14 May 2023. Nigel Biggar for The Sunday Telegraph.

The UK did not play a unique role in the trade in human bondage, but it did in ending it.

The clamour for reparations is growing louder. Last month, Laura Trevelyan announced that she is doing penance fro the sins of her slave-owning ancestors by giving £100,000 to an economic development fund in Grenada. Having left the BBC, she began her campaign by challenging King Charles to apologise for William III’s investment in the slave-trading Royal African Company in the 1690s. Then Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Labour MP for Streatham, picked up the baton by demanding that Rishi Sunak “offer a full and meaningful apology for our country’s role in slavery … and commit to reparatory justice”. If the Labour Party forms the next government, we can expect this demand to intensify.