The plan by Britian’s growing right-wing populist political party to block all new visas to nationals of Antigua and Barbuda and 18 other Caribbean countries, if those nations continue pursuing slavery reparations, has faced swift and immediate condemnation from the CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC).

Nigel Farage’s party Reform UK yesterday proposed a “Reparations Lock,” which would halt the issuance of all new visas — including work, study, family, and visitor visas — to nationals of any country that formally demands reparations.

Antigua and Barbuda is among the nations explicitly targeted, alongside fellow Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member states Barbados, Jamaica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, Belize, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, the Bahamas, Haiti, Montserrat and Suriname, as well as Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria.

Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, Zia Yusuf, made the declaration in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, framing the proposal as a firm response to what he described as “insulting” calls for reparations.

Yusuf said countries seeking reparations “ignore the fact that Britain made huge sacrifices to be the first major power to outlaw slavery and enforce this prohibition.”

The announcement came roughly two weeks after the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring the transatlantic trafficking and chattel enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity. That resolution passed with 123 votes in favour, with the US opposing the resolution and UK among many European countries that abstained.

It was proposed by Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama and backed by the African Union and CARICOM.

The CRC swiftly condemned the proposal with the CRC Chairman Professor Sir Hilary Beckles describing the move as consistent with the “legacy of toxic racism” that has characterised opposition to reparatory justice.

Beckles said, in a press conference, that the position reflected a pattern in which the victims of an enormous crime are punished for calling for justice.

“I would suggest that they rethink that notion about punishing people who are calling for justice,” Professor Beckles said. “The idea that the victims of an enormous crime calling for justice are to be doubly punished is tragic.”

Beckles drew a direct line between Reform UK’s stance and the arguments made by those who opposed emancipation in 1833.

“There were people who did not want emancipation, who insisted that slavery was good, that it was in Britain’s national interest, that Black people were not deserving of freedom,” he said. “Political leaders who take that view would realise that punishing the victim again is in fact consistent with those people at the time of emancipation.”

He said the legacy of white supremacy politics remained so intense that Black people continued to be deemed undeserving, adding that the British Parliament contained people who did not share that view and that it remained a place where these conversations could take place in a humane fashion.

Reform UK’s central justification was that Britain deserved credit as the first major power to abolish slavery and was challenged directly at the conference.

Professor Beckles argued that the 1833 Emancipation Act was a property compensation measure, not a moral one.

“The compensation which the British government paid to the slave owners was for loss of property,” he said. “If you’re going to have property compensation, first of all, you have to assume that the 600,000 people were property.”

He further noted that the enslaved were made to fund 51 percent of the cost of their own emancipation through four years of unpaid labour.

“The notion that the enslaved had to pay with four years of free labour to the enslavers to pay off the financial gap suggests that the Emancipation Act was in itself unethical,” Beckles said.

Dobrene O’Marde, Antigua and Barbuda Reparation Support Commission’s chairman and a Vice Chair of the CRC responsible for the coordination of national committees, said the commission had to be ready to push back against that argument forcefully.

Dobrene O’Marde

“Haiti did that at least three decades before the United Kingdom did,” he said.
He added that Britain was also among the first to pay reparations in other contexts.

“They paid reparations to the Spanish and to the Portuguese in protection of their sugar industries,” O’Marde noted, pointing to what he described as a clear contradiction in Britain’s current position.

Professor Verene Shepherd, Vice Chair of the CRC for research and dissemination and Vice Chair of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, also addressed the Reform UK position at the conference.

“When you talk about benevolence, when you talk about leading the campaign, think of what it costs us here in the region to fight for freedom,” Shepherd said.

She named Caribbean revolutionaries executed in the cause of emancipation, arguing that freedom was not gifted by Britain but fought for and paid for in blood across the Caribbean.

Beckles said the reparatory justice movement remained committed to a government-to-government dialogue and called on European leaders to engage.

“We are calling for the best possible minds to be gathered to discuss the way forward,” he said. “There can no longer be a denial of reparatory justice.”

The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, scheduled for Antigua and Barbuda later this year, is expected to bring the issue into sharp focus, with the CRC confirming it is planning a major reparations event alongside the summit.