The city council of Bristol has approved a motion calling for reparations for slavery as an act of “atonement” for the British port city’s role in the slave trade.

The Labour Party-run council passed the motion by a margin of 47 votes to 12 on Tuesday following a zoom meeting of the councillors. The council agreed to implement “community wealth creation strategies” and to write to the British Parliament demanding the establishment of a commission to determine “how reparations may be delivered”.

In a peculiar act of so-called cultural appropriation, Cleo Lake — the Green Party councillor who led the motion — called upon the other members to support reparations by “representing” as US civil rights leader Rosa Parks in a mock American accent.

“I believe we are here on this Earth to live, grow, and to do what we can to make the world a better place for all people to enjoy,” she said in a put-on accent while quoting Ms Parks.

In a statement, the Bristol city council said that racial injustice today is a byproduct of “economic injustice or domination of the global economy established in the seventeenth century,” and therefore “efforts need to be made to expedite the atonement process, and work needs to be done to achieve holistic reparations.”

The left-wing council went on to say that “reparative justice should be driven by Afrikan Heritage Communities experiences, voices and perspectives to ensure that advocacy messages not only reflect but also respond to the real needs of the community in order to recognise inequalities.”

In response to the reparations push, Robert Poll of the Save Our Statues campaign told Breitbart London: “This is straight from the Critical Race Theory playbook, perpetuating a simplistic and divisive victim/aggressor narrative. It’s a misrepresentation both of history and of the people of Bristol. Nobody today is guilty. Nobody today is a victim.”

A senior fellow at the Policy Exchange think tank, Calvin Robinson, added that Bristol has become “the first city in the UK to go entirely woke.”

“There’s a clear misunderstanding amongst Bristol politicians. People are struggling because of a whole host of socio-economic issues; an attempt to put the blame on race is narrow-minded and short-sighted. They’d do far better to look at the class disparity in the city,” Robinson told Breitbart London.

“The idea of reparations in the 21st century to somehow make-up for atrocities of the 16th/17th century is beyond ridiculous. Whose money are they suggesting we use to pay reparations, and who are they suggesting reparations are paid to?” he questioned.

Mr Robinson who has himself been the target of left-wing racism and even called a “race traitor” for being a black man espousing conservative views, noted that “there is no such thing as government money” and reparations would, in fact, be paid by the British taxpayer.

“The idea that I am somehow owed monetary compensation for something my ancestors may or may not have experienced is lunacy. Would all brown people by eligible? The way our tax system works, that would mean relatively poor black people would be paying reparations to rich black people, it’s nonsensical,” he proclaimed.

Mr Robinson said that the reparations push from the Bristol council is just another attempt at “virtue signalling from the woke elites,” adding: “The British Government apologised for its hand in the slave trade, it is our job as a Christian nation to accept that apology and move on. Let’s look forward, not backwards.”

Bristol was one of the United Kingdom’s top slave port cities during the 1700s. The city has in recent decades become a hotbed of left-wing activism, with Black Lives Matter vandals toppling the statue of British philanthropist and parliamentarian Sir Edward Colston last June for his role in the slave trade.

While Great Britain did play a role in the slave trade, it became the first country in the world to abolish slavery.

Following the passage of the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1807, the Royal Navy embarked on a campaign to end the practice, capturing an estimated 1,600 slave trade ships, and freeing some 150,000 African slaves in the process.

Between 1830 and 1865 some 1,587 British sailors lost their lives in their fight against slavery.

Calvin Robinson questioned whether the Bristol city council would recognise Britain’s efforts to stamp out the slave trade, proposing a statue in honour of William Grenville, who introduced the Slave Trade Act of 1807.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka