Comedian Lenny Henry Has Called On Britain To Pay £19 Trillion In Slavery Reparations
British comedy legend Lenny Henry has called on Britain to pay almost £19 TRILLION in slavery reparations, claiming it would lead to a ‘nationwide sigh of relief’ for something that had ‘gone unspoken’ for so long.
Sir Lenny made reference to the Brattle Report of 2023, which calculates that Britain owes £18.6 trillion in reparations ‘for its role in transatlantic chattel slavery, primarily for the enslavement period in the Americas and Caribbean’.
Just one problem with that: the UK’s GDP stands at just over £3.6 trillion, which means £19 trillion would be the total market value of all goods and services for at least the next five years. It’s larger than China’s entire GDP, as historian Rafe Haydel-Mankoo points out:
Comedian Lenny Henry has called on Britain to pay £19 TRILLION in slavery reparations.
Historian Rafe Heydel-Mankoo: “That’s the funniest thing he’s said since 1983.”
PLANK OF THE WEEK: https://t.co/sttlrPJNwY@Iromg @mrmarkdolan @DobbsandPolicy @RafHM pic.twitter.com/LH5v6TFFyi
— Talk (@TalkTV) October 3, 2025
Even still, Lenny Henry believes the sum would make up for damages caused by slavery; including trauma, loss of heritage and modern day disparities in life expectancy, employment and income.
He said: “Once you start to break it down, it goes beyond getting a cash refund for slavery. It becomes about social engineering, and – it’s going to sound really touchy-feely – but it becomes about healing, and about spiritual healing, rather than just cash. It’s hundreds of years of being oppressed and downtrodden.”
He said people are ‘scared’ to discuss the financial implications of reparations: “It’s so huge they’re frightened, because actual reparations would cost trillions of pounds.
“These things take time. Look how long it took to abolish slavery – and to pay for slave owners’ loss of work and earnings. This is to try and push the dial so that the conversation might lead to something. That might take another 100 years, another 150 years.”
Well, I suppose I get the argument that slaves themselves deserve compensation and reparations, but the moral argument for receiving compensation over things that happened to your ancestors several generations ago seems a bit flimsy. After all, German reparations to Jews in Israel and British reparations to Kenya went to people who actually had direct experience of slavery and oppression. That’s fair enough, isn’t it?
The best reparations would be to build a society free of slavery and racism, where anyone and everyone can prosper, no matter what their background or skin colour. In that regard, you could say Britain has come in leaps and bounds. Although then again… maybe not.
