The UK owes Caribbean nations £205billion in slavery reparations, a leading Cambridge academic has said.
This country was once ‘the leading slaving nation in the world’ and present day descendants of slaves deserve compensation, the Dean of Trinity College Cambridge Dr Michael Banner claimed.
In a new book, titled Britain’s Slavery Debt, the theologian said he calculated that Britain owes £205billion, The Telegraph reported.
He based the figure on the compensation claims made by slave owners when the trade was first abolished in 1833.
Despite the UK government rejecting the case for reparations, Dr Banner has urged the Scottish Government to ‘show leadership’ on the issue and start paying back its share of £20.5billion.
It comes after Tory MPs rebuffered calls from Caribbean nations for Britain to pay reparations over treatment of ‘indentured workers’.
Speaking to the Herald on Sunday, Mr Banner claimed that Scotland should seize the initiative due to presenting itself as more liberal than the remainder of the UK.
‘It’s well-known Scots played an outsized part in growing and sustaining the British empire, and Glasgow was in particular closely tied up with Caribbean trade,’ he said.
‘Scotland now has an opportunity to show leadership once again on the side of right, by recognising the compelling case for making reparations to the nations and people of the Caribbean.’
He added: ‘The British Government has consistently failed to face up to this responsibility. Scotland can show the way.’
The theologian based the amount he believes the UK should pay back on more than £40million of compensation slave owners said they were due when the trade was first abolished, even though they received half of that at £20million.
‘We know the people living in the Caribbean now – the people asking for reparations – are the inheritors of those who were wronged,’ he said.
Scottish Tory MSP Stephen Kerr said Dr Banner’s reasoning ‘may have its place in the ivory towers of Russell Group universities’ but did not ‘speak to the real-world challenges we are facing’.
He added: ‘People in Scotland have other pressing concerns. We need to deal with the real priorities of Scots and not be concerned with yet more academic virtue-signalling.’
The organisation that represents 20 Caribbean states – Caricom – has issued a 10-point plan for ‘reparatory justice’.
Last year a leading international judge claimed Britain owes almost £19trillion in reparations for its role in the international slave trade, and even that might be an ‘underestimation’.
Patrick Robinson, who sits in International Criminal Court, claimed that countries behind the centuries of atrocities were ‘obliged to pay’ and accused politicians like Rishi Sunak of burying their heads in the sand.
He spoke after an academic report in June alleged that 31 former slaveholding states – which also include the United States and Spain – owed $100trillion – $131trillion between them.