REPARATIONS – AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME?

KEHINDE: Transatlantic slavery was pivotal in the efforts to build what we now think of as the West. It was hundreds of years of slaughter, enslaving millions of Africans – turning us into commodities – in order to create unparalleled wealth for the West. So profitable was this system that in order to end slavery, the state provided the biggest ever bailout to private industry: 40 per cent of government revenue in 1834 was handed over to compensate slave-owners for their losses. So enormous was the sum that the loan from the Bank of the England was only paid off in 2015.

If I and generations of families who descended from the enslaved have been paying to compensate slave-owners, then it is simply absurd to argue that this is an issue of the past. The wealth accrued from slavery is very much still with us and so is