A major meeting of the leaders of countries later this month is likely to see an awkward confrontation between the British Government, which will in part be represented by However, the monarch could face a difficult summit in Samoa, as 15 countries have banded together to call for £200 billion in reparations for historic injustices carried out by Britain.
15 countries in the are making the eye-watering £200bn demand for repayment, following years of campaigning on the impact of the transatlantic slave trade - which saw more than two million human beings taken from their homes to be clapped in irons and shipped to British colonies to work as slaves.
But this massive sum pales to insignificance when compared to other estimates of the money owed to the descendants of slaves. Speaking to the UN, Mia Mottley said: “The numbers have been looked at and studied by many persons and the figures suggest a minimum of $5 trillion dollars..."
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She continued: "4.9 to be precise, is what it would be if we were to be similarly compensated across the board today.” Barbados is one of the 15 governments making up the Caribbean Community, CARICOM, group calling on Britain to make reparations for the slave trade, which lasted for almost 250 years and made some British merchants, as well as the government, extremely wealthy.
The first of these slave colonies to be established was Barbados, which signed into law in 1661 that African people were property, reports Nadine White in the In the coming centuries before abolition, Britain and the crown would gain enormous sums of money by forcing slaves to work on plantations in the Caribbean, growing sugar and tobacco that would then be traded back in Britain.
Leading the charge almost 400 years after slaves were first taken across the Atlantic, the Barbados PM said she had pressed the matter with King Charles at a meeting earlier this month at , where Mottley reportedly discussed a much higher sum than £200bn.
This figure has been calculated by Reverend Dr Michael Banner, the Dean of Trinity College Cambridge, who estimated that Britain had benefitted by around £205bn from the slave trade, but other estimates are much higher. Last year, a judge at the International Court of Justice placed the figure for reparations at £18 trillion, owed to 14 countries.
However, King Charles and Sir are likely to give the demand short shrift at this year's Commonwealth Heads of Government summit, which is taking place October 21 to 26. When asked about whether the UK Government would compensate people for slavery, Starner said on Monday: "We do not pay reparations."
While Britain led the in banning slavery, as well as enforcing the end of the transatlantic slave trade, it should be noted that reparations have been paid previously. When the repugnant act was abolished in the 19th century, Britain made the decision to compensate the people who had owned slaves - paying £300 million in today's money, five per cent of the GDP, to former slavers.
