The struggle for reparations in Britain

The struggle for reparations and reparative and transitional justice for the trafficking, enslavement and colonisation of African peoples, with all their attendant legacies of national and racial oppression, has a long and varied history that dates from the beginnings of chattel enslavement itself. In this chapter, we will focus on the history of grassroots activism in the UK, showing it to be a struggle that dates all the way back to the eighteenth century. While acknowledging the longevity of this unmet claim, our contribution will concentrate primarily on the important groundwork undertaken by reparations activists following the 1993 Abuja Declaration. This will touch upon the years that led up the 2007 bicentenary of the Abolition Decree (1807), and beyond into present-day calls for reparation. We will look at some of the longer-term goals of this activism, including the importance of self-determination and the creation of an All-Party Parliamentary Commissions of Inquiry for Truth and Reparatory Justice. We will also highlight the centrality of ‘Planet Repairs’ to reparations campaigns and its links to Extinction Rebellion, a movement that exists in over sixty countries initiated by the Rising Up Campaign, and most recently the Green Party. The term ‘Planet Repairs refers to the need to proceed from a standpoint of pluriversality that highlights the nexus of reparatory, environmental and cognitive justice in articulating the need to repair holistically our relationship with, and inseparability from, the earth, environment and the pluriverse. It means giving due recognition to Indigenous knowledges in contrast with western-centric Enlightenment ideals that separated humanity from nature and devalorised Indigenous systems of knowledge in order to justify exploitation for capital accumulation.