Britain will not pay billions of pounds in slavery ‘reparations’, Downing Street has said.
A delegation from Jamaica visited Buckingham Palace on Monday to lodge a petition seeking acknowledgment that Britain owes compensation for its historic role in the transatlantic slave trade.
Campaigners, backed by some Labour MPs, are seeking £7.6 billion in so-called reparations.
The delegation said the filing of the petition would mark the first time a Commonwealth state had used this legal route ‘for the cause of reparatory justice’.
The group also has a meeting with the British Museum to discuss ‘the repatriation of cultural artefacts taken from Jamaica’.
Downing Street said the government acknowledged the ‘wrongs of the past’ but insisted that reparations were not due.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman told reporters: ‘Our position on reparations is clear. The UK does not and will not pay reparations. The transatlantic slave trade was abhorrent, and of course it’s right that we acknowledge the wrongs of the past. But we continue to face forward and work with other countries on current shared challenges.’
Former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption dismissed Jamaica’s claim to a legal right to reparations as ‘nonsense’.
Jamaican minister Olivia Grange hands in petition to Buckingham palace seeking recognition that the UK has a duty to pay reparations for its role in the slave trade
He told BBC Radio Four’s Today programme: ‘I think that they see in the UK a country which has lost its pride in its past, which is riven by self-doubt and guilt, and which is no longer confident in itself, and so they see an opportunity to get some money. I think that it’s as simple as that.’
But Olivia Grange, Jamaica’s minister of culture, gender, entertainment and sport, said Britain’s historic decision to compensate slave owners meant it now had a duty to pay reparations for harm caused in the past.
The British government paid £20 million to slave owners in compensation when slavery was abolished across most of the empire in 1833, which at the time amounted to 40 per cent of the Treasury’s annual income. It had to take out massive loans to be able to raise the cash, with the debts finally being paid off in 2015.
Ms Grange said: ‘The question really should be: if in modern times we’re still paying back the slave masters for the property that was our people, our ancestors, for property that was because of the abolition of slavery, then why shouldn’t we be pursuing some remedy at this time?’
The petition asks King Charles, as Jamaica’s head of state, to put to the Privy Council: whether the enslavement of Africans in Jamaica was legal under English law, whether it broke international law, and whether Britain now has a legal duty to provide redress.
The question of reparations is likely to be a major issue at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Summit in the Caribbean, which both the King and Andy Burnham are expected to attend in November.
The campaign for reparations is backed by a number of Labour MPs, including former frontbencher Diane Abbott and Clapham and Brixton Hill MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy.
Last month, Ms Ribeiro-Addy said the slave trade was ‘the gravest crime in humanity’. She added: ‘People think reparations is just about money – it is not. Reparations means repair. It means healing, it means proper equality in our schools and hospitals. It means how our children get to live.
‘We are not free until we are all free.’
The King has authority under the Judicial Committee Act of 1833 to refer legal matters to the London-based Judicial Committee of the Privy Council for an advisory opinion.
He has no personal say over whether the petition is referred to the Privy Council and would act entirely on the advice of the relevant authorities.
A palace spokesman said: ‘We understand the Jamaican government is seeking a petition to be heard before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
‘The process for seeking a petition is to lodge it with the Judicial Committee so that referral under section four of the 1833 Act can be considered.
‘We also understand the Jamaican representatives will be received by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office for bilateral discussions.’
