we talk about reparative justice, we are not just talking about financial compensation for historical wrongs. We are also talking about restructuring the architecture of global power dynamics, which continue to shape contemporary issues,” Koram told me.

He uses climate policy as an example. “The question becomes: ‘How can we facilitate arrangements between the global north and the global south that balance out contribution towards the climate crisis, and can lead to a more sustainable future.’ So it’s not just about the past, it’s about the future.”

He added that the demand for reparative justice takes many forms, including restructuring economic inequalities, such as tackling the global debt crisis or the structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) that restrict Caribbean economies. It could also mean changing legal structures, for example that Jamaica’s final court of appeal is still the UK’s Privy Council, an institution most people in Britain are barely aware of, Koram said.

“So it’s trying to rewire a lot of that architecture of inequality, which is just as valuable of a reparative justice initiative as monetary figures.”

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The past is never dead

Some suggest there is no clear plan for reparations, but there are several models. For example, Caricom, the regional organisation representing Caribbean countries, has a 10-point framework. It calls for measures such as establishing museums and research centres, addressing the Caribbean’s chronic disease crisis, supporting efforts to eradicate illiteracy, ensuring young people gain access to science and technology, and cancelling historic debts.

This framework shows, powerfully, the links between the past and the future. Which is why, whenever I write about transatlantic slavery and the call for reparations, I think of William Faulkner’s famous line: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” What happens in our past, recent and historic, has a way of staying with us.

This is the point Koram made when I asked what he would say to Britons who believe what happened 200 years ago is ancient history, and we need to move on. “People often assume that when we’re talking about reparations, we’re talking about dealing with people in red coats and muskets and what wrongs happened in the early 18th century or even late 17th century. But the people in the Caribbean are not talking about their issues of what happened 300 or 400 years ago, they’re talking about how those issues connect to many of the continuing flows of wealth and flows of capital, even today,” he said.

Koram argued that Caribbean countries such as Jamaica or Barbados are still suffering the economic consequences of British enslavement and colonisation. “That attempt to try and create this separation between the past and the present doesn’t really stand up on interrogation.”

It goes far beyond economic systems. Slavery shaped ideas of what it means to be human. Entire populations were legally defined as non-human to justify their trafficking and enslavement. That dehumanisation required an ideology, one whose echoes continue to fuel injustice today.

“The way people are treated by different institutions of power – the police, the prison system, the immigration system, the education system – are ideas about who belongs, who we see as intelligent, who we see as aggressive and violent” Kojo said. Those ideas, he explained, were first forged during transatlantic slavery.

Perhaps that is why it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate calls for racial equality from demands for reparative justice.

What else we’ve been reading

I urge you to read this tender call for empathy two years on by Sharone Lifschitz (above), whose parents were kidnapped on October 7. Poppy Noor, deputy editor, newsletters
Viewing the celebrated German photographer Andreas Gursky’s newest large-scale images on your mobile won’t give you quite the effect of seeing these meticulously crafted works in person (he’s exhibiting in London now), but his insights into how he brings them to life in this interview are fascinating. Craille Maguire Gillies, newsletters team
I often wish the monopoly on British identity could be reclaimed from the right. I don’t agree with all of Sunder Katwala’s ideas on that topic – but I am grateful that people like him are thinking about it. Poppy
If ever the Pass Notes column was written for me, it was this one about ladybirds, explaining with sarcasm and a little bit of science what’s behind Britain’s baffling glut of Coccinellidae. While you read it, I’ll just go and evict a few more spotted mini beasts back to the great outdoors. Craille
I can’t read enough about the bad lyrics pertaining to Taylor Swift’s fiance’s “magic wand” on her new album – and this hilarious take by Arwa Mahdawi is no exception Poppy

Sport

Football | Melchie Dumornay scored twice for OL Lyonnes, who came from behind to secure a 2-1 Women’s Champions League win at the title holders, Arsenal.

Cricket | England staggered over the line chasing 179 and won by four wickets, with Bangladesh fuming after Knight had three successful reviews. Women’s World Cup: England, 182-6, beat Bangladesh, 178, by 4 wkts

Tennis | Emma Raducanu’s brutal run of form and luck in Asia continued at the Wuhan Open as she retired because of illness from her first-round match at the WTA 1000 event, while trailing 6-1, 4-1 against Ann Li of the United States.

The front pages

The Guardian splashes on “Jenrick accused of fuelling ‘toxic nationalism’ after race remarks” and the Metro has done well with “No whites don’t make a wrong, Bob!”. The Express has “Kemi: Trust me to put UK’s economy back on track”. The i paper leads with “Millions of UK drivers will get £700 payouts for major car finance scandal” about which the Financial Times reports “Banks face £11bn bill for car finance mis-selling scandal, regulator warns”. “CPS: No 10 to blame for collapse of spy trial” – that’s the Telegraph and the Times runs with “Ministers ‘refused to help’ China spying prosecutors”. “China given a free pass to spy on Britain” declares the Mail. “Sickening” is the Mirror’s take on David Norris, killer of Stephen Lawrence, seeking parole.

Today in Focus

‘This is what we’ve been afraid of’: British Jews after the Manchester attack

Guardian journalist Abigail Radnor and Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust talk through the grief, fear and anger of the British Jewish community after the Heaton Park Synagogue terror attack

Cartoon of the day | Ella Baron

The Upside

A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad

“It’s amazing how much of my life has been shaped by Crumpsall when I think about it. Which I hadn’t until last Thursday, and the horrific attack on the Heaton Park synagogue. Crumpsall is a small area of north Manchester, 1.2 sq miles with a population of 18,000.” So writes Simon Hattenstone in a remarkable reflection on how the very things that can drive us from where we grew up can years later be transformed into the things that pull us back.

In the final year’s of his mother’s life, Simon spent a lot of time in the place he’d left decades earlier. “I began to love both the house and the community,” he writes. “Or should I say communities. In the decades I’d been away, more and more Muslims had moved into Crumpsall and Cheetham Hill. They did not displace Jews, they lived largely separate lives, peacefully side by side.”

In the aisles of a Tesco Extra, he found the imprint of this diverse community writ small. “I couldn’t get over my belated discovery – that the place I’d dismissed as parochial was one of the greatest melting pots on the planet.” These are, he admits, terrifying times for Jews and Muslims everywhere. But Manchester faced down this hate following the terror murders of 2017 and will again: “Love trumped hate hands down. It must do so again for Crumpsall.”

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