They’ve got us banged to rights
We really did have slaves, a lot of them. For that I believe we are all truly sorry and should say so.
An apology, however, is the littlest thing the campaigners are pressing for. They are also demanding astronomic sums of money in “Reparations”. Unfortunately, everyone seems to be too polite to say, “No”, which means the campaigners will win the argument by default if we won’t argue against it.
The argument in favour of Reparations is so full of holes it’s hard to know where to start. But let’s just look at the basics. Who pays the Reparations, and who gets the money?
The taxpayer pays. All of us would have to contribute to the tune of up to £500,000 each, because the Brattle Group assessed the grand total to be $100-131 trillion, of which the UK share would be in the region of £24 trillion.
It’s not that simple though, because campaigners are also saying it would be obscene if descendants of enslaved people should have to contribute. And others are also saying that people of African descent should receive Reparations as well, so presumably they shouldn’t have to pay. It would be an injustice, too, I would argue, if people of Asian heritage had to contribute. So that means the tax or levy or however it is collected would have to explicitly exclude People of Colour from liability. In plain terms, it would be a tax on White people.
Then we can ask, who gets the money? You would be sadly mistaken if you thought for one moment it would go to those descended from enslaved people. It would go to the governments of the Caribbean, which have a diabolical record of financial probity. There is not a hope any of it would be passed down. And nobody in the UK who is descended from enslaved people would get any of that money either. It would be a massive injection of cash for them to squander as they please.
The final point that too few people make, is that we ended slavery.
Not only did we abolish it throughout the Empire, but we went further and stopped the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Hundreds of ships destined for South and Central American states were intercepted by the Royal Navy and their slaves freed. It is unfair of the campaigners to fail to acknowledge that we did not start the slave trade, but we did end it.
There is a comprehensive website that examines every aspect of the debate, and it even has a William Wilberforce chatbot to answer your questions. Please see https://noreparations.uk/ and read the evidence behind the claims, there are 234 pages, far too many to summarise here.
Mark Griffin