Hilary Beckles recalls when he was a child that “it was normal to see a 15-year-old white boy on a horse driving 100 black people to work on the plantation”. Such social and economic legacies of slavery are inescapable in Barbados, a former British colony. In the UK, however, they have been “brushed under the carpet”, says Sir Hilary, vice-chancellor of the University of the West Indies.
In response to the Black Lives Matter campaign, British business is fumbling to come to terms with its historic debt to millions of Africans who were systematically enslaved and abused for profit. A long-running push for reparations, whose Caribbean leaders include Sir Hilary, is gaining traction. To correspond even modestly with the profits generated by trading in slaves and their products, compensation running into many billions would be needed.
The case for reparations depends not only on historic injustice but also on the belief that exploitation of enslaved Africans contributed heavily to the British economy and continues to do so through tainted capital. This article examines the scale of that shameful legacy.