Reparations are wrong on every level. We must reject the divisive politics of national grievance

‘As Caribbean people, we are not going to forget our history,” David Lammy, then a ­backbencher, told Parliament in 2018. “We don’t just want to hear an apology. We want reparations.” It was, to say the least, an infelicitous use of the word “we”, and it encouraged groups around the world who want Britain to pay them for all manner of imagined wrongs. These groups, treated as a lunatic fringe even five years ago, are now celebrating what they see as a victory at the heart of the British state. “He [Lammy] has been a supporter of the discourse while he was in opposition,” says Sir Hilary Beckles, the leading reparations campaigner. “The question is whether he would be given a free hand in his government to take the matter to a higher level.” Sir Hilary, vice-chancellor of the University of the West Indies, also heads Caricom, the reparations commission for a group of 15 Caribbean nations. The sums being floated are so absurd as to topple into slapstick. Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, wants £3.9 trillion – nearly three times Britain’s total annual budget. Still, in the frenzied mood that followed the lockdown and the murder of...