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Topic History of: Slavery. Who cares?
Max. showing the last 5 posts - (Last post first)
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Barney |
Yes - Jo and I - must have (wilfully) missed the point!
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honey!oh sugar sugar. |
Barney wrote:
honey!oh sugar sugar. wrote:
It doesn't matter what happened hundreds of years ago
The fact that our nation transported over 3 million people from Africa to the Americas does matter!
Done solely for profit, the human cargo was treated brutally, inhumanely and viciously - and frequently thrown overboard when they became ill.
Saying 'who cares' is simply callous
- and doesn't reflect the stance of our governments which have apologised for, and admitted their appalling practices on numerous occasions.
Notably Tony Blair in 2007.
You have (wilfully) missed the point, Barney, and for you to think I actually dont care about slaves means that you must have skipped five years worth of my posts, which is fine. 
It is the CURRENT slavery we need to do something about. |
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Barney |
John, the father of Liberal prime minister William Gladstone received the most compensation for his 2,500 slaves - £85 million, in today's money.
William - PM on four occasions - fought a long and difficult cause for the compensation due to his father and family.
It is significant that the same wealthy families, then as now - make no mention of their slave windfall.
These include virtually all the current aristocracy - and David Cameron's ancestors.
Clearing bank families also did well from the slave proceeds - Lloyds and Barlays, for instance.
Many efforts have been made to obtain compensation on behalf of the slaves.
But successive Tory and Liberal governments have made such actions virtually impossible - bearing in mind the tainted roles of their predecessors.
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Barney |
The passing of the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833 meant that £300 billion - in today's money - was paid to slave owners, as compensation.
Not to the slaves themselves!
It was the largest payment ever made by the government, and only paid off in 2015.
'Heroes' of the trade were rewarded and honoured, like Sir Francis Drake.
A sad and pitiful part of our history.
In which we rewarded human cruelty...
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Jo |
It's not many generations ago that slavery was around. If you took one person from each generation, from a line descended from enslaved people and a line descended from people who benefited from slavery, right back to those people, you could probably easily fit them in a room. Wonder how that discussion would go.
There were a couple of documentaries on this subject on TV not too long ago ("Britain's forgotten slave owners", also on YouTube) and if I remember correctly they said that slave-owning was quite widespread in the UK, not so much in the form of keeping slaves in the house but in the sense of having slaves overseas and reaping the benefits. Family legend has it that someone on my father's side of the family, which was of quite moderate means, had earned money from slavery but that, for moral reasons, the family never claimed the compensation money available on abolition. University College London has a database of slave-owners: www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/ |
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