Who should pay for slavery reparations? And to whom? | Letters

Kenneth Mohammed’s article rightly highlights the growing moral case for reparations, but like many pieces on this subject, it fails to address the practical “how” (In the Caribbean and Africa a reparations movement is growing: so why is Britain pretending otherwise?, 25 December). While the refrain that “no one alive today owned slaves” is indeed tired, the question of who finances reparations remains a massive hurdle that advocates consistently underanalyse.

Take my family: I am of English heritage and my husband is of north African colonial descent. While his family faced appalling historical injustices, my ancestors were Lancashire miners and cotton mill workers. Though their industry was built on the back of slave labour, they lived in poverty. Today, as a nurse and a social worker in London, we struggle with the cost of housing, living and a sluggish economy.

The primary beneficiaries of colonial wealth were the landowning classes and those with inherited wealth now tucked away in offshore accounts. Asking the modern working class to fund reparations through taxed income when they are already struggling is the real barrier to gaining public support.

If the movement is to succeed, it must move beyond generalities and target the specific institutions and squirrelled-away wealth that truly profited. Until then, the debate remains one of moral theory rather than economic justice.
Graham Hadibi-Williams
London

As an Indian expat living and working in England, I read your article on reparations with a heavy heart. While the focus on Caribbean and African legacies is essential, I was shocked to find no mention of the Indian subcontinent – the “jewel in the crown” of the empire.

The call for restorative justice is incomplete without acknowledging the systematic extraction of wealth from India, the millions of lives lost to manmade famines in Bengal and the displacement of our cultural heritage – symbolised by the Koh-i-Noor diamond and countless temple statues held in British institutions.

Furthermore, while the article rightly highlights the visa hurdles faced by citizens of other former colonies, it ignores the huge bureaucracy and costs faced by Indian professionals. If we are to discuss the unresolved shadow of empire, we must include the 1.4 billion people whose history was fundamentally reshaped by it. We cannot truly address colonial injustice by picking and choosing which victims to acknowledge.
Abhishek Kalyankar
London