Could you introduce yourself and your work?

I’m an academic, I’ve been an academic for the whole of my life. I’m also a minister of the Church of England. I got to writing about reparations quite recently and I feel rather ashamed about that, that I’ve only come to this topic very late. I think the easiest way to explain why it’s compelling is to say there’s a historical claim and a moral claim and they go together to make up the case for reparations. The historical claim is that Britain was in the Caribbean for more than 300 years before and after abolition, making huge tons of money out of the exploitation of first enslaved workers and then after so-called emancipation, out of people who were kept in poverty in all sorts of ways through indentured labour and so on. Britain drew huge resources from the Caribbean.

In particular, I focus in my book, Britain’s Slavery Debt, on the fact that wrongly, compensation was paid to those who purported to own people, not to the people whose labour and lives had been expropriated. So the money went in the wrong direction. And I make an argument that when there are people who are continuing to benefit from a historical wrong, and alongside that there were people who were continuing to suffer as a result of that historical wrong, then an act of moral repair or reparations is owed. And that covers the case of Britain and the Caribbean. So I believe the case for reparations is morally compelling.

In Britain’s Slavery Debt: Reparations Now!, you analyse the profits reaped by Britain from the system of chattel slavery, during enslavement, after abolition and through to now, including the overall compensation package of £20 million distributed across enslavers from the legislation of the 1833 Abolition Act. How do we quantify or qualify present-day benefits? That £20 million package, for instance, how do we account for how this sum benefited the British economy in an accessible way?

If we look at the whole piece, there is no doubt that that £20 million, which of course is only a fraction of the money that flowed out of the Caribbean into Britain, could be tracked through families. As I like to say, money is sticky. You see that in Britain all the time. We can track the generations of people who purported to own slaves who got compensation. We can see they’re still wealthy now, so many of these families. The money is sticky. Poverty, unfortunately, is also sticky.
And so I think we could do more forensic analysis to look at particular pots of money. But the general case that money flowed out of the Caribbean to the benefit of Britain, and Britain continues to benefit from it, is an unarguable proposition.

What is our best entry point into a conversation about reparations in the UK with persons who maybe aren’t familiar with the histories of enslavement? How do we address that amnesia in education in the UK?

Amnesia is the right word. We’ve got to address this. I put my hands up at the beginning and said, ‘I’m new to this’. When I taught in London a few years ago, I didn’t talk about this. But I am now. I’ve come late to it and I feel bad about that. And Britain’s come very late to it too.

All we can do is go on talking about it and trying to raise consciousness. The conversation is different from what it was five years ago, but I think you’re right, there’s huge ignorance. And we need to cover the whole piece. We need to cover the history from the 1630s, when Britain arrives, all the way through to the terrible story of the Windrush generation. And we’ve got to tell the whole story of Britain’s shameful history, of which the Windrush is the most shameful. But I think it’s a huge job of education. People in Britain just do not know. They do not know the extent, do not know the numbers, they do not know the horrors.

I’ve often taken to saying to people, let’s watch our words here. We use the word plantation, and I know it’s an accepted term, and it’s got a long history to it. But in my view, it’s been used in Britain as a sort of euphemism to cover up the extent of the horrors. I’ve been saying to people, you do know that when people talk about a plantation, they mean a slave labour death camp. That’s what a plantation was. It was a slave labour death camp. It was a slave labour camp in which the death of the people working was envisaged by the owners, the purported owners of the slaves, who calculated that it would be cheaper to replace the slaves than it would be to maintain them alive. So then I hate the word plantation. Let’s start calling them slave labour death camps because that’s what they were and people in Britain don’t know that.

The recent Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting highlighted that Caribbean countries are eager to discuss reparations as outlined by the CARICOM Ten-Point Plan for Reparations, while the UK government remains reluctant to engage. Could you share with us your views on the CARICOM Ten-Point Plan, and what part it could/should have in conversations about reparatory justice in the UK?

I think the CARICOM Ten-Point Plan is an excellent document and the work that’s been done since is excellent. I mean, it’s very clear, it’s very serious, covers in its ten points the important issues. I think it’s a very good baseline for a proper discussion and a debate.
There was a claim made by the Prime Minister saying it’s not on the agenda. But that’s ridiculous. It was on the agenda. It’s on everyone else’s agenda. Everyone else was talking about it and by the end of the week it was in the communiqué.

But Britain now needs to be serious, behave like grown-ups and say, let’s get in the room with CARICOM and have this conversation. And of course, there will be disagreements and there’ll be claims made, but that’s how moral repair goes on. And moral repair can sound a bit fancy, but it’s actually simple. How do adults overcome disagreements and problems? It’s by talking. It’s by negotiating. I don’t know what will happen when, but I think the Caribbean is clear this is an urgent matter. Professor Sir Hilary Beckles is a very eminent speaker on this. I know there are others, but he’s spoken clearly and powerfully and is a powerful moral voice to which we should listen. 

In your book you use the example of a petition in Manchester in the 18th century with 10,000 signatories. Fast forward to today. As a concrete action, do you think a petition for Repertory Justice could be similarly effective in achieving that sort of critical mass support needed to get reparations as a priority issue on the agenda?  

I think in the British context, it’s really important that we try and provoke local discussions. A petition is fine, but we should also promote local discussions in local institutions to address the issue in our own context, in our own terms. 

I’m a member of a university, so I think the university would be doing that. People are members of churches, they might have business connections. I think each of us in our place in Britain needs to consider what are the connections that our institution has had and what can we do in our place here and now to provoke serious discussions and reflection on what actions might be constitutive of reparatory justice for our institution. And it might be money, it might be other ways of engagement, like building bridges and collaborations of different kinds for different institutions. And this isn’t in place of the national conversation, but it’s to say that it may be that those local conversations are what we need to raise consciousness and understanding for the national conversation eventually to get where it needs to be. 

You mentioned Manchester. What’s not well understood in Britain is that, as Eric Williams used to say, British historians gave the impression that Britain practiced slavery for the sole joy of abolishing it. Manchester, which was essentially the heart of the Industrial Revolution, was wholly dependent on Confederate cotton right the way through to 1865. And indeed, the British financial system was bankrolling the Confederate states from 1800 onwards. Enslaved people were typically bought on mortgages and the mortgages were provided by British banks. And when certain American banks went bankrupt, they were bailed out by London institutions.  

London was the centre of the financial world back in the 1820s and 30s. So that the whole funding of the Southern enslaved enterprise, which was much larger in numbers, of course, than in the Caribbean eventually, was financed out of London. So it’s not even the case that we washed our hands with it in 1830. We were still funding enslavement through to the 1860s. 

Part of the work we are doing is to harness education to understand the truth. Do you see education and more truth language in history storytelling being an important part of bringing reparations to the forefront of conversation and public attention in the UK? 

Well, I hope so. Some of us are trying to do our bit and trying to get the conversation in a different way. And I know that we’re only following in the footsteps of other people. But in Britain it’s very easy to get these conversations started and then for them to feel like, well, we’ve talked about that, but actually not to go as far as we need to go to reckon with the entanglements. I think there’s a huge and important work to be done demonstrating that the links, connections and the entanglements are across the whole piece.  

One other phrase I’ve been using recently when I’ve been talking to people to try and get the point across is – “the one thing abolition was not, was abolition.” Abolition was not abolition. Abolition in 1833 was abolition of an institution but a continuation of a practice. And of course, the abolition of the institution did nothing to address the mentality which the institution of slavery had produced, which was the racist framework which persisted and persists. I mean, there’s an awful lot of work still to be done. And it’s across a whole sweep of things, to confront a wilful amnesia.  

We’ve found that wilful amnesia often comes with a sense of pride in one’s British identity and an unwillingness to engage with feelings of guilt and shame, which is often a conversational sticking point. From your experience how can reparation advocates present the facts to those who think they have not benefited from chattel slavery, in a way that takes into consideration the emotional resistance to engage with shameful parts of British history?  

We know what we’re talking about, we’re talking about shame and guilt – a very basic human phenomenon and emotion. I think what you’re referring to is that to say sorry and to mean it requires a process of reflection and openness which people find difficult. Yes, there are things to be proud of in British history, and there things to be ashamed of. I’m not attacking Britain. But if we start reckoning with those things seriously, we can be more happy that we’ve got things to be proud of because we’re not telling a fairy story. But we need to stop telling a fairy story and recognize the things for which we do feel shame. 

Alongside that, I think it’s important for Britain to acknowledge that the entire society benefited. It is important to acknowledge we received funds that went to the government and created our educational system, created our museums, created the cultural capital, as well as the financial stability through institutions like banks and insurance companies, which are the backdrop on which people do business and have built the British economy over a long period. All of this flowed in part from enslavement.  

People can say, ‘it’s not my responsibility’ in different ways, as there are many people in Britain with different heritages who will rightly feel differently. But I do actually think that anyone who’s come to Britain and settled and is part of the enterprise, and calls this their home, from wherever they came, they are part of this story. And of course they will relate to it differently. But Britain is a nation which was built on enslavement. And even if you arrived in London in 2010, you’re still piggybacking off that to a certain extent.  

So I do think we share a collective responsibility for addressing the wrongs from which we continue to benefit. And that’s more in the way of restitution than it is guilt.