That slave owners were compensated so highly in Britain

[tinypony]

I never realised till i read this article the extent of slavery in the UK till i read this. The fact that when slavery was abolished the slave owners were compensated by (in today's money) by millions of pounds, 40% of the ENTIRE government expenditure for 1834. If it wasn't for the fact they were getting compensated so highly we'd never have known the names of all these slave owners. But the lure of the big money drew them out of the woodwork.

www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/12/british-history-slavery-buried-scale-revealed

How bloody hypocritical and contradictory to abolish slavery on the one hand (presumably because of the immorality of it) but on the other hand give massive compensation to those affected.
It's just another case of the elite being looked after, where was the compensation for the slaves and their families. I'm disgusted.

It wasn't unjust at the time.
Governments still expropriate land/homes/livelihood and give back what some think fair compensation but it usually isn't.

And when slavery was abolished and the compensation was paid the bulk of the male population did not have the vote or any other form of influence; nor of course any of the women. Expressions of national guilt and apologies nearly two hundred years later from the people who happen to live on the same area are absurd.

My "drift" is that i'm angered by the fact that the slave owners got such huge compensation for the loss of their "slaves". There's no other agenda, other than i think the slaves families should have been compensated. I didn't know these people received such huge compensation, i wonder if others realise that too.

But @BarbarianMum contextualised that very eloquently for you in the first few replies.

There's nothing wrong with being angered about past gross injustices.

I still don't understand what you want. For everyone to join you in simply being angry?

"Being angered [by] past gross injustices" would be a full time time job for many, many people.

Perhaps if you had a thesis or an aim, you'd be easier to engage with. As it is, your weak and anachronistic understanding of history is even undermining your "Cor, but this was bad, innit?" thrust.

And when slavery was abolished and the compensation was paid the bulk of the male population did not have the vote or any other form of influence; nor of course any of the women. Expressions of national guilt and apologies nearly two hundred years later from the people who happen to live on the same area are absurd.

Quite.

I don't think you'll make any headway with the OP, though.

And just to take responsibility for my own part in it. We're not going and it won't be on in our house.

That's fine as are many others, I just think you was being disingenuous regarding the "it's just football init". Its a worldwide sport, there were and are many protest groups just the same as there were regarding Brazil when they was clearing out favellas and putting up walls, its a corrupt organisation and most people realise that unless governments get involved which tbf UK/Europe and USA have tried to it just shows how corrupt FIFA are, the same can be said of IAF, to blame the average fan for something that is happening 5 years away (which you seem to have forgotten as an obvious fan) is a bit harsh, that's all I am saying

There's nothing wrong with being angered about past gross injustices
Maybe- but there are current gross injustices that are worth noting and fighting for. Why dwell on the past when the present needs our attention.

So I will preface this by saying that I am not vegan. Now imagine that owning animals became illegal (note that while I do not consider owning animals wrong in the way that I consider 'owning' people wrong, slave owners must not have thought it wrong. I know it is not a pleasant comparison but, in the context, affair one I think). What do you think all the farm owners, zoo owners, and other people whose livelihoods depend on owning animals do if this were to happen. What do you think the co sequences would be for the government if they did not compensate them well? I know that slavery is now difficult for us to u derstandso it is easy to be shocked by such things but it's not really good enough, intellectually, to just stop at being shocked. Try to think of the other factors at play. Yes there was a moral element against slavery, this is very obvious to us in this day and age. But then there were other matters at hand. There were political pressures as noted above. I'm sure some MPs must have felt concern for potential economic suffering for individuals and businesses who relied on slave labour. Quite likely some MPs were concerned about their own economic losses in this respect. Others may have been preoccupied by the roghtfulness of effectively confiscating property in such a manner-even when the 'property' by its very nature must not be own. Perhaps some MPs were thinking of their position in life, worried about what personal consequences abolishing slavery would have for them. It is easy to say that it is hypocritical to compensate slave owners but to not do so would effectively punish them for legal acts. I don't think it is wrong to do so but there are many reasons why politicians at the time would not wish to do so, not least of all because they would fear the Act not passing or being quickly reversed if they did not buy off influencial slave owners. Means to an end I suppose.

OP Are you equally troubled about what William I and his Normans did to the Saxon population of this country? If not, why not? Why the selective concern?

Exactly

There's nothing wrong with being angered about past gross injustices.

There isn't but trying to hold historical situations within today's ethical standards is futile, we can look back and say its wrong as everyone does. But as others have said, unless you're going down the slippery slope of repatriations there are many modern day issues including slavery that deserve just as much anger but which you could do something about.

andrewfog where did i say that this was the only thing that angered me? sorry i don't understand. Are you saying that because i'm angered at this i'm not at anything else?

serf why are you taking such a strange stand with me. What the hell do you mean "you won't make any headway with the Op", where the fuck have i been unreasonable.

It's the only thing that's angered you enough to start a thread about it.

As barely anyone, and no women, had the vote in slavery times I don't feel any guilt about this. Ditto the Irish Famine. Awful, awful things, but I will only take responsibility for things occurring while I was a voting adult. Iraq, etc.

I just prefer historical rigour to blind emoting.

What an odd statement. The majority of threads on aibu are about things that anger people. Should we now tell them they shouldn't bother unless they list everything that angers them?
Should i have given a list about all the other stuff that angers me??

Abra1d Funny you should mention the Irish famine because many of the builders of the Great British Empire were Irish and from both sides of that divided house. I guess once you got away from these parts and were among the damned savages which of the islands you came from and which church you went to (or stayed away from) wasn't so very important, eh, what?

Should i have given a list about all the other stuff that angers me??

Your being disingenuous, there are many points from posters that you are refusing to answer

What points that i have refused to answer??

If you go back far enough I'm sure that almost every section of society has been massively wronged in one way or another for various reasons - gender, race, religion, nationality - if we were to compensate those groups of people where would it end? how far back would we go and do we then also seek to be compensated by other groups or countries? what kind of acts to we compensate for?

Do we compensate the families of the mentally ill who were placed in asylums such as Bedlam where they were treated like zoo animals as people paid to view them? Do we compensate the families of all those children who were lied to and sent to Australia when in care? Do we compensate the Romany gypsy population for sending their families to the Caribbean as slaves or for hanging them simply for being a 'gypsy'? The families of witch trials? The families of those who were sent to magdalene laundries? How about all the women who were raped by their husbands when it was legal to do so?

Many of those things were 'legal' at the time, you cannot punish people for an act committed if the law against such action was only brought into force after the act was committed.

I agree with the OP in theory but in reality it's not so simple for reasons others have explained.

Thanks for this OP. It's not surprising but interesting nonetheless.

My main point was that i thought it was wrong that the slave owners were so heavily compensated and the slaves got nothing. Quite shocking really. No need for anyone to go any deeper than that. But as always on aibu there are always those who will try to make an argument over it, when there really shouldn't be.

Its all history now anyway. Hard to get worked up about something that doesn't exist anymore Oh but it does.

In the UK, slavery is illegal. End OF point!

I thought so too cheminotte it's something i never knew about, and i suspect most on here didn't either, but they're not letting on.

justanotherlurker what are those points i ignored?