FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (17 May 2026)
The transatlantic slaves and their descendants are the only ones not to have been compensated by the British government. The time has come to right that wrong.
The Transatlantic Slavery made victims too of those who evaded capture during the slave raids on Yorubaland (the Escapees). These people suffered trauma of the acts of escape that they often had to repeat time and time again, witnessing the powerlessness and savage ill-treatment of captured relatives and kins, wanton destruction of their towns, villages and farms, indiscriminate slaughter of their relatives and kins, sudden disruption of their communities, families and religious life, forced internal displacements and migrations, and end to the civilisation they once knew and cherished. Descendants of the Escapees have inherited the after effects of this trauma. Defined by the ‘ancestry’ laws of Nigeria, a Descendant, and individual entitled to seek compensation, was a person whose parent was Yoruba and had been born in Yorubaland and whose grandparent was Yoruba and had been born in Yorubaland. Conducted over 400 years, extracting some 5 million Yoruba slaves, it is more likely than not that slave raiding for the Transatlantic Slavery affected all corners of the Yorubaland.
This barbarity of the Transatlantic Slavery was supported, regulated, and defended by the British Crown and Parliament, making it a state-sponsored economic enterprise. The British parliament enacted more than 100 legislations supporting and protecting the Transatlantic Slavery. British royalty, politicians, banks, insurance companies, the church, and other institutions had business interests in the plantations, and slave-related trading companies. In the early stages of the Transatlantic Slavery, the British government granted charters to slave merchants including the Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading with Africa, the largest single British company involved in the Transatlantic Slavery. The ships of the Company enjoyed the protection of the Royal Navy. The British judiciary provided cover for slave merchants against loss at sea of their human cargo. By the turn of the 19th century, the slave plantation economy was so enormous that it made Britain the most powerful economic force on Earth. Profits from the Transatlantic Slavery was evident throughout Britain, financing banks, including the Bank of England, and notable buildings, including the West India Docks in London. It is therefore right and proper for Descendants of the Escapees to seek compensation from Britain.
UN General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution A/80/L.48 of 26 March 2026 codified the Transatlantic Slavery under the customary international law as ‘gravest crime against humanity’, and as a result, for the first time, made the Transatlantic Slavery a compensatable offence. Modern day descendants of the Escapees are taking advantage of this UNGA codification by going to court to claim monetary compensation for the harm (trauma) that their ancestors suffered witnessing and escaping slave raids. They passed this harm down generations to the present.
The 1833 Slavery Abolition Act was a sham that awarded double compensation to slave owners: £20 million from taxpayers and £27 million in unpaid labour under the guise of the ‘apprenticeship’ system. Descendants of the slavers inherited wealth, capital and societal advantages generated by unpaid slave labour meaning they had a legal obligation to pay compensation to descendants of the slaves for the unpaid labour. Britain too as a country had the same legal obligation, for it invested wealth generated from unpaid slave labour in the Crown, church, educational institutions, factories, land, buildings, infrastructure, banks and insurance companies, which passed down generations.
Please donate what you can to this court case at
www.yorubapartyuk.org
Your contribution will pay for:
· Court and legal fees
· Expert witness testimony
· Archival research
· Mobilisation for a class-action suit for descendants