One of the most important points in the reparations debate is how narrow the class of actual beneficiaries of the slave trade was. The reparations argument implies a broadly shared British inheritance of slavery’s gains. The historical reality is that the gains were concentrated among a specific and relatively small commercial class.
The people who profited from the Atlantic slave trade were merchants who invested in slave trading voyages, plantation owners in the Caribbean, shipping companies, and the financial institutions that provided credit and insurance. Bristol and Liverpool were the primary British slaving ports, and within those cities the wealth was concentrated among a mercantile elite. Most British people had no connection to this class and no stake in its activities.
