UN calls on British government and royals to investigate slavery links

UN experts are leading calls for the British government and royal family to investigate their links to transatlantic slavery and take steps towards restorative justice.

- Aamna Mohdin

The Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian, apologised on Tuesday for the role the newspaper’s founders had in transatlantic slavery and announced a decade-long, multimillion-pound programme of restorative justice. The independent academic research into the Guardian’s past and the programme of restorative justice have been welcomed by UN experts and campaigners, who have called for other institutions to follow suit.

Prof Verene A Shepherd, the chair of the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination and director for the Centre for Reparation Research at the University of the West Indies, said: I read with interest that the owner of the Guardian has issued an apology for the role the newspaper’s founders had in the transatlantic trafficking in enslaved peoples and announced a decade-long programme of restorative justice. This is laudable; and my hope is that those who suffered the consequences of their past actions will benefit from the sums committed in a participatory, not a top-down way.

“But although we have seen individuals and institutions stepping forward, admitting the wrongs of the past and offering reparation albeit mostly in a top-down fashion)... the British state has refused to apologise to Africans and people of African descent for the role they played in the trafficking and chattel enslavement of millions of Africans in the Caribbean, simply uttering meaningless statements of regret, remorse and deep sorrow, with a former UK PM even telling us to get over the past and move on.”