Prime Minister Andy Burnham says his government will consider apologizing for the first time for its role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade as it seeks to strengthen relations with nations in Africa and the Caribbean LONDON -- U.K. Writing in the Guardian on Saturday, Burnham said Britain needed to acknowledge its “complicated history” in order to protect the Commonwealth, an association of 56 independent nations that grew out of the British Empire. Burnham travels to Antigua and Barbuda next week for a meeting of Commonwealth leaders.
But he said Britain would continue to resist calls for it to pay reparations for the slave trade. Instead, the prime minister said he wanted to address the issues that face the Commonwealth and other nations today, including high levels of debt faced by many developing countries. Burnham said he would work with other wealthy nations and investors to help vulnerable countries pay off their debts over a longer period and at lower interest rates.
To help move this initiative forward, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a champion of debt relief for developing nations, will attend the Commonwealth meeting, he said. King Charles III faced calls for Britain to apologize and pay reparations during the first phase of a nine-day trip to the Caribbean that will end with the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting Sunday through Wednesday in St. John’s, the capital of Antigua and Barbuda.
Speaking in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, on Tuesday, Charles acknowledged “the great suffering and injustices of the past” but stopped short of an apology. The king until now has been prevented from going further because it was government policy not to apologize for the country’s role in the slave trade and Britain’s constitutional monarch speaks on behalf of the elected government. Burnham’s comments come as Britain seeks to shore up relations with its traditional allies in the Commonwealth in the face of economic, environmental and military challenges around the world.
A change in the government’s position could also respond to younger, more liberal voters at home, where activists have called for Britain to re-examine the legacy of its colonial history. In 2020, anti-racism protesters in Bristol tore down the statue of Edward Colston, an English merchant and politician, saying the city should no longer glorify the life of a slave trader. Colston was a deputy governor of the Royal African Company, which shipped thousands of enslaved people to English colonies in the Americas.
The descendants of some British people who profited from the slave trade have already apologized and offered compensation. Those include the owner of the Guardian, a liberal newspaper where leaders of Burnham’s Labour Party often lay out policy initiatives. U.K. politicians have traditionally focused on the country’s role in banning the slave trade in 1807 and outlawing slavery throughout the British Empire in 1833.
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