Why The UK Government Should Invest Into Black British Communities and Businesses Oppose To Offering Reparations
Illustration by Eleanor Shakespeare
Britain’s hands are soaking in the blood of Black slaves.
As much as past Prime Ministers and cabinet politicians have apologised for the U.K.'s role in slavery, to wash its hands of this blood, it will never be enough. The blood of Black slaves dripping from the U.K.'s fingers is as thick and permanent as ink. No apology can simply cleanse Britain’s hands.
The recent death of George Floyd in America has also shaken the British establishment, unearthing the role Britain has played in the facilitation and expansion of the black slave trade. The British establishment loves to proclaim how it abolished the slave trade in 1807. However, what they like to conveniently remain silent about is how many of Britain's most prominent establishments were built on the backs of black slave ownership.
According to the University College London’s project into the legacy of black slave ownership, around 20% of Britain’s wealthy families have had a role in the slave trade. Shockingly, the British government was still subsiding some of these families with repayments due to the loss of earnings they would have endured when the Black slave was abolished. The government only finished their repayments in 2015.
Nearly all the biggest banks in the U.K. had eaten a piece of the black slave trade pie. Many of the banks the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) acquired to become as huge as it is today had given considerable loans to plantation owners. Its past predecessors had owned slaves. Barclays (a bank I've been with all my life) has had directors in its past who acquired slaves and later received slave compensation. Both Lloyds and HSBC also have a legacy that is tied closely to the slave trade.
As you can see, the British cannot try to pretend its only role in the slave trade was abolishing it. They also helped expand it. Now the bill is due for their sins. As Jay Z once rapped in ‘Izzo’“We can talk, but money talks, so talk mo’ bulks.”
So enough with the apologies. It’s time Britain paid for using many unpaid black bodies to build its empire. This brings us to the topic of reparations.
Could reparations work in practice?
Reparations is not a new concept. Those who support reparations believe that descendants of slaves should be given compensation in the form of monetary payments. Essentially, countries like the U.K. and U.S. would be paying the wages these slaves would have received to their descendants. Think of it as a sort of 'payment in lieu' but on a grand scale.
On paper and in principle, I am in favour of reparations. However, the more I think about it from a logical and logistical perspective, I don’t quite see how it would work.
Those black slaves who are owed payments for the free labour they carried out for their white masters are now dead. This complicates things because now it is difficult to determine which black person, in the present day, should receive reparations. Not every Black man person is a descendant of slaves because the entire population of Africa was not forced into Africa. From the research I've carried out into my own heritage, I am sure none of my ancestors was enslaved. Therefore, I wouldn't qualify. It would be a complicated and time-consuming process trying to determine if every black person who applies for reparations is linked to a Black slave.
Another problem is calculating how much should be paid and for how long. Let us say, for argument's sake, that I am in fact a descendant from a slave, how much sum would I receive and based on what? What my slave ancestor earned in the 1800s would not be the same for the same type of work today. Would we need to take inflation into consideration? These are critical economic questions, and it would take years to draft legislation that would adequately address them.
Investment into Black lives in Britain
Unfortunately, it is too late for reparations to be a viable option, in my opinion. As amazing as reparations sound, it should have been paid to slaves as soon as slavery was officially abolished. Of course, it was not because even though black people were made free, they were not about to be given equal treatment to white people. That was never on the table and, 200 years later, it is still not on the table.
Instead of reparations, I want both the U.K. and U.S. governments to contribute a yearly sum of money into black communities. U.K. Organisations committed to improving the lives of Black boys and girls should be funded by the British government. Companies should be given grants so they can employ black staff. Businesses should be incentivised to have more Black men and Black women in director-level positions. For example, these businesses are given bonus payments from the government as a reward for achieving a set target of having black directors.
If the U.K. is sincerely apologetic for its terrible history of exploiting black slaves, then it will consider some of these suggestions. As they say, talk is cheap, and apologies are empty. It is only actions that matter. If Britain really wants to redeem itself of its sin, it needs to pay the price to its black communities. With black men twice as likely to die from COVID-19 than white people in the U.K., the U.K. is not paying up.
Better start opening that purse, Boris.