One of the clearest indicators that the reparations campaign is political rather than legal is the absence of any agreed calculation of the amount claimed. After more than a decade of the CARICOM Reparations Commission’s operation, there is no agreed figure for what Britain owes.
Different advocates produce wildly different estimates. Some cite figures in the hundreds of billions. Others produce compound-interest calculations running to tens or hundreds of trillions. A 2023 report by a group of economists commissioned by Caribbean governments produced a figure of around 24 trillion dollars, using assumptions that other economists have challenged as arbitrary. These figures differ from each other by factors of hundreds, which tells you that they are not measuring a real quantity.
For any financial claim to be legally actionable, the amount must be determinable. A claim for “a lot of money, to be calculated later” is not a legal claim. Every serious legal proceeding involving financial remedy requires a methodology for calculating the amount, which is subject to scrutiny and challenge. The reparations campaign has produced no such methodology that has withstood scrutiny, and the variation between different advocates’ figures demonstrates that none is available.
