The history Britain must confront is not confined to Bristol merchants and Liverpool shipowners. Britain transported more than 3mn enslaved Africans across the Atlantic. The Crown did not merely tolerate the business. It supplied ships, granted monopolies, and acquired financial interests in it.
In 1564, Elizabeth I lent John Hawkins the 700-tonne Jesus of Lübeck for his second slave-trading voyage. His expedition acquired captives through purchase and violence, then sold more than 400 Africans in the Spanish Caribbean. The following year, Hawkins received a coat of arms whose crest depicted a bound African. Enslavement had become a public emblem of advancement.
The Stuarts institutionalized royal participation. Charles II chartered the Company of Royal Adventurers in 1660; its successor, the Royal African Company, received its charter in 1672. His brother James, Duke of York, governed and invested in the enterprise. Captives were branded "DY,” for the duke, or with company initials. The Smithsonian describes the company as having shipped more enslaved Africans to the Americas than any other institution.
In 1689, Edward Colston transferred £1,000 of company stock to William III. Protesters pulled Colston’s statue into Bristol Harbor in 2020. The royal recipient deserves a place in the same reckoning. Under Queen Anne, the 1713 Utrecht settlement secured Britain the asiento, the contract to supply enslaved Africans to Spanish America. Anne assigned it to the South Sea Company. Proposed financial arrangements reserved her a personal share of its profits. George I and George II subsequently served as company governors.
Royal resistance to abolition followed. In 1799, the Duke of Clarence, the future William IV, defended West Indian planters, claiming he could "bear witness to their good conduct.” He was king when Parliament legislated to compensate the owners of enslaved people.
That payment is the clearest entry in the ledger.
The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, effective the following year, formally emancipated more than 800,000 people in most British colonies. Parliament allocated £20mn to their owners, approximately 40% of annual government expenditure. The formerly enslaved
received nothing. Many were compelled to continue working without pay under "apprenticeship.”
The scheme was financed partly through borrowing. The government refinanced that debt into later securities, one of which was redeemed in 2015. How much original borrowing survived into the consolidated debt is unknown. The familiar repayment claim therefore needs qualification. The beneficiaries do not: public money compensated owners for losing their claims over human beings.
Caribbean governments propose education, healthcare, development programs, voluntary repatriation, debt cancellation and monetary compensation. These are matters for negotiation, not demands that every British citizen confess inherited guilt. Burnham offers debt restructuring, with Gordon Brown helping lead the effort.
Such measures could bring benefits. But CARICOM’s chair drew the necessary distinction: "Debt relief, however welcome, cannot be offered as a substitute for reparatory justice.” Debt cancellation negotiated as repair differs from restructuring offered instead of responsibility.
In March, 123 countries supported a UN declaration calling the trafficking and racialised chattel enslavement of Africans "the gravest crime against humanity.” The United States, Israel and Argentina opposed it. Britain and all 27 EU members abstained.
Britain objected to the legal framing and ranking of atrocities. The declaration was not a damages judgment; abstention was not support for slavery. But objections to one resolution do not answer the demand for repair.
Kemi Badenoch says Britain should not pay for "a crime we helped eradicate”. Abolition deserves recognition. It does not cancel centuries of exploitation. Nor does personal innocence resolve institutional responsibility. Britain carried obligations to compensate owners across generations. Why should negotiations about their victims founder on the discovery that generations have passed?
Reform UK proposes denying new visas to nationals of countries demanding reparations. That would punish individuals for their governments’ pursuit of a historical claim. Britain’s institutions can make finer distinctions. In 2024, an employment tribunal found David Miller’s particular anti-Zionist beliefs protected and his dismissal from Bristol University unfair, wrongful and discriminatory.
It also called his conduct toward students "culpable and blameworthy” and ordered a 50% reduction in unfair-dismissal awards. The 2026 appeal upheld the central findings but remitted part of the compensation analysis. This was not blanket protection for every anti-Zionist statement.
Jewish students deserve protection from antisemitism and mistreatment. Lawful criticism of Israel must not automatically be treated as hostility toward Jewish people. Palestinian rights, however, do not depend on a professor winning an employment case. In July 2024, the International Court of Justice concluded that Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory was unlawful and must end as rapidly as possible.
It identified obligations to make reparation and duties on other states not to recognize or assist the unlawful situation. This was an advisory opinion, not a damages award against Britain. Elizabeth supplied the ship. Hawkins received the coat of arms. Generations later, Parliament found money to compensate the owners. Their victims’ descendants are still being told that repair is the wrong answer. The Crown took its cut. The bill is still open.
• The writer is a prominent news anchor, programme presenter and media instructor.