A British Slavery Apology Would Have Black Britons Apologizing to Themselves
Nigerian-British novelist Adolpi Trisha Ngo-Bani says her Igbo culture gives her no right to apologize for a slave-trading ancestor, and that Black taxpayers would help foot any reparations bill.
Global News Podcast · Violent protests in France for the third weekend in a rowAfter Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he was open to a formal apology for Britain's part in slavery across the Atlantic, Adolpi Trisha Ngo-Bani, a Nigerian novelist and journalist who lives in London and has won awards, offered a complication. She has known since she was a child that her family included slave traders, and she recently laid out her objection in an article in The Times.
Her question, in her words, was this: "So if Britain is apologising, are all these people apologising to themselves?"
By "these people," she argued, she meant modern Britain itself. Britain today, she said, includes Nigerians, Ghanaians, and people from the Caribbean who carry British passports, share in the benefits of life in Britain today, and so share in historic wrongs as well. That composition, she believes, is missing from the conversation, as is recognition that Africans also helped supply captives. Without a fuller conversation, she said, an apology sounds disingenuous.
She speaks, she said, from inside that history. Her great-grandfather was a slave trader, yet she argues she cannot apologize for him. "My culture doesn't give me that right," she said of her Igbo heritage, adding that her family once held an atonement ceremony because her father felt they had offended God. At the time, she noted, her culture sanctioned slavery and committed no crime by its own rules, and the view that "all men are created equal and slavery is bad" came with Christianity, she said. For her to atone for what her great-grandfather did, she said, would be arrogant.
The same problem, she argued, applies to money. If Britain paid the trillions sometimes demanded, she said, "this cheque will not come from beneath King Charles's mattress." It would be paid by taxpayers, including Africans and Caribbeans living in Britain today. "African taxpayers in the UK, the bus drivers will pay. The Caribbean teachers will pay," she said. And then, she asked, would anyone guarantee that payment draws a line, that nobody points fingers and nobody is told to feel ashamed?
Questions people ask
Has Britain ever formally apologized for slavery?
No. British leaders and royals have expressed sorrow and called slavery abhorrent, and Tony Blair expressed deep sorrow in 2006, but no prime minister has issued a formal state apology for the slave trade. Burnham's position would go further than predecessors by opening the door to one.
What was the African role in the transatlantic slave trade?
Historians agree that European traders generally bought captives from African intermediaries, including powerful kingdoms and merchants who captured rivals in war or kidnapping. That trade brought wealth and guns to some African elites, which is why Ngo-Bani argues any full history must include African suppliers alongside European buyers.
What do supporters of apology and reparations say they want?
Supporters, including Caribbean governments and Britain's all-party parliamentary group on African reparations, argue that slavery created lasting poverty and inequality that apologies and practical measures could help address. They say reparatory justice need not mean only cash, but could include education, debt relief, and development programs.