I heard an interesting peice on, I think, R4, from some bloke I didn't catch the name of - his view was that the UK was a 'going concern' - that it was effectively the same entity as it was in 1830 or whatever, and that nearly by living in the UK in 2024, you benefited from slavery because the country was far richer than it would otherwise have been. That the profits of slavery (and the profits of industries that were invested in with the profits of slavery) built the railways, the shipyards, the civic buildings, the museums, and the wealth that built the universities, the NHS, the welfare state, the 1880 Education Act...
I have some sympathy with that view - that I'm not a descendant of Slavers, indeed my family was dirt poor at the time, but that I have benefited enormously from the wealth that slavery brought to the place I live - the view continued that everyone who benefits should pay, and that that means everyone who lives here, regardless of how comparatively rich or poor you are, you are richer (in both the narrow and much wider sense) than you would have been without slavery.
Having lived in Bristol, and Glasgow, and London, I find the view persuasive - bit not professing to be one of the great moral figures of the age, I'm still not keen on coughing up...
My cynicism says that the attitude people take to the morality of slavery reparations is intimately tied to whether they think they're going to end up paying them...
Duke of Westminster? Oh yes, absolutely - squeeze the bastard!
£6bn out of the housing budget? Fuck off, nothing to do with me...