Key facts
- Ralph Gonsalves said the Caribbean would resist any attempt to treat debt restructuring or development assistance as a form of reparation.
- The Caribbean Community's reparations commission 10-point plan asks for debt cancellation, not debt restructuring, and monetary compensation.
- Burnham ruled out reparations but proposed debt resets for smaller Commonwealth nations and £40 million ($54 million) for Caribbean infrastructure over three years.
- Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy said reparative justice arrangements must be made with those affected, because if it is done to us, it is not reparations.
- Prof Kingsley Abbott said it is time to start listening to those who continue to suffer from those crimes even today.
- A Foreign Office spokesperson said the prime minister wants to build stronger relationships to renew the relevance of the Commonwealth in a new era.
Caribbean reparatory justice figures said on November 4, 2026 that UK offers of debt relief and development assistance cannot replace reparations for centuries of slavery, as Commonwealth leaders met in Antigua.
The comments followed British prime minister Andy Burnham's announcement on Friday that he wanted to begin a structured dialogue on slavery and reparations and was open to Britain apologising, but ruled out reparations. Instead, he proposed discussions on debt resets for smaller Commonwealth nations and announced £40 million ($54 million) for critical infrastructure in the Caribbean over the next three years.
Ralph Gonsalves, a former prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines and a senior figure in the reparatory justice movement's Repair Campaign, said countries in the region were likely to welcome Burnham's offer but the Caribbean would resist any attempt to treat debt restructuring or development assistance as a form of reparation. He said the danger was that such assistance remained discretionary on the UK's part.
A 10-point plan drawn up by the Caribbean Community's reparations commission asks for "debt cancellation" rather than debt restructuring, and "monetary compensation", arguing that former colonies' "existing debts are intergenerational and are ultimately and intimately tied to centuries of colonial extraction".
Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, chair of the House of Commons' all-party parliamentary group for Afrikan Reparations, said at a Tuesday event launching a global reparations caravan that reparative justice had to be about "agency, not making deals here and there". She said: "if it is done to us, it is not reparations."
Prof Kingsley Abbott, a human rights lawyer and director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London, told the same event that harmed communities should have a decisive say in what reparations should entail. He said: "It's time to start listening to those who continue to suffer from those crimes even today."
A spokesperson for the Foreign Office said: "The prime minister wants to build stronger relationships to renew the relevance of the Commonwealth in a new era." The spokesperson said the UK was already committed to working with Commonwealth partners on global debt issues, the climate crisis and economic development.