A short time back, I participated in an interview for an upcoming book on historical redress from a Black British entertainer and his writing partner. I began with cautious optimism. It is a serious subject, and I questioned if its nuances might be lost or made light of.
I had the chance to review the book recently. In this significant work, the authors tackle a complex, controversial and deeply contested subject and do something both rare and necessary: they deconstruct it into its constituent parts and explain – debunking and demystifying along the way why so many of the common arguments to reparations are rationally unsound, lacking historical context or dodging the political core.
They manage this without sacrificing rigour or warmth, combining meticulous examination with comedy, even including a culinary guide and a short play. This shows that moral seriousness and artistic openness are not mutually exclusive.
The slave trade was not an unfortunate moral aberration. It was an economic system that fueled the nation's development … but left lasting disparities in its wake.
As we near the end of the year, the book has been published amidst a period when the subject of reparations, long considered a fringe or rhetorical issue in Europe, has ignited globally. It is hard to argue that this has been a defining year for the worldwide campaign for redress – not because any consensus has been reached, but because the issue as a whole has been galvanised.
In one camp, Caribbean states, African nations and diaspora movements are strengthening their demands. Conversely, The UK continues to dismiss the matter casually. The divide between the opposing stances is now the key issue.
Dialogue or Dismissal?
In November, a group came to Britain. They engaged with advocacy organisations, academics, religious institutions, activists and some parliamentarians. The response from the UK government was distinctly underwhelming. There were an absence of government leaders, no promise of dialogue and no signal that reparations would be treated as a active governmental matter.
It would be tempting to interpret this as a deliberate insult – and many in the Caribbean do. But it is vital to see what the visit achieved: conversations began; reparations were examined not as an abstract moral plea but as a concrete political claim based in law, economics and history. Even restricted meetings helped strengthen the movement. Silence, after all, is not the same as stasis.
Political Rhetoric
When asked previously about reparations, the Prime Minister made it clear that his government would not be drawn into what he described as “long, endless discussions about reparations on the past”. This wording is significant. It frames reparations as self-flagellating and historical rather than as a case arising from the very foundations of the nation as it exists today.
This is precisely the framing that the work examines. The authors argue reparations are not about shame or transferred responsibility, but about accountability for past actions and contemporary advantage. The common excuse that “no one alive today owned slaves” is beside the point when states, companies, banks and aristocratic lands persist as legal and economic entities that directly benefited from colonial exploitation.
Reparations are a multi-generational project aimed at correcting structures as much as offering payments to descendants.
The notion that reparations would be impossibly complicated fails in light of past examples – from post-World War II compensation to various independence settlement agreements. Meanwhile, the fear that reparations would be harmful to cohesion is revealed as a projection rooted more in fear of backlash than factual data.
A Decade of Action
The continental organisation declared 2025 to be the annual theme of restitution, putting the issue at the forefront of its priorities for the first time. Leaders, civil society organisations and diaspora movements came together to declare that this was not a mere gesture, but a matter of equity, honor and growth.
Officials quickly recognised that one year was not enough. Subsequently, the AU formally endorsed the next ten years as the Ten-Year Plan for Restorative Justice. This decade-long pledge builds on years of scholarly and activist work.
Over the next decade, the AU has vowed to building international backing, partnering with civil society and the diaspora, promoting education and research and formulating strategies around the lasting impacts of slavery, colonialism and exploitation.
An Asymmetry of Action
In this climate, Britain’s insistence on “moving forward” begins to look anachronistic. While Africa and the Caribbean are embedding justice into frameworks as a development and justice agenda, the former colonial metropoles remain trapped in a cycle of evasion. The result is an imbalance: one side is creating systems while the other is offering silence.
This gap is reinforced by the hollowing out of international forums. Once imagined as a space for historical conversation, they now struggle to even define post-colonial relations. That the issue of reparations has not secured a place from the core discussions speaks volumes about the body's constraints when confronted with issues that question established narratives of dominance.
Border controls further reveals these hypocrisies. In recent years, ever-stricter measures to migration, falling hardest on African, Caribbean and Latin American countries, have been implemented.
That the call for redress has not secured a place the agenda speaks volumes about the restrictions of international bodies when confronted with legacies of power.
The ascendancy of certain political movements has helped push immigration policy towards limitation and prevention, creating domestic tensions while undermining the moral language of alliance and joint legacy.
Many countries continue to face tight travel restrictions despite shared histories. This feels like a stark paradox: the progeny of enslaved and colonised peoples encounter fortress borders from the very state that once claimed unrestricted access to their countries, people and wealth. Set against the disgraceful unresolved legacy of past injustices, these restrictions deepen the sense that the post-imperial relationship is increasingly based on convenience.
The Path Ahead
This does not imply that reparations are certain to happen, or that agreement is imminent. The apprehensions – about fiscal precedent, public opposition and liability issues – are real and will shape how the issue develops. But what the past year has demonstrated is that reparations are far from being a peripheral or intermittent call. They are being systematised, globalised and normalised as part of a broader reckoning with slavery, colonialism and global inequality.
The commission's visit, the African Union’s Decade, and the growing alignment between multiple stakeholders all point in the same direction. Compensation and repair, as the authors make clear, are {not about dwelling in
