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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/09/03/the-historical-facts-the-slave-reparation-lobby/

On the face of it, why would we not welcome the report’s demands for “accurate, unbiased accounts”, “thorough research” and clear acknowledgement of “the wrongs of those who supported or benefited from historical atrocities”? Perhaps I am unduly cynical, but I suspect that what is really intended is the very opposite of what these honeyed words announce. But let us assume the authors of the report are sincere. In that case, what would the outcome of their demands be?

First, public recognition, perhaps through the United Nations, that slavery has been a constant feature of human societies over the millennia, and that it still exists on a large scale in many parts of the world, including Africa.

Second, a collective expression of contrition by the successors of all those states involved in 18th- and 19th-century slavery, including nearly all of Africa, all the Middle East, the whole of the Americas (except Canada and parts of the Caribbean), nearly all of Europe, China and India (most 18th-century slaves were in Asia). In short, everybody would be apologising to everybody – a heart-warming festival of sentimental humbug.

Third, a universal vote of thanks to the anti-slavery pioneers, of which Britain was a leading member, for their epoch-making realisation that enslavement was not merely a necessary element of international business, but a moral outrage – a new and strange idea. There would be public commemoration (with statues and monuments in West Africa, East Africa, Egypt, Brazil, the Caribbean and the United States) of the British sailors, politicians, missionaries, diplomats and colonial officials who struggled for decades, at the risk of their health and often their lives, to put an end to enslavement.

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