Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg delved into the debate surrounding reparations to former British territories by suggesting that countries involved in slavery should be paying us.
The former business minister gave his two penneth after the debate came to the fore once again ahead of a major Commonwealth summit.
Sir Keir Starmer will head of Samoa on 21st October to meet with Commonwealth heads as Barbados prime minister Mia Mottley steps up the pressure on Britain to atone for its past atrocities.
$5 trillion dollars
At a recent United Nations event, she said: “The numbers have been looked at and studied by many persons and the figures suggest a minimum of $5 trillion dollars, 4.9 to be precise, is what it would be if we were to be similarly compensated across the board today.”
The three candidates – Shirley Botchwey of Ghana, Joshua Setipa of Lesotho and Mamadou Tangara of Gambia – to become the next secretary-general of the 56-nation Commonwealth have supported reparations for transatlantic slavery and colonialism.
Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Afrikan reparations, said the UK had a “moral duty” to face up to the past.
“The UN, other governments, religious institutions and NGOs have all accepted they need to address their role in the enslavement of African people and the legacy of racism and impoverishment it left behind,” she previously told The Independent.
“The UK has a moral duty to address reparative justice”.
“Moral duty”
Members of the British royal family, UK governments and aristocratic families were involved in the trafficking and sale of millions of African people for profit for centuries.
The captives were abducted and transported across the Atlantic to be sold as slaves to work on plantations across its Caribbean and North American colonies.
The same ships returned to Britain carrying slave-grown produce including sugar, tobacco and cotton which was then sold for profit and pumped into Britain’s economy and infrastructure, as well as upper-class families’ coffers.
Discussing the matter on GB News, Rees-Mogg suggested former British territories “ought to pay us for ending slavery”, saying we were “motivated by Christian charity”.
Watch the clip in full below:
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