Conservative Party leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick rebuked the growing call for reparations to Caribbean countries and argued that former British colonies instead owe the United Kingdom a “debt of gratitude” for the enduring institutions leftover from the Empire.
While the governing Labour Party has fallen into kowtow mode in the face of demands from anti-British leftist radicals and Caribbean politicians to hand over reparations for historical colonialism, former immigration minister Robert Jenrick has called for a rejection of the “bizarre, unpatriotic belief that we should be embarrassed about our history.”
“It has seeped into our national debate through universities overrun by Leftists peddling pseudo-Marxist gibberish to impressionable undergraduates,” the Conservative MP wrote in the Daily Mail, adding: “Our island story is remarkable in many ways. One thing we have never been, however, is uniquely bad.”
The Tory leadership contender, who has tracked to the right while facing off with former equalities minister Kemi Badenoch to replace failed PM Rishi Sunak at the helm of the Conservative party, called for a more “balanced” approach to British history, in which the ills of the past are acknowledged while at the same time being “proud” the Empire’s achievements.
“I’m not ashamed of our history. It may not feel like it, but many of our former colonies – amid the complex realities of Empire – owe us a debt of gratitude for the inheritance we left them,” he declared.
Jenrick pointed to the various British political and judicial institutions which have remained largely intact in post-colonial nations to this day and noted that countries that the Empire previously ruled are in a far better position than ex-colonies of other European powers, such as France.
The Conservative leadership candidate’s article comes as members of the Labour Party are urging Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to consider reparations for slavery and colonialism.
MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, for example, argued that reparations are needed to confront “the deep-rooted inequalities that still shape our world today.”
While Starmer initially said that London would not consider financial payments to former colonies, the prime minister appeared to potentially walk this back by signing a Commonwealth communique calling for “discussions on reparatory justice with regards to the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement” to come to a “a common future based on equity”.
Conversely, Jenrick put forward that Britain has already made great sacrifices in atoning for historical wrongs, such as the great expense, in both blood and treasure, spent to eradicate the Transatlantic slave trade by the British, which the former immigration minister said “cost an estimated 1.8 per cent of our GDP between 1808 and 1867 – over twice what we spend on overseas aid today.”
“The British Empire broke the long chain of violent tyranny as we came to introduce – gradually and imperfectly – Christian values,” the MP wrote.
Jenrick also contended that Britain could have preserved much of its Empire had it chosen not to take on the scourge of Nazi Germany but, under the leadership of Sir Winston Churchill, “willingly gave up our imperial treasures” for the betterment of others.
“The result was a free Europe, and a lost Empire. Of that we can be proud,” he proclaimed.