On slavery reparations and repatriation

 

A Jamaican government delegation is in London from this Sunday (6 September 2026) to file a petition on slavery reparations with King Charles III. The filing of the petition will happen on Monday.

The petition itself will ask the Britsh monarch, who is still Jamaica’s head of state (NB. no comment here), to refer three questions about transatlantic chattel slavery to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which is the Caribbean island’s highest court of appeal. 

The delegation said it would also meet with the staff of the British Museum to discuss “the repatriation of cultural artefacts taken from Jamaica”.

it added it would be the first time a Commonwealth State use this particular legal route “for the cause of reparatory justice”. 

The British monarch has authority under the Judicial Committee Act of 1833 to refer legal matters to the London-based Judicial Committee of the Privy Council for an advisory opinion.

A decisive week

A programme of events is organised to coincide with the petition filing, including an ecumenical church service “focused on remembrance, justice and repair”, at the New Park Road Baptist Church in south London on Sunday.

This will be followed by a political engagement event in Westminster on Monday and an event with the National Windrush Museum on Wednesday.

The delegation is led by Olivia Grange MP, Jamaica’s minister of culture, gender, entertainment and sport. She said: 

“The petition filing will be a milestone moment in Jamaica’s history. As members of the Commonwealth, our citizens are exercising their right to petition the King to ask him to refer the issue of slavery reparations to the Privy Council. We look forward to a positive programme of engagement around this issue.”

Long awaited historic talks

It is estimated that 12.5 million Africans were forcibly taken into forced labour by European nations from the 16th to the 19th century toward the Americas.

Those who survived the trip across the Atlantic Ocean were enslaved on plantations in the Caribbean and elsewhere under brutal conditions.

The UK has said in recent years it will not pay to make amends for slavery, but Caribbean leaders have called for a formal apology and various measures including debt cancellations. 

Ghana has backed Jamaica's petition to push the UK for slavery reparations earlier in June.

Jamaica and Ghana, being both former British colonies subjected to the transatlantic slave trade, are thus presenting a united front in the drive for reparatory justice. 

Ghana's president said in June that the global movement to address the legacy of slavery has reached a "defining moment".

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7pm update:

“We have inherited systems that continue to deprive our country and our people. The legacy in education, even in health, the way we eat, our diet because of what we were fed, our ancestors were fed,” said Olivia Grange, Minister of Culture of Jamaica.

“The question really should be: if in modern times we’re still paying back the slave masters for the property that was our people, our ancestors, for property that was because of the abolition of slavery, then why shouldn’t we be pursuing some remedy at this time?” she added.

The British government paid £20 million to slave owners in compensation when slavery was abolished across most of the empire in 1833, which at the time amounted to 40% of the Treasury’s annual income.

Ralph Gonsalves, a former prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines who was instrumental in setting up the Caribbean Community Reparations Commission, echoed Grange’s sentiments. 

“The present is very much the past, because what we are dealing with is the legacies of underdevelopment which you can source, and we do source, to native genocide and enslavement of African bodies,” he said on Sunday.

Gonsalves is an elder and adviser for the Repair Campaign, a social movement for reparatory justice.

“People must remember this: that European nations were enriched because of the enslavement of African bodies,” he said.