Keir Starmer could face demands to hand over £18 trillion ($24tn) in slavery reparations this week, as he faces a furious Commonwealth showdown in Samoa.
The Prime Minister insists he’s focussed on current and future issues rather than the past, but senior leaders in the Caribbean and other countries appear intent on pushing the issue at this year’s CHOGM summit.
With the row now raging, a 2023 report into exactly how much the UK could be expected to pay out has resurfaced, backed by a senior UN judge.
The report, published last year by the University of West Indies and backed by judge Patrick Robinson at the International Court of Justice, puts the figure at the mind boggling figure.
The paper, nicknamed the Brattle Group Report, brought together economists, lawyers and historians, and was hailed by left-wingers at the time as one of the most comprehensive attempts to put a figure on the harms caused by slavery.
It didn’t just focus on Britain, but suggested that reparations from 31 former slaveholding countries should amount to a ludicrous £82tn ($107.8tn).
It also broke down where Britain’s contribution – the second highest demanded after the United States – should be sent.
According the authors, £7.3tn ($9.559tn) alone should be handed over to Jamaica, with Barbados coming in second at £3.7tn ($4.906tn), and the United States themselves at £2.8tn ($3.344tn).
The sum, which includes an interest rate of 2.5%, was comprised of a number of factors.
They included:
- The number of enslaved people who embarked on each destination journey or were born into slavery
- Loss of life and uncompensated labour
- Loss of liberty
- Personal injury
- Mental pain and anguish
- Gender based violence
The paper more generously suggested that the UK may only owe $17.141 trillion based on 2.3% interest rate, which in turn is an estimation of the 2.282% average growth rate in wages from the enslaved period to the present.
Following the report’s publication, then-PM Rishi Sunak dismissed calls for the UK government to apologise and pay reparations.
However Mr Robinson said he hoped the Government would take his Brattle Report seriously and called on him to change his mind.
He said: “For me, it goes beyond what the government and the political parties want.”
“Of course they should set the tone. But I would like to see the people of the United Kingdom involved in this exercise as a whole.”
Asked if the £18 trillion figure could be too high, he argued: “You need to bear in mind that these high figures, as high as they appear to be, reflect an underestimation of the reality of the damage caused by transatlantic chattel slavery. That’s a comment that cannot be ignored.”