‘The British state had no involvement with slavery beyond stopping it’ | REPARATIONS ROW LATEST

I was talking to somebody from Number 10 last week who was saying that it was challenging because with Keir Starmer, you might say he was dull, that he wasn't a good communicator, but people knew where they were until he flip-flopped, of course. But Andy Burnham is very free-speaking, isn't he? And he says things and then quite often Number 10 row back. So he's on his way to... Antigua. The King has been very clear at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting that there will be regret but no apology. Andy Burnham's now saying that he's open to an apology. And this morning, the Telegraph are saying that he's open to slavery payouts. Now, I got straight on to number 10 because I thought, really? And number 10 have knocked that down very clearly. They've said. There's no question of any additional aid allocations from this government on top of existing budgets that the Prime Minister doesn't think financial reparations are the way to go. And also the Foreign Office have said, we are committed to working with Commonwealth partners on issues facing the world, including the role of private finance and tackling global debt issues, addressing the climate crisis and supporting economic development. The Prime Minister did what other Prime Ministers do, which is take press on this trip with him as the King has done. There'd be a load of journalists on the plane now and we would all get a question to the Prime Minister so we would be able to drill down into what exactly is going on here. But this Prime Minister has opted not to take us. There is one journalist gone on behalf of all the broadcasters and we can tell you from what they have sent us from the plane that this morning the Prime Minister's plane took off from Stansted, which is the usual. about six o'clock in the morning. Now it didn't head straight to the Caribbean. It went north to Manchester to pick up the Prime Minister. I had a quick Google that's about £1,800 in additional fuel. Collected Andy Burnham from Manchester, where of course we know he lives about half a week, let's face it. Thank you, Lisa. And then on to Antigua via refuelling in Canada. So it would have been nice if he had taken journalists on the plane. And also, I think, important for scrutiny. But they made the decision not to take us. It's avoiding scrutiny because only one hack can't ask all those questions. No. And the thing about being on these trips is you are on a plane with the Prime Minister. Everybody gets a question you can raise. Absolutely anything. You get that on the way. You get that on the way back. You get to see up close and personal what's going on. You get to talk to people. It's very, very valuable. But we've seen starting from when he was elected in Macfield, I was at the by-election and the press were literally kettled behind the metal barriers. We couldn't get anywhere near him. And then the following morning, he literally ran away from people, including our political editor, Chris Hope. He certainly did. Talking of which. Yes, speaking of which, a new IEA report, that's the Institute of Economic Affairs, is urging Commonwealth leaders to prioritise tackling modern slavery over demanding trillions of pounds in historical reparations from Britain. We're joined now by our GB News political editor, Christopher Hope, who has a member of the House of Lords, Lord Dan Hannan, with him. Christopher. Yes, morning Andrew, morning Miriam. Yes, this issue of reparations is flaring up again, as Catherine's saying there, it will be an issue in the Commonwealth heads of government meeting. With me now is Lord Hannan, Dan Hannan, of course, he's the Director General of the Institute of Economic Affairs. Dan Hannan, you've done a report on this, haven't you, this issue? What is the value we could be on the hook for in terms of reparations? What the sum being asked for is extraordinary, it's more than £200,000 for every person in Britain and they've more or less plucked that sum out of the air. The truth is the British state had no involvement with slavery beyond stopping it, right? Every civilisation in the world had practised human bondage. The Aztecs, the Mayas, the Polynesians, the Africans, the Arabs, the Chinese. Some of them were very late in abolition. Nobody is coming after Ethiopia for ...reparations, they didn't ban slavery until the 1940s, or for Saudi Arabia, who didn't ban it until the 1960s, they're coming after us because we keep inviting it, and we must stop doing that, because our story is that we uniquely didn't just abolish the slave trade and slavery itself, we poured our hearts and our treasure and our blood... into a gruelling global campaign for abolition, which was ultimately successful. The argument then is that everyone was doing it, we were the first to end it, why are we on the hook for it? We're not just the first to end it, right? Even when we were in a life and death struggle with Napoleon, we were still diverting ships to hunt down the Atlantic slavers. More than 5,000 people died in the repression. 5,000 British citizens died in repressing slavery. Now it is true, we had been a player... in the slave trade in the 18th century. That's absolutely right. But we made practical atonement in the most straightforward and immediate way by stamping out the slave trade then, and doing so at huge expense, right? So, something like 1.8% of our GDP In the eight decades after abolition, that's the most expensive moral foreign policy in history. And the state also paid out money to the slave land owners and that bond was paid out until 2015. So it's very much a modern day issue as well. Germany gave a billion euros to Namibia in apology for genocide of native tribes. Is that the model for what these countries want? Well, I mean, you have to ask them what they want. I think it's a very recent thing, right? The Caribbean didn't start asking for reparations until 2013. Africa incredibly then got in. on the racket in 2023, despite the fact that it was Africa that was taking the slaves and it was Britain that ended up colonizing these places in order to extirpate the slave trade, right? People talk about colonialism and slavery as though they're the same thing. Colonialism was largely in Africa driven by abolitionism, by the sense that, yes, we'd stop the Atlantic slave trade, but there was no need to, there was no advantage in that if the trade then just turned inwards. And so we went in to try and abolish it. And again, we succeeded. And this is the thanks People who were actually, if you like, the heirs to the slavers. I guess where do you draw the line in the sand historically? So modern times, we pay out money for the infected blood scandal, for example, or the thalidomide scandal. That's in living history, isn't it? But if you go, how far back do you go? The Catholics may have an issue in our country. They were persecuted, of course, and others. I mean, why are we lightening on the slave trade? Right, so normally, in law, there has to be a victim. Now here there are no victims. Slavery was abolished in 1807, sorry, the slave trade was abolished in 1807, slavery throughout the empire in 1833. So there plainly are no living victims. So the only way you can make that argument, ...is if you believe in a kind of hereditary collective guilt. And that is, in every other situation, something that we reject, quite rightly, because we take the view that all human beings are responsible for their own actions. So in law, there's no case then? That's your point. In law, there's no reason to do it. It's just a moral guilt we all share towards these countries. Well, I don't think we share any guilt at all. I think we did the right thing, and I think that we should be recognised and applauded for what we did. But I do think that the Prime Minister, in, if you like, Opening the door to a conversation about it is getting the worst of all worlds. It's a little bit like the Chagos Islands. He's kind of accepting that we're in the dock and then just refusing to pay on the sort of technical grounds that there's nobody alive who was still a victim. Well, the first part of that is fundamentally wrong. We should celebrate our role in abolition. It is one of the most selfless and unsordid actions ever undertaken by any country in history. Do you trust this Prime Minister not to want to pay money out on this issue? Well, you know, he... And Hilary Beckles and these various grifters in the Caribbean have all got the same kind of education on this, and they've all been taught this basically Marxist idea that the West got rich through plunder rather than through capitalism and free contract, and that is just fundamentally untrue. That's true. Lord Anand, Dan Anand there from the IEA there, with a defence of why we shouldn't be paying out reparations from the UK, £200,000 each, by the way, over slavery. Well, Chris Hope, thank you very much for that interview. £200,000 each. Goodness. Amazing. Per person. I think we're in enough debt, personally. Oh, my God. Does the Prime Minister have a clue what he's done? I don't know. I think he's very kind of loose-tongued, isn't he? And he just, he likes to float ideas around, which might have worked when you were mayor, but it's not helpful when you're Prime Minister. Perhaps he thinks it's OK because it promotes a debate and stimulates it. It's also distracting from the big row that's going to break out in the Commons later when the Home Secretary... abandons her gutsy plan on immigration That's true. Maybe he's providing balance.