The Slave Trade
 

Now we're celebrating the abolition of the slave trade in Britain there have been demands that we should apologise for having been a part of it. I'm as appalled by what I've learned about slavery as anyone else is and I can say I'm sorry it ever happened but I just don't appreciate the idea of apology.

Who do we apologise to? The people who were enslaved are all dead and we can't apologise to Africa in general as many Africans were as guilty as as Europeans and provided the slaves for the traders.

None of us, who are alive today, had any part in the African slave trade. Some of our ancestors may have but can we be held responsible for what our great great great grandfathers might have done?

Slavery existed long before Britain became involved. No doubt some of our distant ancestors were slaves owned by the Romans. Should Italy apologise to us? It existed after the abolition, in fact it still exists in various forms today. We are all aware of "sex slaves".

There's no doubt Britain prospered when it took part in the trade but it also prospered when little children were working in the cotton mills in similar conditons to those of the slaves who were picking the raw cotton, little more than slaves themselves because their families couldn't survive without their meagre earnings. I had ancestors who were mill workers at the age of 8. I also had ancestors who, in the same period, owned cotton mills. Who should apologise to me? Should I be apologising to myself?

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There is also the question of compensation, coming from a long line of serfs would it be possible to get the Royal family and the other blue bloods to send me the back pay owed for the generations of free labour they got from my family?

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I agree with you. I don't like the principle of saying sorry for something that we're not responsible for.

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I think we should demand an apology from Denmark and Norway for all that looting, raping and murdering that the vikings did!

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Or why not demand an apology from France for the invasion and the battle of hastings!

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agree totally with west ender, whilst the slave trade was evil beyond question,these pratts that have been protesting for an apology are just wanabees with nowt better to do, it was WRONG,its LONG GONE, and certainly does not help in todays climate, for once i agree with tony blair,who stopped short of an apology.

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As in the thread before, when some American pratt was asking for an apology, will repeat my remark, that blacks should also be apologising to blacks, as rival tribes kidnapped members of other tribes and sold them to the traders ... so .. what's the complaint ?!?

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OK, it's the 200th anniversary of abolition, so it's a historical event, but the media and the BBC in particular have hyped it up to an unbelievable extent. While I was mooching around Manchester centre yesterday, I walked past the commemoration event behind the cathedral. There were about a hundred people taking part; meanwhile, hundreds of others, white, brown and black walked past oblivious, just getting on with their lives.

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Like that :) ... extremely meaningful picture you painted Wynonie .. have some karma ... x

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Tonight I watched the brilliant BBC2 programme 'This World: Child Slavery', presented by Rageh Omaar.

The W.H.O. estimate there are 8.5 million child slaves in the world today, about 1.5 million of whom work in the sex industry. These aren't children who are having to work to help support their poverty stricken families, these are children who for any number of reasons, are bought and sold as bonded commodities.

I don't care about the colour of their skin, their religion, or culture. These are child slaves, some as young as six, who are living in the world today, and it makes me sick to the stomach to also be living in the same world were this is happening now.

I'm all for remembering the terrible trans-Atlantic slave trade, and celebrating the people who brought about it's ending, including ordinary Lancashire mill workers who came out on strike in protest, but appologising is totally pointless.

I don't hold Germans responsible for killing my twenty two year old grandfather in WWII, nor would an appology make the slightest difference to the past, or be at all relevant today. Remember yes, appologise no.

So, people should stop harking on about the past, and help stop this sickening trade in human slaves, that is still evident today in the twenty first century.

By the way, if people do insist on having appologies for the horrors of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, perhaps they should be looking to Africa itself, or Arabia, both of which trading in slaves, before the Europeans even got a look in.

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Yes.. and in more recent times the scousers! :D

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It happened and yes it was tragic but like most things we need to move on. No objection to the comemorations but I would rather they put their energy into dealing with the slave issues of today.

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i agree spuggie!!

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As someone with both Roman and Norman ancestry could I take this opportunity to apologise for the sins visited upon the world by my ancestors under the Roman Imperium and also for the dreadful excesses committed by my family during and following the Norman Conquest....with special apologies to the people of Durham and and the peoples of the Earldom of Buchan and the Manor of Badenoch


IT'S ALL MY FAULT AND I AM SO DREADFULLY SORRY


I know that neither I nor my ancestors deserve forgiveness. We were, and probably still are, a bunch of hopeless imperialist sh*ts, obsessed with domination, oppression and profiteering. I will, tactfully, omit to mention the benefits that occupation brought to this country. Benefits which are still enjoyed to this day, some sixteen hundred years after the collapse of the Roman empire and nearly a thousand years after the Conquest - I do not wish to add denying anyones victimhood to the catalogue of crimes my family is heir to.

I leave the question of suitable reparations to be discussed amongst our victims, their heirs and assigns.


Ridiculous post? Ridiculous subject!

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I cannot see the point in apologising for something over which I had no influence....and if someone apologised to me for something that was not of their doing, I would be singularly unimpressed.

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When the weinies in The Virginia Statehouse decided to apologize, it annoyed me. However, as my relatives were over in England during "the slave years," I figured I remain inculbable. Now you guys have gone and dragged my ancestors into it. :p

The thing is, between being either poor mill workers or poor mine workers my Lank-York kin certainly had no slaves. As agood Englisman then I say ****-off on that one! (is ****off a banned saying?)

Brian

-ooh, I guess it is . . . got the "star" treatment! S o r r y

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just another lot money hungry idiots. the world as moved on, why should an apology make any difference, we can,t turn back the clock, get real people, it happened, and is still going on in different corners of the world, just as it happened to england, different atrocities, call it what you may, but we can not be held to ransom for what our/thier ancestors did all those years ago. besides the people in question will have had to answer to god!. not that i,m a holy joe, but every nation has it,s faith and brings about the same results, they,ll answer to thier maker......let off steam now i,ll have a brew, cheerio aromalady:banjump:

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I'd point out that I am with everyone else here that I detest the idea of slavery(either african, child, sex or any other persecuted group throughout history or geography) but I'd like to put a thought forward.

The people who are taking the stand that we should pay live their lives in good conditions with a decent quality of life. Is it not the bounceback from the suffering that their ancestors underwent that they now live in a world far removed from that which their ancestors could ever have hoped for them. What are they doing about the poor Africans alive today who may be distantly related? There but for the grace of god(and some terrible ordeal of their ancestors) go they.

In these days of racial harmony(much removed from the sensationalistic media I believe the vast majority of people are not racist) how much of that is due to the proximity of different cultures and races irrespective of how they were brought together. We can't say that we would be as integrated in the Western World had it not been for whatever went on in the past. Just like the holocaust spread the Jews throughout the World during their persecution(Ask me about the blond, fair kiddies in Dom Republic sometime) sometimes these periods however regrettable have positive effects on society.

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So what about these blond kiddies in the Dom republic then? Its sad when a gross misuse of human beings is needed to get something done. The jews went through centuries of persecution and now have their own state yet we as a society don't do enough to help those who are suffering the same kind of fate. We have all the present kinds of slavery that still abound and yet though not turning a complete blind eye to it there isn't much being done to curb it. Maybe we need to again take a lesson from the past and say enough is enough before its too late.

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"We", I think, should put our own house in order before we start racing off around the world lecturing other folk on good housekeeping. I seem to recall that our Victorian forebears were siezed with that sort of missionary zeal and as a result destroyed quite a few indigenous cultures and have bequeathed us a legacy of hatred and resentment which is felt throughout the world.