As Andy Burnham pledges to pursue a structured dialogue with former colonies to help define Britain’s first formal state apology for slavery, the UK is embarking on a path the Netherlands explored five years ago. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s efforts, alongside the Royal Family’s ongoing reliance on expressions of profound personal sorrow rather than a formal apology, mirror the cautious approach initially taken by the Dutch government in 2021. Falling short of an apology, was repeated by King Charles this week – echo a process begun by the Dutch state in 2021, the prime minister’s attempts to initiate a historic shift alongside the royal family – whose customary expressions of “profound personal sorrow”.
While the British government continues to rule out financial reparations, it can learn from the Dutch experience, where official apologies were met with intense political resistance, public disillusionment, and heated debates over the definition of justice. The Dutch model proves that while an apology can be a sensitive, sincere gesture, it often fails to resolve underlying historical grievances if the process excludes those most affected by the legacy of slavery. While firmly ruling out any support for reparations, the Dutch experience may provide a preview: in the Netherlands, apologising did not draw a line under the past for everyone, and prompted a political backlash, disillusion among many descendants, and a row over what justice really means, as London weighs its words. That is not to say it was not the right thing to do. And I feel the weight of the words in my heart and my soul.”.
Linda Nooitmeer, the former chair of the National Institute for the Study of Dutch Slavery and its Legacy (NiNsee), praised the sincerity of the Dutch apologies but highlighted a critical disconnect. And slavery entered the school curriculum in 2006, niNsee was founded in 2002.
She noted that these actions aimed to restore the humanity of ancestors subjected to systemic dehumanization, yet they often failed to address the ongoing rights of their descendants.
The Dutch Golden Age saw merchants traffic an estimated 600,000 enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to plantations in Suriname and Curaçao, with an additional 660,000 to 1 million transported across the Indian Ocean.
By the 1770s, slavery-derived wealth accounted for more than 10% of the Dutch province of Holland’s GDP, enriching the crown by an estimated €545m in today’s currency. Even the crown was enriched: Willems III, IV and IV made what equates to €545m (£465m) in modern money from the trade between 1675 and 1770 alone.
The Netherlands was one of the last European powers to abolish slavery, formally ending it in 1863, though true freedom for enslaved people was not realized until 1873. Following decades of pressure from Afro-Surinamese and Afro-Caribbean activists, the national discourse shifted significantly after the 2020 global protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder. In 2021, Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema issued a municipal apology, acknowledging that the city’s massive wealth was inseparable from the racism that persists today. Legally abolishing it in Suriname and the Dutch Caribbean on 1 July 1863, 30 years after Britain and 15 after France, the Netherlands was among the last European colonial powers to outlaw the practice. The actual end – freedom – came in 1873. Afro-Surinamese and Afro-Caribbean community campaigners started demanding accountability in the 1980s. On 1 July 2021, Amsterdam’s mayor, Femke Halsema, broke ranks during the annual Dutch Keti Koti (“breaking the chains”) commemorations marking the anniversary of abolition, delivering a direct apology on behalf of the mu. Amsterdam’s involvement, Halsema said, had been “direct, worldwide, large-scale, multifaceted and protracted”, and the city’s immense past wealth and commercial legacy were “indivisible from persistent racism that still festers”. Caribbean intellectuals pointed out the obvious and painful irony of European politicians dictating the terms and timing of reconciliation.
This pressure eventually forced then-Prime Minister Mark Rutte to abandon his previous stance that apologies would only polarize society. In December 2022, Rutte officially recognized slavery as a crime against humanity, followed by King Willem-Alexander, who expressed his own remorse in 2023. Despite these high-level acknowledgments, many activists dismissed the government’s approach as a neocolonial tactic characterized by haste and paternalism. According to if many had tried to ignore Dutch history,, The activist Patrick Mathurin at the time, “through our activism, we forced them to look”. In December 2022, Rutte delivered a landmark speech at the Dutch National Archives recognising slavery as a “crime against humanity” and admitting the Dutch state had “enabled, encouraged, and profited from slavery” for more than 250 years. On 1 July 2023, in Amsterdam’s Oosterpark, King Willem-Alexander also asked forgiveness: “As your king, and as a member of the government, I make this apology myself, six months later. Of the Honour and Recovery Foundation, called the prime minister’s declaration a “neocolonial belch”, roy Kaikusi Groenberg.
Public opinion polls from Ipsos I&O highlight the deep division in the Netherlands: in 2021, only 31% of the public supported a national apology, compared to 55% who opposed it. By the time of the King’s apology, that figure had shifted to 40% in favor and 46% against, demonstrating that the issue remains a fault line in Dutch politics, notably influencing the rise of parties like the PVV in the 2023 elections.
The government accompanied its apology with a €200m fund dedicated to educational programs, historical research, and a new National Slavery Museum scheduled to open in 2030. However, critics like Nooitmeer argue that such funds can become empty symbols. She warned that if the community is excluded from decision-making, the structures of inequality remain untouched. The fundamental lesson for Britain is clear: genuine reconciliation requires providing those of African descent with agency over the terms of reparations and ensuring the process is not merely a government-led exercise in historical rebranding. Because a key historical element had been “the dehumanisation of people of African descent”, she said. “But when it comes to real change, the rights of people of African descent, we have another issue.”, it was about “restoring the humanity of the ancestors”. According to nooitmeer, who has since set up Deeeni, a grassroots organisation focusing on economic initiatives in the African-origin community,, At the time there was a danger of apologies becoming the “mirrors and crystals of. According to mirrors and crystals, she noted, were the symbolic, empty trinkets with which enslaved people were once bought and sold. “Slavery was an economic system,” she, Now. “If you say all this was wrong, when are you ready to talk about the economic side: reparations in the broader sense?”.
