Professor Doug Stokes has launched a critique against the movement seeking financial reparations from the United Kingdom for its role in the transatlantic slave trade. He argues that the proposed compensation amounts are economically unfeasible and that the current political discourse ignores the realities of modern slavery.
The £19.7 trillion Brattle Group calculation
The Brattle Group, a US consultancy commissioned by the University of the West Indies, has produced a figure that sits at the heart of this controversy: a calculated liability of £19.7 trillion. As the source reports, this staggering amount represents fourteen times the total current UK government budget and is equivalent to six years of the nation's entire GDP.
Professor Doug Stokes contends that these figures are detached from economic reality. On a per capita basis, the demand for compensation would require more than £280,000 from every single person in the United Kingdom. This massive scale makes the financial demands, according to Stokes, economically impossible for the British government to meet.
The lineage of Green Party spokesman Antoinette Fernandez
The debate has also taken a personal turn regarding the background of Princess Antoinette Fernandez, who serves as the Green Party spokesman for slavery reparations. Stokes has pointed to what he describes as a significant contradiction in her advocacy, noting her familial connections to West African royalty.
Fernandez is the daughter of Her Royal Highness Abiola Dosunmu, the queen mother of Lagos. Stokes notes that the family are descendants of the Obas, or kings of Lagos, who reportedly built their wealth through the proceeds of slavery. He characterizes her calls for British apologies and compensation as an act of "breath-taking hypocrisy and sickening opportunism."
Modern slavery in Nigeria, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh
The Global Estimates of Modern Slavery report provides a contemporary context that Stokes uses to challenge the moral consistency of the reparations movement. The report identifies that approximately one-third of the world's 50 million enslaved people currently reside in four Commonwealth nations: Nigeria, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
According to the report, these 50 million individuals include 28 million people in forced labor and 22 million women in forced marriages. Stokes argues that it is morally inconsistent for nations to demand apologies for historical trades while they continue to perpetuate modern slavery for more people than were originally transported to the Americas under the Brattle Report's figure of 9.3 million.
The economic impact of Edward Colston and the Industrial Revolution
While the Bristol merchant Edward Colston is often cited as a primary beneficiary of the slave trade, Stokes argues that the broader British economy did not rely on such profits as its foundation .. He suggests that while specific businessmen profited hugely, the nation's overall prosperity was rooted in the innovation of its entire population over several centuries.
Historical analysis cited by Stokes suggests that the country experienced,at most, about a decade's worth of extra growth in income per head due to the trade. he further references economic historian Joel Mokyr, who argued that the British Industrial Revolution would have occurred even without the presence of slavery. stokes points to Portugal as a counter-example, noting that despite transporting nearly two-thirds more Africans than British vessels, it is not the richest country in Europe.
The silence from Princess Fernandez and the Green Party
Despite the specific allegations of hypocrisy and the economic critiques leveled by Stokes, several key questions remain unanswered in the current reporting. There is currently no recorded response from Princess Antoinette Fernandez or the Green Party regarding the claims about her family's historical wealth. Furthermore, the source does not provide a rebuttal from the proponents of the £19.7 trillion figure to explain how such a liability could ever be reconciled with modern national budgets.
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