Andy Burnham open to British apology for slave trade, rules out reparations

Britain must acknowledge its part in the slave trade, Burnham said on Saturday, according to the BBC, calling it a “brutal and barbaric abuse.”

The country has never apologised for the slave trade, but Burnham says he is open to an apology. However, there should be no talk of compensation for the descendants of enslaved people.

That is not the right way to go, he writes in an opinion piece in The Guardian. “I do not think that modern Britons can be held responsible for historical wrongs, however heinous,” he writes.

The British slave trade was abolished after an anti-slavery law was passed in 1833.