Scotland's bill for slave trade 'tens of billions' says Michael Banner

Mr Banner, who has held senior positions at Edinburgh University and King’s College London, believes the time has come for the UK to hand back the wealth it accumulated through slavery, and has calculated Scotland’s share. 

He says the sum would come in at more than £20 billion, one tenth of what is owed by Britain as a whole.  

READ MORE: Why Scotland owes Caribbean nations £20 billion in slavery reparations

He said: “It’s well known Scots played an outsized part in growing and sustaining the British empire, and Glasgow was in particular closely tied up with Caribbean trade.  

“We know Scotland was overrepresented in the slaving economy.” 

Michael Banner (Image: NQ)

The slave trade was an international business. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Arabic raiders would capture native Africans and sell them on the coast to European traders, who shipped them in often appalling conditions to the Caribbean and America to work on plantations. 

Those who survived went on to have familes and establish nations after they were freed. But Mr Banner believes their descendants should receive compensation for the harsh treatment of their ancestors.  

Speaking to The Herald’s Neil Mackay, he said: “We know the people living in the Caribbean now – the people asking for reparations – are the inheritors of those who were wronged.  

“And we in Britain are broadly the inheritors of the wealth that came our way. It’s not a long time ago, and in a sense it’s still active.” 

READ MORE: Church of Scotland admits slavery links and recommends apology

Mr Banner, whose new book Britain’s Slavery Debt examines the riches that flowed from slavery, based his calculations on the amount of reparations needed on behalf of Scotland on the compensation given to slave owners in the 19th century due to the Abolition Act. 

He believes that each slave had a value of £60, and as 2.3 million were transported, that would equal £138m in 18th century money.  

By adding in compound interest accrued in the intervening centuries and adjusting for modern rates, results in a figure of £205bn for the UK. Scotland’s share would be 10 per cent of this.  

Mr Banner said: “Scotland was up there with everyone else – Scotland played a prominent role in the slave-economy, both in the Caribbean and among the merchants and bankers who drove and funded the slave trade and the sugar plantations that trade served.” 

Slaves were transported in appalling conditions (Image: NQ)

The campaign for Britain to pay reparations has heated up within Caribbean nations in recent years. 

Caricom, the organisation which represents 20 Caribbean states –including Jamaica, the Bahamas, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago  – has issued a 10-point plan for “reparatory justice”. 

READ MORE: Why Scotland owes Caribbean nations £20 billion in slavery reparations

It states: “European governments were owners and traders of enslaved Africans, instructed genocidal actions upon indigenous communities, [and] created the legal, financial and fiscal policies necessary for the enslavement of Africans.” 

Neither the UK or Scottish governments haver formally apologised for their role in the trade, although institutions such as Glasgow University, Edinburgh Council and NHS Lothian have in the past.