British Lawmakers Criticize Starmer’s “Colonial Mindset” In Slavery Reparations Discussion

British Labour lawmakers accused UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Sunday (October 27) of having a “colonial mindset” over his reluctance to discuss reparations for the transatlantic slave trade. They claimed that the Minister was trying to silence nations pushing for discussions on reparations for transatlantic slavery at the Commonwealth summit in Samoa. Despite many rejections of reparations calls in the past, some campaigners expected that Starmer’s new Labour government would be more open to it.

However, this did not come to pass. According to Reuters, during summit, some Caribbean and African nations sought to address the issue, but Starmer stated that it was not on the agenda and that he would like to “look forward” rather than have “very long, endless discussions about reparations on the past.”

“[It] is very insulting [to] tell people of African descent to forget and move forward,” stated Labour lawmaker Bell Ribeiro-Addy during a cross-party reparations conference in London.

Clive Lewis, another Labour lawmaker, said it was surprising that Prime Minister Starmer believed he could bring a “colonial mindset” to the summit and “dictate what could and could not be discussed.”

By the end of the Samoa Summit, Reuters reported that leaders of the 56-nation group, led by Britain’s King Charles, agreed to include in their final communiqué that the time had come for a discussion on reparations. Despite the late timing, this was a good first step to open the conversation about the issue. However, unless measures are taken, the talk may remain merely symbolic, lacking the substantive action needed to address historical injustices.

The United Kingdom, much like other former colonial powers, benefited significantly economically from slavery and colonial exploitation. The country played a leading role in the transatlantic slave trade in the past centuries, forcibly taking millions of Africans from their homelands and selling them into slavery in the Americas and the Caribbean.

All this resulted in enduring injustices and inequalities that still exist even after the abolishment of slavery. Today, the UK faces a series of calls to take measures to redress its colonial past, including paying descendants of enslaved people and offering a “full and formal” apology for the impact of colonialism on their cultures and heritage. On one side, proponents of reparations repeat the claim that slavery’s legacy has caused persistent racial inequalities. In contrast, on the other side, opponents argue that countries shouldn’t be held responsible for historical wrongs.

“Reparations isn’t about the past, it is about the here and now,” said Diane Abbott, Britain’s first Black woman lawmaker. UN experts have reported that racism in the United Kingdom today is structural, institutional, and systemic. In this context, choosing not to address the issue just underscores a lack of commitment to confronting the inequalities stemming from a long and painful colonial history.

It is about time for the UK to start opening the conversation about reparations and work on addressing its inequalities. Although the past cannot be changed, a moral obligation must exist to tackle the issues arising from the colonial era. Unless politicians start bringing this to the agenda of discussions, the problem will remain unsolved, and it will not go away.

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