The fight for reparations is not new. One of the earliest examples of organizing for this in the UK was the ‘Sons of Africa’, a late 18th century political group led by African activists who campaigned to end Transatlantic slavery. Britain had a huge role in the transportation of between 10 million and 12 million enslaved Africans to the Americas from the 16th to the 19th century.
The Sons of Africa was led by Ottobah Cugoano. Born in present day Ghana in 1757, Cugoano was kidnapped by a slave trader as a child and ‘sold’ into slavery on a plantation in Granada. Later he was ‘purchased’ by a merchant and taken to England. It was here he was set free – not an outcome that many enslaved people ever saw. Cugoano went on to campaign for the abolition of slavery, including through a series of ground-breaking public letters to British newspapers.
Movements for reparations have a rich, diverse and global history, including within the anti-colonial struggle on the African continent in the 1900s. This was known as the pan-African movement,
