UK Slave Trade Apology 'Needed'

[Andrew Curnow]

This from the BBC News site today:

The Archbishop of York has called on Britain to make a formal apology for the slave trade.
It comes as events round the world mark Sunday's 200th anniversary of laws abolishing the British slave trade.

Earlier this month, Tony Blair, who had previously expressed "deep sorrow" for the slave trade, said: "We are sorry."

But Dr John Sentamu has told the BBC he should go further in expressing regret for the slave trade. Mr Blair is to address a ceremony in Ghana on Sunday.

A video message from the prime minister will be played at the event at Elmina Castle, where slaves were held before being shipped to the Americas.

House of Lords leader Baroness Amos is to tell the commemorative event in Ghana that the slave trade was one of the UK's most "shameful and uncomfortable chapters".

Britain's first black female cabinet minister will also pay tribute to those who worked for the 1807 abolition laws.

Baroness Amos, who is descended from slaves herself, is expected to tell the event: "Millions died, but they fought enslavement and rebelled at every stage."

She will say the "campaigning tradition" that led to the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act lives on in the likes of Live Aid, Live 8 and Make Poverty History.

Dr Sentamu, the second most senior cleric in the Church of England, told BBC One's Sunday AM programme that Britain was a country which had once bought and sold slaves "as it did crops like onions or maize", and now had to make a formal apology.

"A nation of this quality should have the sense of saying we are very sorry and we have to put the record straight," he said.

He urged the prime minister to go further than he did a year ago, when Mr Blair spoke simply of Britain's deep sorrow about slavery.

However, speaking in London earlier this month after a meeting with Ghana's president, Mr Blair said Britain was "sorry" for its role in the slave trade.

Dr Sentamu, who helped lead the Church's own mark of repentance on a walk through London on Saturday, rejected the idea of paying reparations, but said a full apology would be an act of strength.

He added: "This community was involved in a very terrible trade, Africans were involved in a very terrible trade, the Church was involved in a very terrible trade... it's important that we all own up to what was collectively done."

Obviously I don't know much about the slave trade, but neither from any personal experience does Dr Sentamu. I'm not quite sure what the 'full apology' would supposedly entail, and more to the point, what would it be for? Am I just missing something, or is it a mystery to anybody else?

[Larry]

What next are people going to demend we say sorry for having an Empire and colonizing these countries I do not believe we should appolgise it is a period of our history that we are not proud of but it was 200 years ago and should be just left in the history books.

[Wayne]

What is an 'apology' going to mean to anyone, now? It was 200 years ago!! It's a pointless gesture if you ask me.

[Captain Tancredi]

As Niall Ferguson points out in his book 'Empire', the people enslaved under the British Empire were rather better treated than if they'd fallen under the French, Spanish, Portuguese or Belgian yokes. The point of the 200th anniversary of abolition is that we as a nation decided of our own volition that it was wrong to keep or trade in slaves. We should be proud that our ancestors decided that, not ashamed that their ancestors built up their wealth on slavery. It took the USA another 50+ years and a civil war to reach that conclusion, and another century to give black people full civil rights.

And when people discuss apologies and compensation, what they never mention is that the descendants of those slaves who were taken to the West Indies, and whose offspring later migrated to Britain in the 20th century, have far better opportunities, access to healthcare, education etc., than if their ancestors had never left West Africa.

[Ralph]

I think behind all this is the smell of compensation. I heard suggestion that the UK government hence the UK tax payer should be paying the descendents of Slaves compensation, the first step of course is to push for a full apology to make a real issue of it.

While I think the slave trade was appalling, as Wayne said it's 200 years ago, an era long gone. Just how far back should we go into history? I'm sure all of us at some stage are due "compensation" for something that happened to our long distant descendents.

Sadly of course, the Slave Trade still exists in the criminal world with vulnerable girls both here and pulled in from abroad that get used as sex slaves. I care more about the living than the long dead so I'd rather we focus our attention on stamping out this current problem.

[Raston]

Seeing as Britain was the country the made the slave trade illegal and policed the world to stop it happening i think we are the last country that should issue an appology.

I don't think Britain has ever been thanked for taking on the considerable cost to our people of policing the oceans to stamp out the slave trade by other countries.




The owning of a slave in the British isles was made illegal in the 1264 (i think of the top of my head i may be a year or two out though), i don't expect many countries can claims to have made it ellegal that long ago.

[Pamela]

I have a view on the slavery thing-but I'm not going to say it, because I'm sure it would come across badly on the net.

[Pip Madeley]

What is an 'apology' going to mean to anyone, now? It was 200 years ago!! It's a pointless gesture if you ask me.

Exactly, everyone who was involved in it is long since dead, so what does it matter. They should be concentrating on the slave industry that still exists, what with sex trafficking and sweat shops.

[WhiteCrow]

Seeing as Britain was the country the made the slave trade illegal and policed the world to stop it happening i think we are the last country that should issue an appology.

I totally agree with this point.

I don't think the slave trade was at all a nice thing. But it's way more complicated than "Britain bad".

We didn't invent slavery, slavery goes way back - are we going to sue Italy for the Roman invasion of Britain where a lot of Britains were used as slaves?

More closer to modern times. My uncle Vernon was used as slave labour by the Japanese for their Empire, and murdered like so many. Our family have his name and his picture to remember it by. Not for one moment am I about to sue the Japanese country/buisness for this, and it has never stopped me making friends with Japanese students I've met.

I'm very much there for saying slavery is a bad thing. But again it's easy to imagine white slavers arriving in Africa and enslaving the first black person they saw. But in actual fact as I learned in school it was usually one tribe would sell those they caught from a rival tribe for slaves. Whilst the presence of white slavers no doubt flared up tensions, you just have to look at tensions between Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups today. Or are we supposed to be blamed for that as well?

[Larry]

I But in actual fact as I learned in school it was usually one tribe would sell those they caught from a rival tribe for slaves. ?

I to have heard that but it is some thing that is all to easely over looked but this demand for saying sorry is for me just typical of P.C/Human Rights mad world we live in today.

[WhiteCrow]

The fact of the matter is all too many of us if you go back enough were slaves. Back in the middle ages, many of us would have been peasants or serfs (a title which pretty much means slaves).

Certainly my ancestors who were Russian Jews (in Russia) in the 19th Century got a pretty raw deal.

I wonder how this compensation for slave descendants will work if this ridiculous option is followed. Tax rebate if you can prove you are black?

No. I think some of this focuses on the wrong thing. I think we need to talk of slavery and say this is a bad thing yes.

But I'm also very wary of narrowing things down. Genocide is more than just the Nazi holocaust. Slavery is more than just the enslavement of Africans. They are the biggest, most noticable case of it yes.

But alas slavery is very much alive, as we find out with the awful sex slave trade going on in our very country.

And even with the abolishion of slavery, that didn't make all the social problems go away. We're still 200 years later trying to thrive as a multicultural society. And in no way do I think we're there yet.

[Pip Madeley]

I made a display about the abolition of slavery and this 200th anniversary at work today, I'll take a photo next time I'm there and share it with you

[WhiteCrow]

I made a display about the abolition of slavery and this 200th anniversary at work today, I'll take a photo next time I'm there and share it with you

You know I hope it doesn't come over like I'm saying slavery wasn't a bad thing. Just that yes our generation needs to be aware how awful it was. But no, that being made to feel guilty or ashamed of it seems just silly, because it was so long ago and we didn't do it.

A case in point, in 1996 I shared a house with a Japanese student called Ishi and an American one called Patrick.

They were watching a film Patrick had just turned on with Japanese admirals talking about something in Japanese - so Ishi was called in to translate. All of a sudden a swarm of airplanes appeared, bombing US ships - yup it was a film about Pearl Harbour.

So poor Ishi breaks into typical Japanese "so sorry" bowing several times to Patrick.

Patrick says by the end of the year he'd gotten 3 apologies for Pearl Harbour from Ishi, but said it was just so silly Ishi felt like that - he didn't personally blame Ishi for it, Ishi wasn't there, wasn't one of the pilots or admirals, wasn't even born. He said it was Ishi's duty to ensure he never let something like that happen again yes, but it wasn't something he should apologise for.