To think descendants of slave owners should visit former plantations?

A 2010 BBC News article reported that 2,600 migrant women were trafficked into the UK for sexual exploitation during a 12-month period. This figure was based on a report that estimated that 17,000 of the 30,000 women involved in off-street prostitution in England and Wales were migrant women, and 2,600 of those were trafficked.

I wonder if in 200 years time their descendants will visit the UK and hear stories of where these women are working and how someone eventually put a stop to it.

I listened to a very interesting podcast about a black girl bought up in a white middle class family.
She was very surprised when she visited her Jamaican roots that her ancestors were black slave traders.

Slavery may have been 'acceptable' at one time in the sense that it was legally permitted, but it was widely opposed and deplored as well. Many thinking people even then understood it was evil; that is how it got to be abolished in the first place.

I don't think regular people today have anything to be reproached for. A very few families at the time accumulated vast riches through the slave trade, but most people emphatically did not; we can acknowledge that slavery is a whole different order of evil and still accept that most people in the UK at the time were badly exploited and impoverished too. So why should their descendants feel any guilt for this?

I don't agree though with the angle 'let's demand reparations from the French for 1066'. This is really very recent past: after slavery was abolished it was agreed to pay vast amounts of compensation; none to the former slaves, all of it to the slave owners for the loss of their human 'property'.

Do you know when that debt was paid off? 2015. That means that generations of taxpayers had to pay off that debt - also that descendants of slaves who worked in the UK up to 2015 actually contributed to clearing the debt that was created because of a payment made to their ancestors' owners, just so that they could be freed.

So it would be nice if the other families who have built (and today still benefit from) huge wealth historically acquired on the back of slavery could find a conscience and look at ways of making reparations. It would be nice if our beloved Royal Family (who are heavily implicated) could set an example of leadership in this regard. And I think as a nation we should stop worshipping wealth, accept the ugly side of our past and look it in the face. But collective individual guilt? I don't think so.

Anyone who deplores slavery and human exploitation needs to take action against it here and now. That means things like: don't buy cheap fast fashion. Don't access porn. Report any potential slavery or exploitation if you encounter it.

Slavery may have been 'acceptable' at one time in the sense that it was legally permitted, but it was widely opposed and deplored as well. Many thinking people even then understood it was evil; that is how it got to be abolished in the first place.

I don't think regular people today have anything to be reproached for. A very few families at the time accumulated vast riches through the slave trade, but most people emphatically did not; we can acknowledge that slavery is a whole different order of evil and still accept that most people in the UK at the time were badly exploited and impoverished too. So why should their descendants feel any guilt for this?

I don't agree though with the angle 'let's demand reparations from the French for 1066'. This is really very recent past: after slavery was abolished it was agreed to pay vast amounts of compensation; none to the former slaves, all of it to the slave owners for the loss of their human 'property'.

Do you know when that debt was paid off? 2015. That means that generations of taxpayers had to pay off that debt - also that descendants of slaves who worked in the UK up to 2015 actually contributed to clearing the debt that was created because of a payment made to their ancestors' owners, just so that they could be freed.

So it would be nice if the other families who have built (and today still benefit from) huge wealth historically acquired on the back of slavery could find a conscience and look at ways of making reparations. It would be nice if our beloved Royal Family (who are heavily implicated) could set an example of leadership in this regard. And I think as a nation we should stop worshipping wealth, accept the ugly side of our past and look it in the face. But collective individual guilt? I don't think so.

Anyone who deplores slavery and human exploitation needs to take action against it here and now. That means things like: don't buy cheap fast fashion. Don't access porn. Report any potential slavery or exploitation if you encounter it.

Plenty of people have ancestors who did things that are unacceptable today, but we're acceptable at the time.
Why pick on one group?

Don't forget White People have been slaves too . Indentured Irish sent to Jamaica , the Barbary Pirates snatching young White Women off the Devon / Cornish coast . It's not all one sided .

And, in his time, Colston started up a huge educational benefit fund which, 200 years later, donated the equivalent of over 2 million pounds to the University of Bristol. So all the students at Bristol merrily protesting about Colston? Rather ironic.

You do realise that hundreds of thousands of people in Africa were sold into the slave trade by their own people? Often they were criminals or other undesirables that the local chieftain or king wanted to get rid of (and get well paid for). They were rounded up by their own people and herded into holding forts at the coast, ready for sale to European slavers. It was a multi million pound industry that sold people on an industrial scale.

Or did you think that innocent people were playing on the beaches in Africa and a European slaver ship just happened by and dragged them aboard?

Going back further imagine being a poor child or an orphan? Do we also need to find out ancestors of Workhouse owners? Do they owe anything?

No one is responsible for the sins of their father.

I think if you know your wealth and advantage has come from the exploitation of others and you can clearly see the legacy of that then the decent thing is to try and redress it. I don't think that involves big performative visits and poverty tourism. Quiet donations to help the people still suffering because of what happened to make you rich is enough.

Is England (particularly old money/ upper classes) not full of inherited wealth??

Where did this come from I wonder? It was largely generated by no strange coincidence, from the slave trade and other atrocities, such as the Irish famine.

I have really mixed feelings. I think she has done some excellent work about awareness and has made an important contribution which is way better than nothing. The slave trade was so evil and I think acknowledging that your position in life came to you on the back of the suffering of others is something more people should do (not just related to the slave trade and not just individuals either!)

$100k is a drop in the ocean of the benefit but I guess she probably doesn’t have $4m lying around. However I also think the government should be contributing (both UK and US). I also think that the UK (among others) has abused the peoples of so many countries, stolen people, wealth and assets and it’s hard to quite know where to start.

If we paid reparations for the damage we did as a country then a) we would be bankrupt (possibly fair as that’s what we did to others) b) innocent people including descendants from those very countries would suffer.

I think overall she has done a good thing, more incredibly rich families should consider their history and the government should return as many stolen items as they can and acknowledge publically the harms we did in the past. I think it would go a long way