Question Of Reparations For British Role In Slavery

In 1519, the first vessel carrying slaves sailed between Africa and the Americas was Portuguese and so began the transatlantic slave trade but by 1651 the British became the primary carriers of Africans to the New World, a position they continued to maintain until the end of the trade in the early 19th century.
It always irks me to hear our Politicians proudly repeat that the Brits were the first to abolish slavery as if it is a badge of honour because it's like praising a bully for stopping repeatedly punching you in the face and we punched West Africans hard for over 200 years and at the end of the abhorrent trade Britain had transported 40.5% of enslaved humans, Portugal 30.8%, France 18.6%, Netherlands 6%, Denmark 1.1% and Spain 0.1%, a total of 10.7 million arriving in the Americas out of the 12.5 million put on ships.
That we stopped herding people onto ships and transporting them to awful conditions to work for free on sugar, cotton, and tobacco fields while bolstering Britain's economy is hardly something to boast about as is the fact that on abolishing the Slavery Act the British Government paid former slave owners compensation for loss of 'property' that totalled the equivalent of £300m today, the Slaves and their families received nothing.
Quite rightly some countries demand reparations for all they had suffered under British rule and this week both the King and Prime Minister were in Samoa for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and again faced calls for reparations.
Fifteen Caribbean governments have presented a 10-point plan for reparatory justice including a formal apology for slavery and a development program to help the nations with their economies.
Experts have put a figure on how much Britain should pay and reached a figure of anything between £205bn and  £18.8trn and both the King and Keir Starmer have avoided directly addressing the subject, the King saying he understood: 'how the most painful aspects of our past resonate' and Keir Starmer has dodged the question by saying we can't change history and he thinks we should be looking forward and not back.
A financial package of the amounts mentioned will not be forthcoming from the UK Government, it would struggle to find sums quite so astronomical and the word 'Sorry'  is a declaration of legal responsibility for which there could be a legal implications so that won't be uttered either but what is being mulled over is the cancellation or reduction of debt and setting up and funding health and education institutions.
Brit's today aren’t directly responsible for the actions of their ancestors, but we are responsible for somehow making sure that the abhorrent actions of our ancestors are at least acknowledged and widely known and castigated because as American author James Baldwin wrote: 'Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed if it is not faced'.