THE refusal of Keir Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves to even consider, let alone pay, reparations for Britain’s enslavement of millions over centuries is an illustration of the imperialist mindset that the Labour right shares with the rest of the British Establishment.
 
Across a space of 300 years, Britain trafficked around three million Africans into slavery, more than almost any other country, and profited from their labour and their oppression to the tune of trillions of pounds in today’s real terms. As many as two million more died during the brutal, packed journey across the Atlantic Ocean.
 
According to economist and Nobel prize winner Arthur Lewis, Britain received two centuries of free labour from more than 15 million black people in the Caribbean, an exploitation that US socialist sociologist W.E.B du Bois described as “the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice.” The profits of slavery drove the modernisation of the British economy and elevated Britain to one of the wealthiest nations on Earth.
 
But when slavery was abolished, the only compensation was paid to the slaveholders for their “loss,” a staggering amount equivalent to 5 per cent of Britain’s entire gross domestic product at the time, worth well over £100 billion today — paid by taking out a loan that Britain only finished paying off in 2015.
 
Not a penny was paid to the slaves, on whose back Britain built much of its wealth. So much wealth that a judge at the International Court of Justice has calculated that the £18 trillion that the Brattle report says former slave-trading countries owe the descendants of those slaves and the nations in which they live is a significant underestimate but constituted “a clear, unvarnished statement of the grossness.” Responding to Robinson, London’s Labour Mayor, Sadiq Khan, admitted: “There should be no doubt or denial of the scale of Britain’s involvement in this depraved experiment.”
 
The consequences of the slave trade went far beyond cash but not beyond a link to it. Many of the diseases suffered by the peoples of the Caribbean can be directly traced to slavery and colonialism. Diabetes is endemic, with Barbados and Jamaica suffering the world’s worst rates of medically driven amputation as a result of three centuries of high-sugar diets derived from the sugar trade — around 147 amputations per 100,000 population, compared to a global average of around 95.
 
Yet, when confronted about Britain’s guilt and ongoing debt to the descendants by Commonwealth leaders last month, Keir Starmer dismissed their demand for reparations by brushing aside the weight of history and its ongoing impacts by telling them that he wants to look forward rather than back.

“I’d rather roll up my sleeves and work … on the current future-facing challenges,” said Starmer, agreeing only that there should be discussions about the issue at some unspecified future point.
 
Reeves, for her part, was bluntly dismissive: “We’re not going to be paying out the reparations that some countries are speaking about.”
 
To add insult to injury, Starmer refused even to apologise on Britain’s behalf for its role in the enslavement of millions and the disadvantages their descendants still suffer.

Attempting to divert justified anger at such dismissiveness on the part of the Labour government’s two most senior politicians, Foreign Secretary David Lammy said this week that the “concept” of reparations “is not about the transfer of cash,” instead offering vague notions that Britain would share skills and scientific expertise — but even his “jam tomorrow” promise is at odds with the Starmer government’s official position, which ruled out even “other forms of non-financial reparatory justice.”
 
Four years ago, Afua Hirsch said that a Tory minister had told her that Britain would not apologise for slavery because that might be taken as a legal admission of liability as if there could be any question about it.
 
Hirsch went on: “The debate about reparations has, conveniently, been branded extreme and unrealistic by those who don’t want to pay them. We happily listen to the [then] heir to the throne — who on Windrush Day said Britain owed a “debt of gratitude” to the people of the Caribbean — while ignoring the reality that what Britain owes is, in fact, a straight-up financial debt.”
 
Britain lags well behind the other imperialist power and great offender of the slave trade in the attitude of its elites to reparations. Leading US political figures have endorsed or said they are open to reparations, including presidential candidate Kamala Harris and even neoliberals like Nancy Pelosi.
 
The Starmer-Reeves position is a direct continuation, with no discernible differences, of the rejection of previous Tory governments of calls for reparations and apologies. Last year, then-PM Rishi Sunak refused to listen to calls by campaigners, including Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, for the British government to act. Sunak even used the same rationale that Starmer offered last month, saying: “Trying to unpick our history is not the right way forward.”
 
Ultimately, the refusal of the government to pay reparations for slavery is tied to its role in the colonialism and imperialism to which the British Establishment is still wedded. It is a sign of the lack of genuine interest on the part of British elites in actually addressing the grotesque and enduring inequalities created by centuries of imperialism, colonisation and exploitation.

That those attitudes and practices still prevail, whatever the political rhetoric of politicians, can be seen in Western extraction of the mineral wealth of Africa and other developing regions, in the readiness to ruin the environments of local peoples to enrich Western corporations, in the skewed priorities in vaccination and other health urgencies — and in the eagerness of those same elites to support, or ignore, the oppression and mass murder of Palestinians and Lebanese, or of the people of Sudan and others with the “wrong” religion or skin colour.
 
This phenomenon is widely recognised. Presenting her 2019 report on reparations and racial justice to the UN general assembly, UN special rapporteur on racism Tendayi Achiume was clear:
 
“Reparations are a vital aspect of a global order genuinely committed to the inherent dignity of all, irrespective of race, ethnicity or national origin,” she told the assembled national representatives, “Ultimately, the difficult truth is that the greatest barrier to reparations for colonialism and slavery is that the biggest beneficiaries of both lack the political will and moral courage to pursue these reparations.”
 
She went on to make clear that, far from being exceptional or outlandish, the duty of those who profited from slavery and colonialism to make reparation for it is firmly embedded in international law: “State practice, international tribunal decisions, and other sources of international law have repeatedly affirmed that state breaches of legal obligations entail a responsibility to provide reparations.”
 
A lack of moral courage on the part of Starmer and Reeves when faced with the needs of billions compared to the entrenched imperialist interests of political and corporate elites will surprise few, but it is no less inexcusable for being predictable.

Claudia Webbe was the Member of Parliament for Leicester East (2019-24). You can follow her at www.facebook.com/claudiaforLE and twitter.com/ClaudiaWebbe.