Why slavery and reparations are live issues globally

Editorial / 4 November 2026 Trump’s mid-term debacle compels a rethink of US alliance 4 November 2026 Editorial / 3 November 2026 Scrap plans to send troops to Ukraine 3 November 2026 Editorial / 1 November 2026 The youth of Europe demand different political choices. So should we 1 November 2026 Editorial / 30 October 2026 Lessons of Suez 70 years on 30 October 2026 Editorial / 29 October 2026 It’s time for the left to stand up to Burnham 29 October 2026 Editorial / 28 October 2026 The first Burnham Budget is miserably unambitious 28 October 2026 Editorial / 27 October 2026 Burnham at 100 days: must do better 27 October 2026 A BRITISH state apology for the transatlantic slave trade, and the reparations called for by some Caribbean governments, are current controversies.

The King’s Caribbean tour will on Tuesday see him address the royal family’s complicity. Andy Burnham says he is open to a formal apology but not reparations. Kemi Badenoch says even an apology should be avoided.

The political right’s narrative is superficially plausible: nobody alive today was involved in the trade in enslaved Africans, so why hold them accountable? It is part of a grievance culture that holds white people, many of whom are working class and poor, responsible for crimes committed by others.

To that we can add an objection sometimes raised on the left: who pays if reparations are granted? Telling working-class people in Britain (black as well as white) that they should accept new liabilities on the public purse to atone for historic crimes is unlikely to be popular.

Answering these two questions — why is recompense for slavery relevant today, and who should pay for it — is key to winning class unity on these demands.

Jamaica’s reparations petition to the British monarch comes the same year that the United Nations endorsed a resolution from Ghana deeming the transatlantic slave trade “the gravest crime against humanity.” The resolution is linked to the African Union’s declared “decade of action on reparations” beginning last year.

It is part of a vision of decolonisation that — rightly — sees this as an unfinished process.

The formal independence of countries colonised by European powers from the 15th century on did not in most cases lead to real political and economic liberation: the global majority remained trapped in an international system of ownership and trade controlled by Western capital.

The dividing line globally is now between those who welcome what Chinese President Xi Jinping dubs “changes unseen in a century” (the rise of the Global South, potentially ending the long domination of the world by Europe and its white settler-colonies), and those — led by the United States, whose Secretary of State Marco Rubio openly lamented the end of the colonial empires in Munich in February — determined to stop it.

That division was clear at the UN: 123 countries, the majority, voted with Ghana. Three extreme-right governments voted against — the United States, Israel and Argentina — while Britain, Australia, Canada and the EU members abstained.

A snapshot of today’s world. The majority demand justice, the aggressive new right declare war against it, the liberals are frozen in the headlights of history.

As Karl Marx observed, the slave trade was instrumental in the birth of capitalism. The patterns of ownership and exploitation established by force then are very much alive. Demands for justice are demands for a new world order and the end of Western hegemony.

The high cost being paid by Global South countries for a crisis, climate change, largely created by the Global North explains the urgency behind calls for reparation.

International solidarity requires support for the cause as well as for the wider international transformation under way. UN abstentions aside, Britain is not really sitting on the fence between Rubio’s new colonialism and a multipolar future: through Nato, rearmament and hostility to reform of international institutions, we are on the wrong side.

Different models for reparations have been proposed, from reallocated foreign aid determined in conjunction with victim countries, to targeted financing penalising institutions and corporations that profited from slavery.

Placing these demands in the wider context of the fight against capitalism — the battle to expropriate the owners of capital and to share the wealth our collective labour creates — is no more than 20th century national liberation movements, whose history is inseparable from that of international communism, did. And it is key to ensuring the fight for racial justice unites rather than divides workers.

Accepting the principle is the first step. Justice is owed: it cannot be denied.

Britain / 3 November 2026 ‘Sorry, not sorry,’ Britain tells Commonwealth on slavery 3 November 2026 Politics / 1 November 2026 Britain at ‘tipping point’ over slavery apology after Burnham said he is open to discussion 1 November 2026 Racism / 4 September 2026 Time to repay a debt that’s long overdue 4 September 2026 Trade unions should be at the heart of the anti-racist push for reparations for the historic legacy and continuing impact of slavery, writes ROGER McKENZIE