Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany

Con­cur­rent with the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM) that was held in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da from No­vem­ber 1st to 4th, there were some calls for Com­mon­wealth Caribbean states to with­draw from the Com­mon­wealth. The main rea­son is the lack of res­o­lu­tion over repa­ra­tions for the slave trade and slav­ery that end­ed in 1807 and 1834 re­spec­tive­ly.

If with­draw­al is ef­fect­ed, the is­sue of ne­go­ti­a­tions for repa­ra­tions will be over. Lever­age will be lost on the is­sue. All Prime Min­is­ters in the Unit­ed King­dom have done noth­ing on the sub­ject. There was hope that Keir Starmer and his For­eign Sec­re­tary, David Lam­my, would have come through on repa­ra­tions.

Af­ter all, on May 2nd, 2018, David Lam­my, then a Labour back­bencher in op­po­si­tion, put out on Twit­ter the fol­low­ing:

“I raised a point of or­der. In 1833, Par­lia­ment passed the Slav­ery Abo­li­tion Act. £17bn of com­pen­sa­tion to slave own­ers for the loss of their prop­er­ty - my an­ces­tors. The slaves re­ceived no repa­ra­tions. Some peo­ple sim­ply do not know their his­to­ry or do not want to know hard truths.”

Af­ter sweep­ing in­to pow­er in Ju­ly 2024 and Lam­my be­ing ap­point­ed For­eign Sec­re­tary, noth­ing hap­pened. Why? Ac­cord­ing to a BBC re­port by James Lan­dale and Ma­ia Davies on Oc­to­ber 24th, 2024, ahead of the CHOGM in Samoa:

“Calls for the UK to pro­vide repa­ra­tions for its his­tor­i­cal role in the slave trade have reignit­ed ahead of a meet­ing of Com­mon­wealth coun­tries on Fri­day. While Sir Keir Starmer said repara­to­ry jus­tice would not be on the agen­da, Com­mon­wealth lead­ers have de­fied the prime min­is­ter and plan to move to­wards a ‘mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion’ on the is­sue. The UK has long faced calls to pro­vide repa­ra­tions for its role in the At­lantic slave trade, which saw mil­lions of Africans en­slaved and forced to work, large­ly on plan­ta­tions in the Caribbean and Amer­i­c­as.”

Why did Starmer and Lam­my not want the sub­ject placed on the agen­da? It was forced on­to the agen­da against their wish­es.

Noth­ing much changed. Starmer and Lam­my are gone now. This time, the is­sue was cued up by the new Prime Min­is­ter Andy Burn­ham in the UK Guardian days be­fore the CHOGM (Oc­to­ber 30th) that sug­gest­ed that he was open to di­a­logue around an apol­o­gy. How­ev­er, he ruled out “fi­nan­cial repa­ra­tions” be­cause he did not feel that “British peo­ple to­day can be held li­able for his­tor­i­cal wrongs”.

There are eight Com­mon­wealth Caribbean coun­tries that are Realms of His Majesty King Charles III of the fif­teen Realms of His Majesty in a Com­mon­wealth of fifty-six. The Realms are coun­tries that share their com­mon Head of State in the per­son of King Charles III. Those Realms are An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Aus­tralia, The Ba­hamas, Be­lize, Cana­da, Grena­da, Ja­maica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lu­cia, Saint Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Solomon Is­lands, Tu­valu, and the Unit­ed King­dom.

Up­on ar­rival in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da for the CHOGM, he came as their Head of State and par­tic­i­pat­ed in their in­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions as their King on No­vem­ber 1st. He had two ca­pac­i­ties while there – one as King of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da and the oth­er as Head of the Com­mon­wealth. For the in­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions, he was their Head of State, while for the CHOGM, he was the Head of the Com­mon­wealth.

His An­tiguan Min­is­ters could ad­vise him to apol­o­gise for slav­ery and the slave trade as King of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, but that would not place the li­a­bil­i­ty for the dis­cus­sion at the feet of the British monar­chy and its British Min­is­ters who ad­vise the British Crown. The An­tiguan Crown would not be the an­swer be­cause it would place the li­a­bil­i­ty on the Crown of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da as op­posed to the Crown of the Unit­ed King­dom.

Burn­ham may join the list of British Prime Min­is­ters who have done noth­ing on the is­sue of repa­ra­tions for slav­ery and the slave trade. UK Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, Ke­mi Bade­noch, has tak­en a dif­fer­ent ap­proach to Burn­ham. She said in a post on X on No­vem­ber 1st, 2026:

“When will the de­mands stop? Every­one knows the transat­lantic slave trade was wrong. Britain played a huge role in stop­ping it. So when it comes to the ques­tion of repa­ra­tions, my an­swer is no. It’s time for the Com­mon­wealth to start look­ing for­wards, not back­wards.”

The ap­proach of Bade­noch will not of­fer Caribbean lead­ers any­thing should she be­come Prime Min­is­ter. Nei­ther will Nigel Farage and Re­form en­gage the sub­ject.

The po­lit­i­cal fu­ture of the Caribbean repa­ra­tions move­ment now rests ex­clu­sive­ly in the hands of the British Labour Par­ty. What is Cari­com’s strat­e­gy should the Labour Par­ty be un­suc­cess­ful at the next UK gen­er­al elec­tion?

Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI. He was se­lect­ed by the THA to guide the dis­cus­sions on To­ba­go au­ton­o­my.