The party has said that Reform UK will stop issuing visas to people from any country that continues to demand compensation from the UK for its role in the transatlantic trade in enslaved people.
Party’s home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf said daily telegraph That the demand for compensation was “outrageous”.
He claimed that in the last two decades, 38 lakh visas have been issued to people from countries seeking compensation.
For four centuries, seven European countries, including Britain, enslaved and trafficked more than 15 million Africans across the Atlantic. Historians have linked wealth in the West to everything from slavery to large-scale industrialization.
Last month, the United Nations voted to describe the transatlantic slave trade as “the most serious crime against humanity” and called for reparations as “a concrete step toward redressing historical wrongs.”
This historic proposal was supported by the African Union and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). It was proposed by the President of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama, who said: “Let it be recorded that when history indicated, we did what was right for the memory of the millions who suffered the indignity of slavery.”
Britain and EU members abstained, while the US voted against the resolution, which was not legally binding.
Youssef told the Telegraph: “An increasing number of countries are demanding compensation from Britain. These countries ignore the fact that Britain has made a huge sacrifice in outlawing slavery and becoming the first major power to enforce this prohibition.”
He said that “the bank is closed and the door is locked” for anyone who “wants to use history as a weapon to deplete our treasury”.
He added, “The United Kingdom is not an ATM of past racial grievances, and we will no longer tolerate ridicule on the world stage.” “While countries like Jamaica, Nigeria and Ghana have stepped up their demands for compensation, the Westminster establishment has rewarded them. Enough is enough.”
Reform UK has previously promised to end international aid to countries seeking reparations.
In 2023, a report on reparations for the transatlantic slave trade, written and compiled by former International Court of Justice Justice Patrick Robinson, concluded that the UK alone should pay $24tn (£18.8tn) in reparations for transatlantic slavery to 14 countries.
Last year the CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC), which was established to advance justice for the Caribbean people for centuries of slavery and colonization by European countries, addressed misleading press reports that suggested the Commission aimed to “bust the British treasury” by demanding trillions of pounds.
Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, Chair of the CRC, said in a lecture in London during his first official visit to the UK that the ultimate aim of the Commission was to identify mutual strategies for a restorative justice program mutually beneficial to the UK and its former colonies.
“Every week, we open the newspapers and hear the most terrible things about these compensations to the people of the Caribbean. Some people have said that we have come here to break the British treasury by demanding millions and billions of pounds. And they have constantly tried to discredit the ongoing moral and ethical argument for justice, the right to justice,” he said during the lecture.
