The British imperial tradition requires that no more than half-hearted regrets are issued for colonial atrocities. According to the Independent (27Nov06), three groups received regrets in the 1990s:

MAORIS: In 1995, the Queen officially apologised to the largest Maori tribe in NZ for the devastation wrought on their land in 1860s
IRISH: In 1997, Blair said sorry for Britain for not doing more to relieve the suffering from the Irish potato famine in the 1840s.
AMRITSAR MASSACRE: In 1997, the Queen visited Amritsar in the Punjab, scene of the Jalianwala Bhag massacre of up to 1200 people in 1919. She had the gall to say: "It was distressing but history cannot be rewritten, however much we might wish otherwise."
In no case was there any offer of material reparations.

Theatrical antics
Andrew Hawkins, a youth theatre worker, 37, decided to atone for his ancestor John Hawkins's crimes. Of course, he made sure that the British media was present. The Daily Mail duly obliged with with a headline (22Jun06)
"Kneeling in chains, a Briton apologises for his ancestor's role in the slave trade"

Andrew Hawkins went to the Gambia and knelt in chains before the vice-president Isatou NjieSaidy and thousands of Gambians. He told the British press:
"I apologised on behalf of his family for the adults and children taken. The vice-president came forward and graciously accepted the apology. She offered forgiveness and took off the chains."
The group, in shackles, also had a 'reconciliation walk' to the village of Juffureh, the home of 18th century slave Kunta Kinte, made famous by his descendant Alex Haley in the 1976 book Roots.

The trip was organised by the Lifeline - an Evangelical Christian group, part of a 7-year project set up in 2000 to heal some of the scars of the slave trade. On 25 March, members of the group will march from Hull (home of Wilberforce) to London. There will be chains and makeshift yokes, T-shirts with the legend 'So Sorry!'.
But can such tokenism & theatrics heal centuries of monstrous wrongs? Any material reparations offered? No.

So who was Andrew's ancestor?
Sir John Hawkins (cousin of Sir Francis Drake) played a major role in the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 but he has left a greater legacy on England's slave trade.
In 1562, he was the first Englishman to transport slaves from West Africa to the West Indies. Captives were torn from their villages by Slaver like him and sold into a life of dire hardship and brutality, many dying on the way crammed into ships.

Hawkins earned a fortune transporting slaves for years across the Atlantic. He engaged in piracy by seizing Spanish, Portuguese or French ships and plundering their cargo. In 1577, he settled down to serve Queen Elizabeth I, became treasurer for the Navy and played a key role in the Armada's defeat. He had revolutionised the design of English ships, replacing the high-forecastled style of galleon with low, fast, heavily armed ships. He was knighted during the Spanish campaign but after the Armada campaign, he returned to his former career (piracy on the high seas, dying on an expedition to the West Indies with Francis Drake in 1595.