Reform UK would deny visas to countries seeking slavery reparations: ‘The United Kingdom is not an ATM’ 

by Mildred Europa Taylor, Face2FaceAfrica.com

If Reform UK forms the next government, it would stop issuing visas to people from countries seeking slavery reparations from Britain, according to Zia Yusuf, the party’s home affairs spokesperson.

Yusuf told the Daily Telegraph that the call for reparations was “insulting”, adding that over 3 million visas had been issued over the last 20 years to people from countries demanding reparations.

Last month, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution declaring the trafficking of enslaved Africans “the gravest crime against humanity” and calling for reparations as “a concrete step towards remedying historical wrongs.”

The resolution urges “the prompt and unhindered restitution” of cultural items such as artworks, monuments, museum pieces, documents and national archives, to their countries of origin without charge, the Associated Press reported.

The resolution passed with 123 member states voting in favour, 3 against, and 53 abstentions. Argentina, Israel and the United States were the three members who voted against the resolution. The UK and members of the EU abstained from the vote.

Unlike Security Council resolutions, General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding; however, they significantly reflect world opinion, the Associated Press said.

Yusuf told the Telegraph: “A growing number of countries are demanding reparations from Britain. These countries ignore the fact that Britain made huge sacrifices to be the first major power to outlaw slavery and enforce this prohibition.”

He said the “bank is closed and the door is locked” for anyone who wanted to “use history as a weapon to drain our treasury”.

“The United Kingdom is not an ATM for ethnic grievances of the past, and we will no longer tolerate being ridiculed on the world stage,” he added. “While countries like Jamaica, Nigeria and Ghana ramp up their demands for reparations, the Westminster establishment has rewarded them. Enough is enough.”

For several years, the issue of reparations for slavery has been raised by descendants of slaves in the Americas and the Caribbean. $14 trillion is how much the U.S. would have to pay as reparations for slavery.

The belief that white Americans owe black Americans a moral debt for compensation for slavery, Jim Crow and long-standing racism has been ongoing since emancipation.

Critics of reparation say that it would be difficult to make fair calculations as to how much victims would take and in what form, considering the years involved.

A University of Connecticut researcher, Thomas Craemer, however, maintains that giving out historical reparations should not be difficult as there are other examples of historical reparations paid many years after damages were made.

In the journal Social Science Quarterly, Craemer estimated that it would cost between $5.9 trillion and $14.2 trillion to give historical reparations.

The journal, cited by Newsweek, said Craemer came up with those figures by tabulating how many hours all slaves worked in the United States from when the country was officially established in 1776 until 1865 when slavery was officially abolished.

He subsequently multiplied the amount of time they worked by average wage prices at the time, and then a compounding interest rate of 3 percent per year to calculate the reparation figure.