I feel I have a duty to comment on this issue, as an imperial historian, and as the author, fifty-six years ago (gosh!), of the first academic study of early British anti-imperialism. The question is this. Should Britain apologise and compensate ex-colonial countries for the damage she did to them in the past? The suggestion came up – again – at the recent Commonwealth leaders’ summit in Samoa (see https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c207m3m0xpjo). The current British government has apparently promised to ‘consider’ it.
Among those who disagree with this – ‘nothing to apologise for’ – is the dreadful Robert Jenrick (see https://bernardjporter.com/2024/10/12/jenrick/). Here’s his rationale, published in the Daily Mail (where else?): https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-14012923/ROBERT-JENRICK-Britains-former-colonies-debt-inheritance.html. – Jenrick of course is one of the two remaining contenders for the British Conservative party’s leadership; and is defending British imperialism here probably in an effort to bolster his Right-wing credentials among the elderly Conservative party members who currently comprise his electorate, many of whom will be old enough (as I am) to remember the Empire while it was still – just – a going concern. For Jenrick, as is clear from that Daily Mail article, this is a ‘Culture Wars’ issue, with ‘patriots’ on the one side facing ‘woke’ liberals – ‘Leftists peddling pseudo-Marxist gibberish to impressionable undergraduates’ – on the other.
Now, when it comes to this kind of question I usually lean towards the ‘woke’ side; but not all the way by any means, and not enough to make me entirely happy with all this ‘historical reparations’ cant. That may surprise anyone who has read my ‘imperial’ history books, and assumes that I must be one of the ‘anti-imperialists’ about whom I wrote my first one. Which I am. But that doesn’t affect my attitude towards the issue of compensating ex-colonies for crimes and atrocities that my forebears undoubtedly committed there a hundred or more years ago. ‘Apologies’, perhaps – they come cheap. And we should teach about the downside of empire (all empires) in schools, so that new generations won’t come out with the rosy view of British imperialism that Jenrick seems to have picked up. But money?
My main reason for objecting to colonial reparations, qua ‘reparations’, is that they assume a ‘guilt’ on one side of the colonial ledger which history doesn’t really bear out. The British empire was more complex than that. Not everything that happened under it – ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – can be attributed to it. Wider factors were involved, including impersonal ones, like the development of global capitalism. ‘Britain’ as an entity was not necessarily wholly responsible; the British people even less so. When they were, it was not always out of malevolence. The best of intentions can often have the worst of effects. (Look at the Iraq war.) And so on….
I started to elaborate on this in the first draft of this post; but it went on too long, because of the complexity of the issue. The post was turning into a book; and not only a book, but – as I came to realise – one that I’d written already. That was British Imperial: What the Empire Wasn’t (2016). You can find out there (it’s only 200 pages) why I can have no truck with this idea of ‘compensation’ for colonial crimes. Or that Britain should take credit for the ‘benefits’ that Jenrick claims the empire brought.
And that’s before we come on to the more general question of the present-day ‘compensation culture’: the belief that we can atone for past sins – even those we could be said to be still profiting from, like all those National Trust mansions built with slave money – by shovelling money at the descendants of their long-dead victims. Money should go to where it’s needed, whatever might be the putative and historical source of that need. History – which in this case is much misunderstood – should play no part in this. That’s my second reason for breaking ranks with my fellow wokeists on this question; while still holding on to my credentials, I hope, as an ‘anti-imperialist’.
Porter’s Pensées 
All agreed. I’m not objecting to foreign aid, of course; only to this motivation for it.
LikeLike
A brave post, Bernard, and a necessary one. If paying reparations is a good idea, it is surely one which can survive critical scrutiny. As you say, it’s complicated, so please excuse the length of this post.
The furore over reparations is another indication of the theme Pankaj Mishra has been pushing: the West has lost its moral authority. In the West, developing country criticisms tend to be seen as a threat, part of a zero-sum game with some new “axis of evil” led by Russia and China. From the Global South’s point of view, what is being challenged is an unjust international order. Starmer approached the Samoa conference determined to say nothing that might upset “red wall” voters, unwilling to engage in dialogue and without a counter-proposal of his own. I wonder how much of this mess is down to Morgan McSweeney.
Cambridge University must be smarting with embarrassment that they ever awarded Robert Jenrick a first-class degree. His wilfully selective reading of imperial history would not even earn him a pass grade. Colonialism did leave some lasting, negative legacies: look at land distribution in South Africa (and no, that didn’t only begin in 1913). Badenoch’s summary dismissal of reparations is wrapped in her familiar “culture wars” schtick. If this means that she believes development assistance is automatically a waste of money then she has failed to understand one of her supposed influences, Daron Acemoglu, correctly.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. Marxist, I know, and expressed in dated language to boot. Nevertheless, a sound principle, which oddly enough can be supported by John Stuart Mill’s marginal utility theory. It may be hard to believe that classical liberalism gave rise to a theory justifying redistributive taxation, but there you are. I’m of the generation that welcomed and supported the Brandt Report, which recommended that the wealthy global North should transfer just 0.7% of its income to the poor global South. It was a tentative but important step towards global social justice.
Some hope, you might say. Many countries never reached this target; Britain did under Cameron but slipped back after Brexit. DFID has been merged with the FCO; the bill for housing asylum seekers has been charged to the overseas aid budget; Jenrick wants to gut overseas aid even further to boost defence spending, and development spending is a bête noire for Reform UK. Rachel Reeves has done nothing to reverse the negative trend and incredibly has been meaner than the Tories. World financial institutions remain tightly controlled by the global North. Yet, strange to relate after Britain’s tough budget, I believe the present moment is propitious for revisiting the principles of Brandt.
The climate reparations or “loss and damage” fund devised by the COP process is evidence of this. The idea is that heavy emissions countries will help low emissions countries to cope with climate change and transition to clean energy. Broadly, that means the rich countries funding climate transition in the poor countries. Asia will probably benefit a bit more than it would on strict anti-poverty criteria, and the details have yet to be finalised. But it’s a hopeful start.
Whether development assistance is described as global solidarity or reparations, it’s not enough to tackle worldwide poverty. Global financial and governance institutions need to be opened up to the global South. The financial “masters of the universe” decide which countries to reward with investment. African countries are told they lack investors because of bad governance, whereas China, accused of genocide, with corruption rife, and without “inclusive institutions”, has been transformed by global capital. Transfer pricing lets multinationals minimise tax paid to poor countries by taking profits in tax havens. While capitalism provides jobs, it often holds wages down by denying unions recognition. (Note to Kemi Badenoch: Daron Acemoglu thinks there is a role for unions in reducing global inequality.) In brief, global capitalism needs to be deeply reformed if not superseded. For that very reason, aid does have a role to play. There’s little profit to be made bringing clean water to remote villages.
Of course, talk of aid or development assistance carries the unintended stigma of a handout. That’s wrongheaded: it’s about solidarity and global social justice, but I can see why recipient nations prefer the language of reparations, of payment of what’s due. It also appeals to black or youthful activists in the UK. The downside is that, unlike “solidarity”, others may feel they’re being held guilty of the “sins of the fathers”.
The ten point CARICOM reparations plan consists mostly of unexceptionable requests for assistance with developmental goals, some already familiar outside the context of reparations. Debt cancellation has been a staple demand of the development lobby for years, sometimes to good effect: well done, Gordon Brown. The CARICOM plan is said to come ‘without a bill’, but that’s not quite right. Reparations are not only about symbolic actions. The final point includes unspecified “monetary compensation”, and all the measures will need to be funded somehow. It would be more accurate to say the plan is uncosted. Most of these proposals are eminently reasonable and some action should be taken by the UK. Point one seems simple enough: a formal apology by the British state.
There’s no denying the deep emotional power of the demand for an apology for the transatlantic slave trade. If Tony Blair can express “sorrow and regret” why can’t Keir Starmer issue a full, formal apology? It seems like a simple step but it appears the government thinks it would be an admission of liability. Previous formal apologies e.g. Bloody Sunday, have been made at the point when compensation became inescapable. But hang on, surely the Netherlands made a formal apology? Indeed, Mark Rutte made a moving speech backed by a capped and not over-generous 200 million € compensation fund. Since then, four as yet unresolved cases for reparations have been brought against the Dutch government. In the UK, solicitors Leigh Day want to talk to potential litigants. Watch this space. Apologies do not always come cheap.
If not cheap, then how expensive? Even if we confine ourselves to British compensation for slavery and the transatlantic trade, a wide range of figures exist. Michael Banner has recently suggested £105 billion to £250 billion. In 2005, Robert Beckford estimated a total £7.5 trillion. Last year the Brattle Group issued a report giving a range for UK reparations from $17 trillion to $24 trillion for enslavement and $2 trillion for post-enslavement (according to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Afrikan Reparations, about £15-£20 trillion). Note: this figure is purely for the Americas – it includes nothing, nada, zilch for Africa, but does suggest Britain pay $2.4-3.3 trillion to the USA! We shouldn’t be surprised by such large amounts. If enormous suffering is inflicted on an enormous number of people and the bill matures over an enormous period, the figure is bound to be enormous cubed. There is clearly a lot of scope for disagreement over methodologies and assumptions. The figures in trillions look unaffordable even if conceded as due.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Perhaps it’s all just a bluff before the real bargaining begins. There may be something in that. “If any European nation was to truly pay the debt of slavery, it would bankrupt their nation out of existence,” reparations campaigner Barbara Blake-Hannah has commented. Another activist, Denis O’Brien, has suggested (apparently off his own bat) a sum of $2 billion for Jamaica over 25 years, to be paid by Britain and the EU. It isn’t clear whether he meant $2 billion in total or per year. Either way, it bears little comparison to the $6.8-9.6 trillion suggested in the Brattle Report. To put his suggestion in context, according to the FCDO, the UK currently spends some £49 million per year in the Caribbean, home to some 44 million people, and some £19 million per year in the whole of South Africa, population 64 million. The only CARICOM country with a lower per capita income than South Africa is Haiti.
It’s not clear how acceptable O’Brien’s cut-price offer would be to reparations activists. Theologian Robert Beckford, in contrast to the tone of his original documentary, has questioned the maths of such voluntary reparations as paid by the Church of England. Why should the payer of reparations get to choose the figure? Aren’t reparations about paying the true cost of the damage done? Beckford insists negotiators should not let down their ancestors. Moreover, the figures calculated by Beckford and the Brattle Report are not just thought experiments. The National Commission on Reparations, a body established by the Jamaican government, endorsed a figure of £2.3 trillion derived from Beckford’s work, before the Brattle Report came out. Mia Mottley, premier of Barbados, has publicly claimed $4.9 trillion in reparations from the UK, based directly on the Report. Clive Lewis, of the APPG for Afrikan Reparations raised the Brattle-based figure of £18.8 trillion in the Commons, suggesting that it could be paid for by taxing wealth. Jamaican jurist Patrick Robinson, an eminent former judge of the International Court of Justice, has made clear in his comments on the Brattle Report that it provides a serious quantification of damages suitable for bringing a case under international law, though so far CARICOM has not instructed lawyers.
Some British reparations advocates argue that the (putatively) rich descendants of slave owners and traders should pay the cost of reparations. This seems to imply individual lawsuits rather than the state level reparations raised in Samoa. If the implication is that the rich should be taxed more heavily, fine, but not all of them will be connected to slavery. Whether that’s enough to fund state level reparations depends very much on the amount being claimed (and on the other pressures to spend within the UK). Given the recent Treasury caution about taxing the wealthy, some of the cost would surely fall on the ordinary taxpayer. After all, we haven’t even begun to address other claims for colonial compensation – the Indian “wealth drain”, dispossession in Africa, etc. [As an aside, the objection that black British taxpayers ought not to have to pay for slavery reparations made by that kind-hearted chap Daniel Hannan loses force if the beneficiaries of reparations include the “Afrikan” diaspora, as some activists advocate.] But even if the rich were taxed for the benefit of the global South, the reparative approach would not allocate the money where it is most needed.
The key difference between development assistance and reparations is that they operate on radically different principles of finance and distribution. Development assistance takes from the currently rich to give to the currently poor based on current needs. Reparations are taken from the historically guilty to give to the historically victimised based on historic damages. This implies dramatically different consequences. On the finance side, under a ‘colonialism and slavery reparations’ approach Portugal would be confronted with an enormous bill for damages to Brazil, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Mozambique and Timor L’Este. Wealthy tax havens like Switzerland, Luxembourg and Ireland would get off lightly (at state level; I’m aware some individuals might be sued). The extremely well-off USA would pay compensation largely to individuals within its own borders. Wealthy tax haven Bermuda would actually be a recipient nation! The distribution side is equally irrational. Take a country like Lesotho for instance, a supporter of reparations for colonialism. On what will it base its reparations claim? The Gun War? Colonial taxation? Underpaid migrant labour? All have some potential, but I severely doubt that any claim, even one calculated by the Brattle Group, could come anywhere close to matching Barbados’s claims for slavery, and the legal case will probably be much weaker to boot. All this even though Lesotho is more than 25 times poorer per capita than Barbados and has a population about eight times larger.
At this point reparations activists may raise that over-used cry, “whataboutery”: perhaps bringing Lesotho into the picture is just a diversion from Caribbean reparations, a way of deflecting the conversation. Not so. For one thing, the African Union is now committed to cooperating with CARICOM over reparations. That implies a joint AU-CARICOM negotiating position. Some common basis for allocating money will have to be found, and it ought to be current needs based on poverty rather than historic injustice. “Socialism,” said Nye Bevan, “is the language of priorities”. So is international development.
I hope I’ve shown that reparations proposals can be critiqued in good faith from a developmental perspective. It’s not only the UK that needs to rethink its priorities. It’s not just about getting a handful of wealthy countries to pay up and ignoring the rest. It shouldn’t be about placing historic suffering above current suffering. Results matter more than rhetoric. Marx and Mill had it right. If the reparations movement is to be just, then its finance must be based on global ability to pay and its distribution based on anti-poverty criteria, rather than basing them on historic guilt and historic suffering.
LikeLike