“Reparations have been paid for other wrongs and obviously far more quickly, far more speedily than reparations for what I consider the greatest atrocity and crime in the history of mankind: transatlantic chattel slavery.” So noted the eminent Jamaican international jurist Judge Patrick Robinson, when launching the 115-page Brattle Report in June 2023.
The economic consultancy, The Brattle Group, was asked to draw up a report estimating the scale of reparations that should be paid for the chattel trade between 1510 to 1870, covering 31 countries that engaged in transatlantic slavery. This would include compensation for loss of life and liberty, uncompensated labour, personal injury, mental pain and anguish and gender-based violence.
The Brattle Report estimated that the UK – which was the biggest slave trading nation up to 1807 and did not abolish slave ownership in the empire until 1834 – should pay a reparations bill of £18.5 trillion. To put that into context, the estimated annual GDP for the UK for 2023 is about £2.5 trillion and the entire worth of the UK – its land, infrastructure and everything in it was estimated by the Office for National Statistics at £10.7 trillion in 2020.
