How should we feel about compensating slave-owners?

Should Britain have compensated slave-owners? At first glance, the question seems ridiculous. Comedian London Hughes asks if we think it’s ‘disgusting that when slavery ended, the UK government paid out millions to former slave owners as a way of saying sorry’. Academic Jason Hickel notes disapprovingly that British taxpayers ‘were paying reparations from the abolition of slavery in 1833 all the way to 2015…but to the *owners* of slaves rather than to former slaves themselves’. Even the BBC is questioning the ‘whiff of self-congratulation’ around the abolition movement.

But while nuance may be unfashionable, some issues deserve careful treatment. Whether compensating slave-owners can be viewed as a moral good depends on what question is actually being asked. If the question is ‘Did slave-owners deserve compensation?’, then the answer is clearly no. People who profit from the misery and brutalisation of others do not deserve recompense when they are forced to stop. If the question is ‘Should the abolition movement have waited until a complete victory was available?’, then it’s a different matter.