OVER the past two centuries, there have been repeated calls for reparations for the transatlantic slave trade and plantation chattel slavery in the Caribbean and the United States. Decade by decade, these have fallen on deaf ears.

So, will Britain, alongside other former colonial powers, continue to ignore its culpability in one of the greatest atrocities in history, or will the call for reparations “resonate with increasing intensity” (Beckles) and finally lead to action?

Britain’s Slavery Debt: Reparations now! is a clear sign of such intensification. For Michael Banner, not only is the case for reparations compelling: it is also “relatively simple”. This is a bold statement, but one fully supported by the way in which Banner advances the historical and moral claims at the heart of this book. The complexity and challenge come with the practicalities of reparations and how they might be realised, to which he devotes the last third of the book.

The argument begins with a “brief (and painful) history” of the relationship between Britain and the Caribbean. Here, the reader is provided with a clear-eyed account of the brutality of enslavement, in which plantations are best understood as “slave labour prison camps”, and where slave revolt is treated with “almost limitless barbarity and viciousness”. In addition, Banner emphasises the continuity of servitude and exploitation which followed Emancipation in 1836, as well as the dismal story of Britain’s poor record as a colonial power, which has led to the chronic under-development of the Caribbean.

The argument then proceeds with a short chapter outlining the key elements required for the work of “moral repair” (acknowledgement, listening, apologising and expressing sorrow, and seeking to make amends). Here, Banner also attends to how the work is undertaken, arguing that it requires “a certain finesse”, “the right mode of making amends”, and understanding the limits of what be said from “this side of the Atlantic”.

Having laid the groundwork, he devotes one third of the book to the arguments mounted against reparations. Seven of those commonly articulated are judged “Not Very Good”. These include: it’s been a long time, and so we all need to move on; everyone thought slavery was morally acceptable back then; slavery was legal at the time; as a nation, we should be celebrating our part in abolition; and then, finally, the “whataboutery” arguments: what about the fact that Africans sold each other, what about the slaving activities of the Vikings and Barbary pirates, and what about the others — the British weren’t the worse. All these are efficiently dispatched.

Banner then lays out the most substantial three objections: that reparations are “somehow objectionable in principle”, given wrongs “of the greatest gravity”; that reparations punish contemporary persons for the sins of the past; and that they are backward-looking and “serve to enscribe the very racial divide which is slavery’s most obvious legacy” by promoting a “sense of victimization that is culturally and politically debilitating”.

Working through the issues raised by these three objections takes Banner into the heart of the real challenges: Who should pay what to whom? Here, Banner engages with contemporary debates and adds his own distinctive arguments.

Banner is keen to illustrate how a figure might be identified and show how it can be achieved. His starting point in calculating Britain’s contemporary debt is the “compensation” paid by the British government to slaveholders in 1836. A truly enormous sum, £20 million, it was based on contemporary calculations of the economic value of labour involved at emancipation. From this, Banner proposes £105 to £250 billion. Given that British taxpayers (including those of Caribbean descent) finished paying the 1836 “debt” only in 2015, exactly who pays is just as complex as how much. Here, Banner argues that the most equitable solution is for money to be raised through a one-off wealth tax.

These calculations assume that reparations is the business of states, but, of course, institutions such as the Church Commissioners, USPG in relation to the Codrington Estate in Barbados, and Trinity College, Cambridge, are also engaged in reparatory-justice projects. Banner argues that such institutions have an important, potentially critical, part to play in advancing the broader case for reparations — given that no former colonial power has yet committed itself to reparations for the Caribbean.

Britain’s Slavery Debt is aimed at a broad audience, many of whom will be largely unfamiliar with the subject. It is written by an individual, racialised as white, from the heart of the British Establishment, who has been on a journey of understanding (as so many of us have) the ways in which he and the institution of which he is a part are implicated in this shameful history.

Distinguished by a combination of sound historic assessment and clear-eyed moral judgement, this short, well-written, and accessible book provides an unanswerable case for reparations. If it reaches a wide audience, it has the potential to help bring into the mainstream the cause for long-awaited justice for the persons of the Caribbean.

The Revd Dr Duncan Dormor is the General Secretary of the USPG. In September 2024, USPG launched a ten- to 15-year project of reparatory justice in Barbados: Renewal and Reconciliation: The Codrington Reparations Project.

Britain’s Slavery Debt: Reparations now!
Michael Banner
OUP £14.99
(978-0-19-888944-1)
Church Times Bookshop £13.49