King Charles opens Commonwealth summit amid slavery apology debate
King Charles III is opening the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Antigua and Barbuda on Tuesday with a speech that Buckingham Palace says will address the lasting pain of the transatlantic slave trade with "unflinching honesty" and "sincere sorrow." British Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said he is open to a formal UK apology for slavery but has ruled out reparations, which several Caribbean nations are demanding. The Palace says policy is a matter for the government, not the King. Read at BBC News →
Britain abolishes slavery, and pays the owners
What happened then
The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 ended slavery in most of the British Empire, freeing more than 800,000 enslaved Africans, mainly in the Caribbean, Mauritius and South Africa. It received royal assent on August 28, 1833, and took effect on August 1, 1834.
What caused it
Britain had banned the slave trade in 1807, but slavery itself continued. A mass abolition movement kept up the pressure, with petitions in 1833 alone gathering about 1.3 million signatures. The resistance of enslaved people, culminating in the great Jamaican rebellion of Christmas 1831, and the declining economic case for Caribbean sugar slavery pushed Parliament further.
How it was resolved
The settlement was a hard-fought deal with the slave owners' lobby. Parliament granted £20 million in compensation, paid by British taxpayers to slave owners, while the people who had been enslaved received nothing. Most were also bound as unpaid 'apprentices' to their former owners for years; protests and abolitionist campaigning brought apprenticeship to an end early, in 1838.
How it turned out
Abolition was a landmark, and it made British territory, including Canada, a refuge for people escaping slavery in the United States. But the compensation records, now studied by University College London's Legacies of British Slavery project, show how much of that money flowed to owners in Britain. That uneven bargain is at the heart of today's debate over apology and reparations.
Sources: Britannica: Slavery Abolition Act · UCL Legacies of British Slavery: Context · Wikipedia: Slavery Abolition Act 1833
Further reading: The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery by Michael Taylor