UK Taxpayers Have Spent £17 Billions Compensating White Slave Owners - With Nothing For The Slaves

Commonwealth Leaders at the 2026 Summit. Photo credit CHOGM

To hear Andy Burnham’s condescending response regarding any apology or reparation for the legacy of slavery is to see the colonial White mindset in action. His defence for not granting reparations to the Commonwealth countries whose people were enslaved is that the UK population today had nothing to do with slavery, so they shouldn’t be held accountable. Taken on its own merit, and out of context, that’s a fair point. But when you put it beside other aspects of this sorry tale of White supremacy and cruelty, the argument doesn’t stand up.

To understand where Commonwealth countries are coming from, a brief background to this debate is necessary.

Believe it or not, Britain finally abolished the trading of enslaved people across its empire with the Slave Trade Act of 2007 (though the initial ban on purchasing or transporting slaves via British ships occurred 200 years earlier under the Slave Trade Act of 1807!).

However, the enslavement of Black people itself was not formally ended until 1833 with the Slavery Abolition Act, which took effect on August 1, 1834, though it forced freed individuals into a long transitional period of unpaid "apprenticeship" (lasting until 1838 for field workers) before they achieved full freedom. 

Huge Settlement to Slave Owners

Of course, the government feared economic and political backlash from the wealthy planter class who viewed slaves as their “property” and wanted compensation for them. So when slavery was abolished, the British government did not compensate the hundreds of thousands of enslaved people who had suffered under the yoke of captivity. Instead, it used massive public funds to compensate slave owners for their "loss of property".

To this effect, the government borrowed £20 million - an astronomical sum at the time, equivalent to roughly 40% of the government's total annual budget (and about 5% of Britain's GDP). In fact, it equates to £17 billion of today’s money, which was distributed to over 40,000 slave-owning claimants. Not a single slave got any money to compensate for their incarceration and inhuman life. 

The government financed this massive payout by issuing perpetual bonds, and rolling over national debt structures across centuries. It meant that British taxpayers continued to service this huge financial obligation for generations. In fact, these slave-compensation loans were not finally cleared by the UK Treasury until 2015. 

King Charles at the Commonwealth Summit. Photo credit: Antigua News 

Reasons Commonwealth Countries Are Pushing for Reparations 

The Commonwealth nations - particularly Caribbean states - are united behind a Ten-Point Plan for Reparatory Justice that include formal apologies, debt relief, and financial reparations for several key reasons:

• Generational Economic Disadvantage: Nations that endured centuries of colonial extraction and slave labour argue that their modern economic struggles, healthcare gaps, and educational deficits are direct systemic consequences of historical exploitation. For example, slaves were not allowed to get married and this practice was embedded into slave societies for centuries, with lots of kids being born out of wedlock and fractured families where the fathers were missing.

• The Hypocrisy of Compensation: Momentum has surged as the public has grown more aware that British taxpayers spent centuries paying off the descendants and estates of slave owners, while the victims of slavery received nothing. That is a great  injustice that has embedded, and perpetuated, the deleterious effects of slavery through the generations, because that compensation has helped slave owners and their descendants to maintain their lifestyle and prosper even more, while depriving Black people of any means of improving their lives.

• Shifting Political Landscapes: Many former colonies are actively moving away from constitutional monarchies (such as Jamaica pursuing steps to remove the British monarch as head of state) and utilising international platforms - like Commonwealth summits and the United Nations - to demand accountability, formal state apologies, and reparative justice.

It is clear that Britain is still treating these countries in a colonial way, making sure that it imposes what it thinks is right on the descendants of those slaves, while protecting the descendants of the owners. The irony of the situation, which adds insult to injury, is that, with the UK being a multicultural society, Black taxpayers have actually been paying the White owners of their enslaved ancestors, for the privilege of enslaving them!

It is time Britain did the right thing and stop the platitudes, condescension, and colonial treatment of the ‘Black’ Commonwealth. For me, an apology is unnecessary because no one should be apologising for the past, especially when such an apology is not based on experience of the deed or time, and would not be sincere. 

But the hideous legacy of slavery has blighted many generations of people of African heritage, while the descendants of many of Britain’s aristocracy and landowners are still enjoying the fruits of slave labour today, through the fortunes made from the actual trade and the compensation that followed. 

That is not justice, and Britain should be ashamed of its tardiness in righting this wrong.