Reparations and Britain: The History of a Continuing Campaign

A question that emancipation left open

Britain’s emancipation settlement addressed one form of compensation with considerable precision. The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 authorised £20 million for people losing claims over enslaved labour. It created no equivalent fund for those who had been enslaved. That decision did not settle the question of what was owed to them. Instead, it left a lasting distinction between ending a recognised form of ownership and repairing the injuries through which that ownership had been exercised.¹

The distinction remains central to debates about reparations. Ending a wrong prevents its legal continuation; repair asks what should happen to its consequences. For Britain, the questions involve institutions, fortunes, African and Caribbean societies and descendants across the world. Accounts of responsibility differ. A history of the campaign therefore has to follow both its proposals and the organisations that have carried them, rather than treating every intervention as a demand for the same payment.²

An eighteenth century argument for restitution

Ottobah Cugoano addressed the need for repair while Atlantic slavery was still flourishing. His 1787 book, Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, condemned enslavement and called upon those involved to abandon it. He also argued that they should make restitution, as far as they could, for injuries already inflicted. The argument came from a writer who described his own capture and enslavement and who challenged Britain’s conduct from within British society.³

Cugoano’s reasoning was grounded in an eighteenth-century Christian moral world. He accused people who claimed religious civilisation of participating in profound wrongdoing. His concern extended beyond stopping future trafficking: those already subjected to injustice required freedom and protection. He also distinguished reparation from simply inflicting equivalent suffering upon the wrongdoer. Revenge could leave the injured person no better restored. The purpose of a response should include what it did for the person who had suffered.³

There is no need to turn Cugoano into the author of a modern government programme to recognise the significance of that argument. He was asking what justice required after an injury, and refusing to treat the interests of enslavers as the only practical interests that mattered. His writing establishes that demands for restitution were voiced during slavery itself. They cannot be dismissed as concerns invented by later generations who had no understanding of the historical setting.³

From Pan African organising to Abuja

By the late twentieth century, reparations had become part of organised Pan-African political action. The First Pan-African Conference on Reparations, held in Abuja in April 1993 with support from the Organisation of African Unity and Nigeria, connected the experiences of Africa and its diaspora. The resulting proclamation treated enslavement and colonisation as histories with continuing consequences, rather than as closed events whose effects ended when particular laws changed.⁴

Bernie Grant carried that argument into Westminster. His early day motion of 10 May 1993 welcomed the Abuja Proclamation and urged countries enriched by enslavement and colonisation to examine the case for reparations. The parliamentary record lists sixty-three supporters in total. The motion linked economic consequences, personal suffering and racism. An early day motion records parliamentary support for a position; it does not itself create legislation, authorise payment or establish government policy.⁴

Abuja also features in the African Union’s account of its longer reparations agenda. That account places the conference within efforts involving political leaders, diaspora organisations and campaigns for the return of cultural property. The connections matter: the movement has developed through exchanges between Africa, the Caribbean and communities elsewhere. Britain is one important setting in that history, rather than the place from which all its ideas or priorities originated.⁵

Building a movement in Britain

The African Reparations Movement UK was launched at a Birmingham conference on 11 December 1993. Grant worked with campaigners including Linda Bellos, Sam Walker, Stephen Small and Dorothy Kuya. Its activities included public meetings, historical research, education and demands for the return of objects held in British collections. These activities connected reparations with questions about who controlled historical knowledge and cultural inheritance.²

That organising history helps explain the breadth of the term. Community teaching could challenge exclusion from the historical record; a museum campaign could question continuing possession of an object; parliamentary work could press a government to acknowledge responsibility. These activities helped make historical injury politically visible. Grant’s archive preserves this practical work, showing a movement sustained through meetings, correspondence and collaboration.²

What repair can involve

A useful vocabulary appears in the United Nations’ 2005 Basic Principles and Guidelines on remedy and reparation. They identify restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition. In ordinary language, these include restoring rights or property where possible, addressing assessable loss, supporting recovery, acknowledging wrongdoing and changing conditions that allow violations to recur. Their discussion of satisfaction includes truth, public acknowledgement, remembrance and accurate education. ⁶

The principles address serious violations within applicable domestic and international law. They expressly explain that they identify ways of implementing existing obligations rather than creating new ones. They therefore offer a framework for understanding different forms of repair without automatically deciding every legal question about historical slavery. Political negotiation, institutional action and litigation each require their own account of responsibility, evidence and remedy.⁶

The Caribbean develops a collective programme

CARICOM established its Reparations Commission in 2013, giving Caribbean governments a regional structure for advancing the case. Its original ten-point plan called for a formal apology, support for repatriation, development programmes for Indigenous peoples, cultural institutions and measures concerning health, education, psychological rehabilitation, technology and debt. The commission presented these as responses to the legacies of enslavement and colonial domination. It argued for a programme of social repair extending across generations.⁷

This approach challenged the habit of reducing reparations to a single calculation. Education, access to historical knowledge and the resources available to public institutions can affect a community’s future as well as its understanding of the past. At the same time, each proposal needs scrutiny on its own terms. Naming a historical connection does not remove the need to explain how a particular measure would work, whom it would serve or how its effects would be assessed.⁷

The programme has continued to change. CARICOM heads of government approved a revised plan in July 2026, and it was relaunched at the regional reparations conference in Barbados that September. Secretary-General Carla Barnett’s explanation identified public health, education, cultural development, support for Indigenous communities, psychological rehabilitation, gender justice, debt cancellation and monetary compensation among its concerns. An account of the movement written in October 2026 therefore needs to recognise this revision, rather than present the earlier plan as unchanged.⁸

Research leads to institutional commitments

Some British institutions have begun their own responses. In 2019, the University of Glasgow and the University of the West Indies signed an agreement following research into Glasgow’s historical benefits from slavery. Their programme included a jointly based Glasgow–Caribbean Centre for Development Research. Glasgow committed to raising and spending £20 million over twenty years, with much of the funding expected to come through grants and benefactions.⁹

That wording is important. A commitment to raise and spend money over time is different from a completed cash transfer of the same amount. The partnership connected historical findings to research and educational collaboration, while leaving practical questions about implementation to subsequent work. It offers a concrete example of an institution deciding that researching its history should lead to an ongoing relationship with a Caribbean institution.⁹

The Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian, published its own research and apology in 2023. Its report examined connections between the Manchester Guardian’s founders, cotton commerce and enslavement. The proposed response included support for descendant communities in Jamaica and the south-eastern United States, journalism opportunities and further research. The Trust said it expected to invest more than £10 million over the following decade, with millions directed towards a restorative justice fund.¹⁰

The report also committed to consultation with descendant communities. That raises a question relevant to any institutional response: who helps set the priorities? A project can acknowledge a historical connection while still leaving decisions about money and public memory concentrated in the institution making the offer. Meaningful participation requires attention to how communities can influence the work, alongside clear reporting of what has actually been funded and delivered.¹⁰

Diplomacy brings the issue to a wider stage

At the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Samoa in October 2024, leaders acknowledged calls for discussion of reparatory justice concerning transatlantic slavery and other historical wrongs. Their communiqué recognised the need for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation. That language brought the issue into a shared diplomatic document, although it did not amount to an agreement to pay a specified sum.¹¹

The distinction between opening discussion and reaching a settlement matters. Diplomatic statements can establish a subject as legitimate for negotiation and identify areas of shared concern. The practical obligations may remain contested. Readers should therefore ask what a document actually agrees: recognition, a process for talks, a programme, a financial commitment or a binding remedy. Those are different developments, even when headlines use the same word for all of them.¹¹

The African Union made justice for Africans and people of African descent through reparations its theme for 2025. Its stated objectives included stronger institutions and cooperation with CARICOM and the diaspora. This placed reparations within a wider international agenda that also addressed colonialism and the restitution of cultural heritage. The geographical breadth helps explain why the debate cannot be understood solely through statements by British ministers.⁵

The British government and the disputed legal question

The difference between acknowledgement and acceptance of legal responsibility was visible at the United Nations in March 2026. The UK government condemned slavery and recognised continuing harm, but said it could not support the resolution before the General Assembly. Its explanation objected to creating a hierarchy of historical atrocities and argued that legal responsibility must be judged against the international law applicable at the time. ¹²

That was the government’s legal position, not a neutral determination settling all reparations claims. It argued against a duty to compensate for historical acts that were not then prohibited by international law. Campaigners and claimant governments have advanced different arguments about law, continuing effects and responsibility. The government’s July 2026 update also distinguished attending a reparations conference in Accra from endorsing its outcome. Participation in discussion did not signify acceptance of the claims being made. ¹²

Jamaica seeks answers through a new petition

Jamaica took a further step on 7 September 2026 by submitting a petition to King Charles III. It sought a reference to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council under section 4 of the Judicial Committee Act 1833. The petition asked for examination of questions concerning the forced transportation and enslavement of Africans and Britain’s obligations to provide a remedy. It developed arguments about English law, international law and the continuing consequences of enslavement.¹³

The document did not ask the committee at that stage to calculate a particular award. Its emphasis was on establishing questions of legality and obligation. Those propositions must be described as the petition’s case: filing a legal argument does not make its conclusions a judgment. The distinction allows the significance of Jamaica’s initiative to be understood without announcing an outcome that has not occurred.¹³

By October 2026, the petition had been referred to the Judicial Committee.¹⁵ On 15 October, Jamaica’s culture minister, Olivia Grange, announced that a hearing had been provisionally scheduled for the week beginning 8 March 2027. At the date of this article, that hearing remained in the future. The petition represented a new procedural development in a long campaign, with the substantive questions still awaiting consideration.¹⁴

The decisions that come after acknowledgement

Across these initiatives, several practical questions recur. What injury is a proposal intended to address? What evidence connects it to the institution or state being asked to act? Who should benefit, and how can affected communities shape the response? A scholarship programme, a cultural institution, a debt measure and a monetary payment have different purposes. They need to be assessed against the needs and responsibilities they claim to address.⁶

CARICOM’s revised programme and the institutional examples discussed here show why the campaign continues after a report or apology. Historical recognition creates further questions about resources, authority and implementation. Progress can be examined through commitments kept, decisions shared and benefits delivered, rather than solely through the language of announcements. These are matters on which supporters of repair can also disagree and ask for greater accountability.⁸

Cugoano’s eighteenth-century demand for restitution offers a useful point of return. He understood that abandoning wrongdoing left a further responsibility towards those already injured. The organisations, legal arguments and proposals have changed enormously since his time. The continuing question is how acknowledgement becomes action that serves people whose histories have too often been discussed without giving them power over the response.³

Sources

[1] UK Parliament; historical transcription by Peter Davis. Slavery Abolition Act 1833, section XXIV; 28 August 1833.

[2] The Bernie Grant Archive. Reparations.

[3] Ottobah Cugoano; digitised original at Internet Archive. Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species; 1787.

[4] UK Parliament. Abuja Proclamation, early day motion; 10 May 1993.

[5] African Union. AU Theme of the Year 2025: Justice for Africans and People of African Descent Through Reparations; 2025.

[6] United Nations General Assembly; text reproduced by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea. Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation, Resolution 60/147; 16 December 2005.

[7] CARICOM Reparations Commission. CARICOM Ten Point Plan for Reparatory Justice, original framework; 2014.

[8] Caribbean Community. CARICOM Secretary-General Urges Unity and Action as CARICOM Relaunches Ten-Point Plan for Reparatory Justice; 18 September 2026.

[9] University of Glasgow. Historic agreement sealed between Glasgow and West Indies universities; 23 August 2019.

[10] The Scott Trust. The Scott Trust legacies of enslavement report; 2023.

[11] The Commonwealth. Samoa Communiqué, Leaders Statement and Declarations; Samoa Communiqué, paragraphs 21–22; 26 October 2024.

[12] Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. UK Explanation of Vote on the declaration concerning the trafficking and racialised chattel enslavement of Africans; 25 March 2026; updated 7 July 2026.

[13] Government of Jamaica. Petition to His Majesty King Charles III concerning reparations; 7 September 2026.

[14] Jamaica Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport. Grange gives update on Petition; 15 October 2026.

[15] Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. In the matter of a Petition on behalf of the People of Jamaica, JCPC/2026/0084; Issued 24 September 2026.

Sources checked on 22 October 2026.