In 2025 reparations became central to UK ties with the Caribbean and Africa – so how do we move forward? | Kenneth Mohammed

This year was a pivotal one, in which the issue of restorative justice began to frame the UK’s post-imperial relationship with the global south

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little while ago, I was interviewed for a forthcoming book about reparations by a black British comedian and his co-writer. I approached it with modest expectations. It is a serious subject for me as a Caribbean man, and I wondered whether the complexity might be flattened or trivialised in the process.

I got to read the book this week. In The Big Payback, Lenny Henry and Marcus Ryder take a complex, controversial and deeply contested subject and do something both rare and necessary: they break it down into its constituent parts and explain – debunking and demystifying along the way – why so many of the stock objections to reparations are intellectually incoherent, historically illiterate or politically evasive.

They manage this without sacrificing rigour or warmth, weaving careful analysis with Henry’s trademark humour, a red pea soup recipe and even a short play – reminding the reader that moral seriousness and creative generosity are not mutually exclusive.