Nigel Farage to block visas for all countries demanding £18trillion slavery reparations

Jack Walters
Mon, 06 Apr 2026 21:46:52 +0000

Nigel Farage will block visa requests from any country demanding slavery reparations from the UK, Reform UK's home affairs spokesman has confirmed.

Zia Yusuf, who was last month unveiled as Reform UK's immigration chief, claimed countries pushing for £18trillion repayments ignore the "huge sacrifices" made by the UK to ban the barbaric practice.

Nigeria and Jamaica have been involved in the charge for reparations from the UK, prompting concerns nationals from both nations risk being banned from Britain if Reform wins the next general election.

Mr Yusuf said: "A growing number of countries are demanding reparations from Britain.

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"They ignore the fact that Britain made huge sacrifices to be the first major power to outlaw slavery and enforce this prohibition.

"Astonishingly, of the countries demanding reparations, Tory and Labour governments issued 3.8 million visas to their nationals and sent them a staggering £6.6billion in foreign aid over the past two decades. Enough is enough."

British ships were said to have transported around 3.4 million Africans across the Atlantic between 1640 and 1807.

However, the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron ultimately led the charge in clamping down on the practice, seizing roughly 1,600 slave ships and freeing around 150,000 enslaved Africans by 1860.

While the UK abolished slavery in 1833, France only definitely outlawed the act in 1848 and the United States waited until 1865.

However, a number of former British colonies have led the charge to seek reparations from the UK, including Kenya and Barbados.

The United Nations recently voted in favour of Britain and other former colonial powers coughing up trillions over the practice.

The UK was one of 52 countries that abstained on the resolution which described slavery was the "gravest crime against humanity".

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A bloc of 55 member states, known as the African Union, is leading the charge for compensation.

It argues that countries who played a major role in the slave trade should now begin "good faith dialogue on reparatory justice, including a full and formal apology, measures of restitution and compensation".

However, Mr Farage last week told GB News: "It was a UN court that gave an advisory judgment to give away the Chagos Islands.

"And it is now the UN telling us we should go bankrupt, to apologise for what people did in 1775 or whatever it might have been. Forget it. The UN has no legitimacy over this country whatsoever."

However, Labour MPs have joined calls for the UK to pay reparations for its role in the transatlantic slave trade.

Bell Ribeiro-Addy, who briefly threw her hat into the ring for Labour's deputy leadership race last year, urged the UK to "engage" in discussions about the "enduring legacies of slavery and colonialism".

Ex-minister Dawn Butler suggested the decision to pay slave owners £20million in compensation in 1833 showed the possibility of reparations today.

Ms Butler said: "There has been a precedent in paying reparations for slavery, it’s just been paid to the wrong people."

However, Sir Keir Starmer has previously ruled out issuing a national apology on behalf of the UK.

The Prime Minister also insisted the UK will not pay reparations.

He said: "I’d rather roll up my sleeves and work with them on the current future-facing challenges than spend a lot of time on the past."

A Foreign Office spokesman added: "The UK's position on reparations is clear – we will not pay them."

A spokesman for the Labour Party said: “This is a desperate gimmick from Reform that would do nothing to restore order and control to Britain's borders. That's this Labour Government's focus, and that's why we are taking decisive action to tackle surges in asylum claims by imposing an emergency brake on study and work visas from countries abusing the system, slashing £1bn from the asylum support bill and halving the length of refugee protection to 30 months.

“Nobody will take Nigel Farage seriously on this when his party is full of opportunistic Tories who failed on immigration when they were in government. Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick presided over record levels of migration and all but lost control of the system - you can't trust them now.”