At Commonwealth summit, former U.K. colonies demand reparations for slavery

The British Commonwealth Summit begins Monday in Samoa as leaders of commonewealth nations seek reforms

LAUREN FRAYER, HOST:

Dozens of former British colonies are challenging their old colonial rulers to make amends for slavery and other injustices suffered under the British Empire. The idea of reparations was floated at this week's Commonwealth summit in the Polynesian nation of Samoa. King Charles III was there.

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KING CHARLES III: I understand from listening to people across the Commonwealth, how the most painful aspects of our past continue to resonate.

FRAYER: His government has refused to apologize, though, and says it's ruled out reparations in cash. But in their official communique released at the end of the summit, the Commonwealth leaders reiterated, quote, "the time has come for the reparations conversation." We reached Dan Bloom, senior playbook author for Politico, in Samoa on the last day of the conference. And he told us that monetarily, it's not exactly clear what the Commonwealth countries want from that conversation.

DAN BLOOM: Well, what they're asking is for the R word - reparations - to be sort of on the table. And that could mean, you know, money hypothecated for, say, a museum to slavery or for projects to kind of turn around the injustices. But it could also mean educational programs, holding off sort of the effects of climate change, especially in some of the small island, developing nations, and sort of to generally better what is quite loosely termed the Global South of developing countries, which just aren't as wealthy as the countries that historically profited from slavery and also from producing carbon emissions in sort of the industrial age.

FRAYER: Well, why have British royals and officials refused?

BLOOM: The king is technically and constitutionally not political. Now, the reason the U.K. government is not keen on this is because when you say the word reparations, people think of very large sums of money. And the new Labour government here - their whole kind of approach has been that they do not have money to spend, and this is simply not something that they can afford. And even when you ask them about reparations in terms of money for developing countries, projects in developing countries - which is something the British government supports - they say, we do not pay reparations; we are not talking about reparations.

And the problem for them is that that word is very powerful to a lot of Caribbean countries particularly. Britain came into this summit saying, this is not on the agenda. Now at the end of the summit, Keir Starmer's only speech has included that nod to, I understand the strength of feelings on reparatory justice. So he is now talking about it and the king - to sweep back to the beginning of your question - kind of referred to it in this quite diplomatic way in his speech. And that is quite significant because the king is kind of deployed to make these subtle, we're-hearing-you type messages when it's needed, kind of sparingly, which is kind of how the diplomatic double act in the British system works.

FRAYER: Dan, the idea of the word reparations formally appearing at this Commonwealth summit, what does that say to Britain?

BLOOM: It says that Britain does not have complete control of the agenda at the Commonwealth summit, and nor should it because the whole point of the Commonwealth is that Britain no longer is an empire. And it is just one of 55 nations attending this summit, albeit it's a very wealthy and relatively developed one. And I know that we've recalled to this interview before the communique has been agreed, and it's being played out after. So I'll give you my prediction, which might not stand the test of time. But if by the time you're hearing this interview, the communique does have the word reparations in, that is a blow to Britain and Britain's hopes for this summit because it didn't want this to be about the past. It didn't want the R word in it. And it didn't want this to be on the agenda. And a communique at the end of a summit is pretty much the definition of the agenda of a summit.

FRAYER: That was Dan Bloom, senior playbook author for Politico, joining us from Samoa. Dan, thank you so much.

BLOOM: Thank you.

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