UK’s top diplomat says slavery reparations ‘not about cash’

The UK will seek to atone for the transatlantic slave trade through better trade relations with African countries, Foreign Secretary David Lammy has said.

Lammy is visiting Nigeria and South Africa this week as part of London’s outreach to the continent, just a week after 56 members of the Commonwealth signed a document calling for a “conversation” about reparations for slavery.

The transatlantic slave trade was “horrific and horrendous” and left “scars,” Lammy said on Monday in Lagos, the Nigerian port city that was once a hub for slavers.

“I am the descendant of enslaved people, so I recognize that,” he added.
Lammy is a child of Guyanese immigrants to the UK. British authorities had brought over many African and Indian slaves and indentured servants into the former colony on the South American mainland.

Speaking with the state broadcaster BBC, Lammy said that reparations are “not about the transfer of cash,” especially at the time of a cost-of-living crisis in the UK. Instead, he argued, developing nations could benefit from the transfer of British scientific and technical expertise.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s cabinet at 10 Downing Street has previously ruled out both cash payments and “other forms of non-financial reparatory justice” as well.
“We do not pay reparations,” a spokesman for Starmer said last month, adding that London will not be offering an apology for slavery either.

Starmer was responding to reports that a group of Caribbean countries intended to ask for £200 billion ($261 billion) in compensation for the pain and suffering from the transatlantic slave trade.

While the British PM insisted that reparations were not on the agenda of last week’s Commonwealth meeting in Samoa, 56 member states signed a statement declaring slavery a “crime against humanity” and calling for “discussions on reparatory justice with regard to the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement.”

“The time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity,” the document said.

Britain first got involved in trading slaves from Africa to the Americas in 1562, becoming the world’s largest slave trafficker by the 1730s. In the 19th century London reversed course, however, banning the slave trade in 1807 and abolishing slavery in the colonies in 1833.

According to Reverend Dr. Michael Banner, the dean of Cambridge’s Trinity College, the UK owes the Caribbean £205 billion (nearly $266 billion) in reparations. Economic consulting firm Brattle Group suggested in 2023 that Britain owed as much as £19 trillion ($24 trillion) in reparations for its three-centuries-long slaveholding practices.

Lammy’s trip to Africa is his first as foreign secretary. He said it would be the start of a five-month “consultation process” to make sure African voices “inform and sit at the very heart of” the new British approach to the continent, as well as accommodate their “diverse needs and ambitions.”