Commonwealth leaders should focus on tackling modern slavery rather than demanding trillions in historical reparations from Britain, a new Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) paper argues.
The Atonement Complex, by Professor Doug Stokes, challenges the economic and historical case for reparations and argues that greater attention should be paid to the estimated 50 million people living in modern slavery worldwide.
The paper examines a £18.8 trillion estimate of Britain’s potential reparations liability, produced by the Brattle Group in 2023. Stokes argues that such calculations are highly sensitive to economic assumptions, with small changes in compound interest rates altering the estimated liability by trillions.
It also challenges the claim that slavery was the foundation of Britain’s prosperity. While slavery generated substantial wealth for some merchants and plantation owners, Stokes argues that its contribution to Britain’s wider economic development was more limited than often suggested.
By contrast, research cited in the paper estimates that Britain’s campaign to suppress the international slave trade cost approximately 1.8% of national income annually over 60 years, including lost trade, higher consumer prices and government expenditure. Around 5,000 British lives were also lost in suppression efforts.
Stokes argues that the reparations debate too often overlooks both Britain’s role in abolition and the wider global history of slavery, including the involvement of African kingdoms and non-Western empires.
The paper also warns that reparations demands could expose Britain to significant financial and geopolitical pressure. Drawing parallels with the Chagos Islands dispute, Stokes points to how a non-binding international court opinion helped generate political pressure for Britain to negotiate over sovereignty and substantial financial commitments. He warns that reparations campaigners could pursue a similar approach.
Professor Doug Stokes, author of the paper, said:
“There are an estimated 50 million people living in modern slavery today. Commonwealth leaders should be focusing on ending that suffering, not pursuing trillion-pound compensation claims for events centuries ago.
“Slavery was a profound injustice, but claims that it made Britain rich overlook the enormous economic and human costs Britain bore in abolishing the trade. We need an honest account of the whole history, not selective arguments for reparations.”
Lord Hannan, Director General of the Institute of Economic Affairs, said:
“Reparations would be wrong on every level. They are aimed narrowly at the country that, in a slave-owning world, distinguished itself by a decades-long struggle to end the foul business. They are based on a collectivism that is impossible to reconcile with freedom. They rest on poor history. They divert the energies of Caribbean politicians from domestic economic reforms to international rent-seeking.”