If anyone should be paying slavery reparations, it’s West Africa

The Dean of Chapel in Trinity College, Cambridge, the Rev Michael Banner, has computed that Britain owes more than £200 billion to Caribbean nations as reparations for slavery. Banner is not a historian nor an accountant but a clergyman and his calculations, both mathematical and moral, are wrong. In 1833, when Parliament emancipated slaves in the British empire, the cabinet initially offered the slaveholders about £15 million in compensation. The two sides eventually settled at £20 million. To have paid the slaveholders to free their slaves was highly controversial at the time, but it was the only way to secure their freedom finally after years of campaigning. Banner’s calculations start with the valuation initially advanced in the negotiations by the slaveholding interest, which, at £40 million, was twice the amount they actually received. Why he has taken this as his baseline isn’t clear from the reports, but in so doing Banner has ensured that his final figure for what you and I apparently owe is both astronomical and nonsensical. It is moral nonsense because the whole British nation in 1833 can hardly be held responsible for the actions of the 45,000 Britons who owned slaves. At least 10 times as...