Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said he is open to a formal British apology for the country’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, but has firmly rejected financial reparations, according to BBC News.
Speaking ahead of next week’s Commonwealth summit in Antigua, Burnham described the slave trade as a “brutal and barbaric violation” and said Britain must “face up to the past”. He proposed a “structured dialogue” with Commonwealth nations and said he would listen to calls for an official apology on behalf of the British state.
“I do not think that British people today can be held liable for historical wrongs, however heinous, that happened in a different age,” he wrote in the Guardian.
The government has never formally apologised for slavery or paid reparations. Burnham’s position continues that policy: acknowledgement, perhaps; compensation, no.
His comments come as King Charles III tours the Caribbean before opening the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. In the Bahamas, the King referred to the “suffering of the past”, and in Guyana he visited the site of an enslaved people’s rebellion against British rule.
Campaigners welcomed the prime minister’s willingness to discuss an apology, but said it did not go far enough. Bell Ribeiro-Addy, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Afrikan Reparations, said a formal state apology would cost nothing and remained overdue.
“Acknowledgement is not the same as understanding,” she told BBC Radio 4. “Until we apologise, we are never going to be on equal footing.”
She argued that the debate should not be reduced to money. Reparative justice, she said, is about dignity, truth and equality within a Commonwealth that claims to be a “family of nations”.
Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, a leading voice for reparations, said she would engage in good faith while continuing to pursue justice. Denis O’Brien of The Repair Campaign was more critical, urging the government to “stop obfuscating” and issue a full apology now.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch strongly opposed any financial settlement. She said British taxpayers should not pay for events that happened “generations before any of us were born”, and accused Labour of planning “global welfare”.
Chancellor John Healey supported Burnham’s approach, saying an apology was “the right thing” to discuss before the summit, but stressed that it would not create financial liability.
Britain’s involvement in slavery was vast. From the 16th century, English authorities and the monarchy profited from the trade in enslaved Africans. Parliament abolished slavery in 1833, but plantation owners were compensated for losing their “property” while enslaved people received nothing. Britain only repaid the resulting debt in 2015.
As Commonwealth leaders gather, Burnham has opened a door to historical reckoning. Whether that leads to an apology, or merely another conversation, remains unresolved.
