Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party has vowed to block visas to Britain from any country which demands slavery reparations from the United Kingdom.
Shadow Home Secretary Zia Yusuf, who would be tasked with controlling immigration should the party take power at the next general election, announced this week that migrants from countries backing the leftist push for reparations would not be welcome under a Reform government.
Yusuf pointed to said that unless they drop their demands for reparations, he would block visas for nationals from Antigua, Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) nations, Dominica, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Kenya, Nigeria, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Yusuf said: “Countries who received 3.8 million visas and £6.6 billion in aid from Britain are demanding trillions in reparations. Britain’s decision to abolish slavery was the most expensive moral foreign policy in history. We won’t be punished for it.”
“Under a Reform government, if a country demands reparations, we will stop issuing visas.”
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage added: “I’ve had enough of us being threatened by the UN and these countries. Reform UK will block visa requests from any country that demands slavery reparations. It’s time to make a stand.”
Yusuf argued that such countries ignored the sacrifices made by the British Empire in the service of eliminating the Western slave trade.
Indeed, after becoming the first nation in the world to outlaw the slave trade, with the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1807 and the owning of slaves with the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, the British Empire used considerable resources to stamp out slavery throughout the world.
For example, the Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron freed some 150,000 African slaves after capturing an estimated 1,600 slave trade ships between 1807 and 1860. In total, 1,587 men died on the West Africa Squadron during efforts to stamp out slavery. Britain was also instrumental in combating the Barbary and East African slave trades as well.
Despite this, leftist campaigners have claimed that countries like Britain should pay “trillions” in reparations to the descendants of slaves.
The move by Reform comes in the wake of the United Nations adopting a resolution last month calling for reparations for slavery, put forward by the African nation of Ghana. Additionally, the resolution declared that the transatlantic slave trade was the greatest crime against humanity in history. This comes despite the Arab slave trade lasting far longer and often engaging in far more brutal treatment of slaves, including the castration of African males.
The left-wing British government of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said that it would not agree to pay reparations. However, at a meeting of Commonwealth nations in 2024, the Labour PM signed a document calling for more “discussions on reparatory justice”.
