Reform UK has said David Lammy must disavow previous pro-reparation comments amid Keir Starmer becoming engulfed in a slavery row.
The Prime Minister is facing accusations that he is personally to blame for fanning the flames of the Commonwealth argument after appointing Mr Lammy to the foreign office despite his previous strident support for slavery reparations.
In widely reported comments from 2018, Mr Lammy used a Commons debate to ask “what do reparations look like for those Caribbean nations? How do we make that work? What dialogue do we as a country need to have with those people?”
Shortly after he took to Twitter, now X, in which he blasted the fact Britain paid slave owners billions in order to put an end to the human trafficking, but that the slaves “received no reparations”.
The calls from Mr Lammy continued thick and fast as a frontbencher under Keir Starmer, including one interview in 2020 when he said Britain will “get to a point where we have to discuss power and reckoning and repairing – and to some extent that is obviously financial”.
This week his comments led the chairman of the Caribbean Community (Caricom), Sir Hilary Beckles, to say that the Foreign Secretary should have a “free hand in his government to take the matter [of reparations] to a higher level”.
However The Express can reveal that Mr Lammy and Sir Hilary have a pre-existing kinship, having participated together in a 2016 pro-reparations rally at the House of Commons.
Sir Hilary gathered a small group of MPs, including Mr Lammy and Diane Abbott, and others for a meeting of the Caricom Commission on Reparatory Justice.
A write-up of the meeting described it as an event “to share information and develop strategies across Britain and the Caribbean in order to advance the reparatory Justice movement”.
It went on to describe the meeting as an “intense exchange of opinions”, with Mr Lammy having “addressed the issue at the level of the British Parliament”.
By all accounts the support for reparations in the room was “solid”, and other organisation leaders “indicated their willingness to join in the planned Caribbean reparations rally being planned this year [2016].
A subsequent photograph of the meeting released in June that year saw a beaming Mr Lammy standing behind Sir Hilary in a House of Commons committee room.
Reform UK’s deputy leader Richard Tice has now demanded that Mr Lammy finally “disavow his previous comments on this and stand up for British interests”.
He told the Express: “David Lammy has consistently embarrassed the United Kingdom on the opposition benches and he continues this now in one of the great offices of state.
“We should not be entertaining talk of reparations and it should never be on the table.
“David Lammy needs to disavow his previous comments on this and stand up for British interests.
“Reform MPs will be holding Mr Lammy’s toes and Labour’s feet to the fire on this issue and try to ensure common sense wins out.”
While Keir Starmer began the day by bullishly insisting that reparations will not be on the agenda at his year’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Samoa, a Whitehall source later suggested that the Prime Minister may agree to a communique that “references” slavery reparations, though this would “not necessarily mean there is a change of policy”.
Last year a report by the University of West Indies, backed by UN judge Patrick Robinson, said Britain should cough up an eye-watering $24 trillion (£18.5trn) to make up for the historic injustice, taking into account the number enslaved, loss of life and liberty, personal injury, and mental trauma.
The Foreign Office was approached for comment.
