Last week, it was announced that Prince William and Princess Kate will begin Britain’s Black History Month by visiting Wales, a region in the UK with the most minor black population. Given their disastrous colonial tour in the Caribbean last year, one understands why.

In the United Kingdom, reparations have long been an intricate and contentious issue, an issue that the Royal Family have tried to ignore. This Black History Month, we explore the UK’s legacy surrounding reparations, delving into historical facts and modern attitudes, especially among the elite who benefitted from slavery the most.

The Foundations of Inequality

By 1833, when British slavery was abolished, the economic system of slavery was already declining due to the global investments of elite white individuals. However, the affluence of post-abolition Britain remained closely tied to the ongoing struggles faced by the Caribbean. Baldwin Spencer, former Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, unequivocally connected the economic exploitation of black Caribbeans to their contemporary hardships.

“We know that our constant search and struggle for development resources is linked directly to the historical inability of our nations to accumulate wealth, from the efforts of our peoples during slavery and colonialism. … These nations that have been the major producers of wealth for the European slave owning economies during the enslavement and colonial periods entered independence with dependency straddling their economic, cultural, social and even political lives.”.

Former Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister, Baldwin Spencer

Currently, the economic systems of Antigua, Barbados, and Jamaica continue to suffer as a result of the black loss of inherited family wealth over those many colonial generations and because of their historically imposed reliance on foreign capital and other financial arrangements.

The Slave Compensation Commission

The 1830s Slave Compensation Commission sheds further light on Britain’s slavery history. British ships had carried at least 3.4 million enslaved Africans to the Americas. Astonishingly, the white racial framing has succeeded in minimizing the UK’s slavery history despite comprehensive data. The Commission oversaw the allocation of £20 million (approximately £17 billion today) to 47,000 slaveowners as compensation, while those enslaved received none. They were instead compelled to endure four more years of unpaid labor, euphemistically referred to as ‘apprenticeship.’ Historian Kris Manjapra emphasized the cruel hypocrisy inherent in this system. He noted that Britain intended to “train [blacks] out of their natural state of savagery,” which in reality was unpaid labor on the same plantations. The framing was extraordinarily hypocritical, painting the oppressed as savages and the oppressors as mentors.

The Elite’s Tainted Wealth

Recent research has also uncovered that the forebears of distinguished British personalities like George Orwell and former Prime Minister David Cameron were recipients of sizable monetary reparations for the loss of enslaved people. Intriguingly, actor Benedict Cumberbatch, known for his role as a slave owner in the movie ’12 Years a Slave,’ has openly discussed his own family’s history of slave ownership. He even shared that his mother once advised him to use a stage name in his career to avoid potential reparations claims from the descendants of slaves.

Arguably more noteworthy is the finding that British slavery was much more commonplace than earlier recognized. While a majority of whites who enslaved their fellow human beings were men, scaled-down slavery involvement among the middle class included some widows and single women who owned no land in the Caribbean but rented out their “human property” to white landowners. Approximately 40 percent of white enslavers in the British colonies were women, and they often had inherited human property from their husbands. Still, most of the government’s compensatory money went to the “richest citizens, who owned the greatest number of slaves.”

The Government’s Stand: Evasion and Misinformation on Reparations

In 1993, Bernie Grant, one of the first black British Members of Parliament, called for an apology for the legacies of slavery. He passed away in 2000 without hearing one. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak refused to apologise for the UK slave trade or to pledge reparations, and urged people to “move on from this painful [slavery] legacy,” which only sidestepped the issue rather than confronting it head-on.

Even more strikingly, in 2018, the Treasury Department tweeted a misleading claim that British taxpayers had helped end the slave trade, misrepresenting facts and ignoring that the compensation went to slave owners rather than to the enslaved or their descendants and that debt was only fully paid off in 2015.

The Heirs of Slavery

The Heirs of Slavery, an advocacy Group for Descendants of Slavery, comprises a diverse set of members, such as King Charles’ second cousin, a direct descendant of Victorian Prime Minister William Gladstone, who have plans to petition the UK government. Their goal is to secure official recognition and reparation for the UK’s involvement in the transatlantic trafficking of an estimated 3.4 million enslaved African individuals.

“British slavery was legal, industrialised and based entirely on race… Britain has never apologised for it, and its after-effects still harm people’s lives in Britain as well as in the Caribbean countries where our ancestors made money.”

Alex Renton, one of the group’s founders

In a landscape of contentious debate over reparations for slavery, contrasting attitudes are evident among those descended from historical figures who benefitted from the slave trade. On the one hand, there are groups like the Heirs of Slavery, which includes the descendants of Gladstone, who have formally apologized to Guyana for their forebears’ involvement in slavery. This follows in the footsteps of a broader movement to hold the UK accountable for its historical role in the enslavement of 3.4 million Africans.


Not everyone, however, supports the push for atonement and reparations. Good Morning Britain’s Richard Madeley recently engaged in a fiery exchange with Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali over the issue. While Ali insisted that the UK ‘still benefits from the greatest indignity to the human being,’ and cited a UN report suggesting that the country owes £19 trillion in reparations, Madeley countered with an increasingly heated line of questioning that escalated to include the Royal Family’s role. The diverging perspectives in this debate expose a rift in the UK’s collective reckoning with its history, highlighting the complicated path toward justice and reparations for the descendants of slaves.

The Royal Commentary: Words but No Actions

In 2018, Prince Charles described Britain’s part in the slave trade as an “atrocity,” yet he included the line, “Britain can be proud that it later led the way in the abolition of this shameful trade,” in the same breath. Despite these words, from 1807 to the present day, the UK government has neither paid a single penny to the descendants of enslaved African workers nor issued an official apology.

The UK’s royal family’s stance, replete with “good-bad rhetoric,” has done little to address the historical injustices or to dismantle existing systemic racial oppression.

‘It’s not enough for the son of the monarch to apologize, the monarch should.”

Pop Culture pundit Kristen Meinzer

Contrast this with Dutch King Willem-Alexander, who apologized and asked for forgiveness for his country’s role in the slave trade. The Netherlands plan to pay $204 million for social awareness projects and $27 million for a museum on The Netherlands’ role in slavery and slave trade.

The Road Ahead Toward Reparations

True reparations must involve more than mere apologies or rhetorical acknowledgements. They require a genuine commitment to dismantling contemporary systemic racial oppression and providing substantial restitution to black descendants of slavery. Anything less is a continuation of the white elite’s longstanding racial framing, a disservice to the cause of justice, and a stain on the nation’s history.

To truly honor Black History Month and make amends, mere words from the Royals or politicians are not enough. Concrete reparations and a genuine commitment to dismantling systemic racial oppression are essential. As history and present realities show, acknowledgement and restitution for these crimes against humanity are something that elite whites, including those in the royal family, have never been willing to do.

In the words of historian David Olusoga, the need for better representation within national institutions is crucial. Unless this occurs, the history of black enslavement and exploitation will continue to be reduced to mere “Friday factoids,” ignoring the deeply-rooted inequalities and traumas that persist to this day.

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