UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham says he is “open” to considering a formal apology for Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, while dismissing the possibility of financial compensation.
He said he wanted a “dialogue with those affected” and was “open to calls for an apology,” but said reparations were “not the right answer.”
It comes ahead of next week’s Commonwealth leaders summit in the Caribbean. As King Charles III tours the region, there have been renewed calls for an apology.
The British government has never formally apologized for slavery or offered to pay reparations. Burnham has stuck with the policy of his predecessors, and has stopped short of offering any consideration of reparation payments.
“I do not think that British people today can be held liable for historical wrongs, however heinous, that happened in a different age under different laws and in which they played no personal part,” Burnham claimed in a piece he wrote for the Guardian.
He said Commonwealth countries had for years been asking for an “honest conversation.”
He added he wanted to offer a “structured dialogue”, adding: “Listening to calls for a formal apology on behalf of the British state will form an important part of this process. I am open to them.”
All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Afrikan Reparations chair Bell Ribeiro-Adday said while the government’s acceptance of the role it played was welcomed, it had “still fallen short of a formal state apology, and that actually costs nothing”.
“Acknowledgment is not the same as understanding,” she was quoted as saying by BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Denis O’Brien, founder of The Repair Campaign, said Burnham’s statement was disappointing and did not go far enough.
“The British Government must stop obfuscating and give a full and formal apology now,” he said.
“This would be a significant and symbolic first step towards reparatory justice.”
From the 16th Century, English authorities and the monarchy were prominent participants in the centuries-long slave trade.
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