STILL making money from slavery?

[4plusthehound]

AIBU here?

www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/04/british-slave-owners-family-apologise-reparations-trevelyans

It seems so craven

I have never been a slave. My taxes still paid compensation though. Surely by your own example you can then see why the conversation is still relevant?

@Pinata ...reparations to slave owners only finished being paid in 2015...

Yes. To an extent. As I understand it (I did a fair bit of work on earlier than1837 British sate funding and debt a decade ago now, not this) there were two broad forms of compensation: 'cash' payments (financed by borrowing) and annuities that gave an income and were passed on, traded etc. These were paid off in 2015.

Chancellors Brown and Osborne were keep on tidying up past long running state debts. So far as what were big UK debts go:

Second World War - paid off 2006

First World War - cough, never, so much got lost in the interwar crises. Some War Bonds were paid off in 2014. There are still elements that are being repaid, might be repaid, and have been put to one side and forgotten.

Slave Compensation Act 1837 - last bits in 2015 as your link reported.

Irish Distress Loan of 1847, Napoleonic Wars, earlier conflicts in the 18th Century and back to the South Sea Bubble - a lot of debt was rolled up into Consols at various stages which Osborne redeemed. A contact who is far more clued into this than me thinks elements of C17th debt can still be found in Treasury Bills etc.

Point taken @BeKindersDismount and very well made.

I think when I say we have come so far I refer to an increase in overall wealth, and health in todays world as compared to 1800s. In that context we have indeed come far.

However - as you rightly point out we still have far to go.

*If you want to 'ponder' and write about stuff that you find 'fascinating', why don't you start with the above? Of course that won't please the woke crowd and 'grants' won't land on your lap *
**
I think the "quality" of my writing shows clearly that I am not in a "grants" position in society. I did not even go to uni actually. I just read the paper yesterday, and genuinely thought that the journalist was profiteering from slavery just like her ancestors but in a slightly different way. I wanted to discuss.

Hmm, maybe the British should start suing the Romans and the Vikings.
Maybe the Scots should start suing the English.
No one can be responsible for what their ancestors did.
The whole thing drives me insane.

Agreed!

BUT - don't profit from it either.

This "apology for what my ancestors did, aren't I great" is continuing to profit from it, and is really bloody unsavory.

Plus! Re the Romans and Vikings?

We finished paying the loan the paid the slave owners in 2015. Still very relevant I would say!

And this s the type of comment that drives me mad.

Nobody sued them. They apologised of their own volition. Why is that such a problem?

It’s far more complex than that. Many people of black Caribbean and black American descent are descendants of both slave owners and slaves. Many black Americans and some Caribbean are descendants of neither. No one alive today was a slave or slave owner in the Atlantic slave trade. There is no one that compensation that could be paid to.

Because they didn’t do anything. Ancestors that they never met and are not responsible for did it.

We didn’t really. Government borrowing from the time of slavery abolition was rolled over (redeemed by issuing new gilts) as well as being repaid many times over the years. It’s impossible to trace borrowing from that time and the actual gilts (loan notes) are long gone). However 2016 was when the Bank of England decided to redeem all undated gilts (so ones with no end date for repayment). Gilts are transferable instruments too and are used similarly to cash in many contexts.

so again the situation is much more complicated. Any compensation was paid out about 200 years ago. Any debt issued to repay the original gilts would have changed ownership many millions of times like other government debt and was just part of government debt. It’s not that we were paying slave owners in 2016 - they are long long dead.

I’m asexual and Irish and I want to know what there is ‘no need for’ 🙄. Laura Trevelyan is quoted in a Cornish newspaper saying her Great great gramps Charles T ‘ really didn’t want people to die’ from starvation and actually he attributed all that happened to God’s will being done- 👍🏿☘️

The loans taken out by the government to stop slavery were finally paid off in 2015. The payments to stop slavery were not only made to people in the uk there were payments to at least foreign country, cant remember off hand which one. Britain founded Freetown and we've been making foreign aid payments for years.

None of my family were slave owners (unusually I do know my ancestry a fair way back) but as a tax payer I have been paying slave owners for years. So personally I dont want the government making any more payments. The nearest I have come to "benefitting" from slavery is a free public library and that doesnt outweigh my tax payments.

Some of the young people in Britain suggesting seeking "reparations" be paid now have personally benefited more from slavery than I have - because they are not paying off the loans now.

>We finished paying the loan the paid the slave owners in 2015. Still very relevant I would say!

Or not.

It's complicated as @SueVineer points out.

Osborne settled what were otherwise perpetuals. When given as compensation they were never intended to be paid off, although they could be called in. So the compensation for the ending of the slave trade was never something to be completely taken off the books. Osborne terminated them after 178 or so years as opposed to... never.

Tim Worstall blogging on the Adam Smith site (absolutely no affiliation with them) suggests he paid them off by borrowing, so in a way we are still in neverland.

www.adamsmith.org/blog/britain-still-hasnt-paid-off-the-slavery-compensation-debt

@MMBaranova not sure if what you mention changes things materially? The point is, these things are still with us in recent times, even if it’s final tidy ups or similar

I suspect the descendants of enslaved people would have less of an issue if they weren’t robbed twice, once for the labour of their ancestors and then again in terms of their ability to live on equal terms in the 180 years since then. It’s actually outrageous, when you think about it - to be enslaved and then vilified.

For comparison - would anyone argue against the holocaust reparations agreed between Germany and Israel? Of course not. Britain, meanwhile, has never really faced up to its own horrendous history in the same way and people are now awake to the fact, as they take a proper look at where the disparities of today’s world come from.

the proceeds of slavery and colonialism directly built large parts of our economy, notably the financial sector and the city. How else do people think an otherwise small island with relatively few natural resources became a top 10 global player?

It’s never too late to right past wrongs

I suspect the descendants of enslaved people would have less of an issue if they weren’t robbed twice, once for the labour of their ancestors and then again in terms of their ability to live on equal terms in the 180 years since then. It’s actually outrageous, when you think about it - to be enslaved and then vilified

Are you in the UK? What do you mean by this? 'Robbed twice'? 🙄

FGS

@pinata For comparison - would anyone argue against the holocaust reparations agreed between Germany and Israel? Of course not. Britain, meanwhile, has never really faced up to its own horrendous history in the same way and people are now awake to the fact, as they take a proper look at where the disparities of today’s world come from.

Not being British I'm looking on from the sidelines. However, I live here at the moment and spent much of my childhood here in the care of an Irish grandmother who was part of a diaspora because... well, guess the rest.

Has Germany faced up to its past? In ways for sure as you point out. Currently? Putin's war has shown that Germany post the fall of the Wall (and to an extent in the run up) has some self-searching to do.

Debate over things that ended in the British empire before the living memory of anyone alive today is rather strong in the UK compared to say debate in Spain. That doesn't mean it is perfect and it doesn't mean there aren't things that can be addressed now, next year and over coming generations. That doesn't mean that there aren't people in the UK who blindly stand up for its past without seeing it warts and all (and how perhaps their ancestors may have had a raw deal). There is debate and history is contested. My hope that the debate is informed and on this thread there has been some useful sharing of thoughts and information as well as 'the usual'.

See - that is very interesting. I need to do some reading on this- thank you.

It is clear to me what the poster is saying.

Robbed once - slave.

Robber twice -freed but living under racism and all that entails.

Robber twice -freed but living under racism and all that entails

In the UK 'robbed', really?

Are you trying to be pedantic, @BeKindersDismount? Robbed is the correct word there.

Or are you saying there's no racism in the UK?

Well YES.

For goodness sake !

Does No dogs, No Irish No Blacks ring a bell at all? 1970s.
Robbed of ability to apply for accommodation, or for a jobs.

More recently - sending people back from whence they came with WIndrush gen. A policy that was introduced by politicians under 50 years old.

Yes robbed twice. Robbed of FULL, EQUAL, non racist citizenship.

The above post is for @BeKindersDismount

It's 2023

@4plusthehound yes, exactly. Could add robbed x3 by post colonial structures/trade set ups and debt that impoverish countries and definitely keep money very much flowing back to the UK and the west

@BeKindersDismount yes, I’m in the uk - racism to people who are the descendants of slaves also exists here

@MMBaranova I’m not suggesting Germany is perfect by any means. I was just pointing out that atrocities attract reparations and acknowledgment that a wrong has been committed. People don’t have a problem with the principle

Also, the idea of righting historic wrongs is hardly new - why are people posthumously pardoned, for example, if these things don’t matter? Why not just move on, they’re dead? Because it does matter if we are to be able look at ourselves in the mirror, as a society, and so does this

My family on all sides really has obviously been poor and run of the mill.

I’ve never researched a lot but I only actually know the dates of birth of three of my grandparents. There’s a family mystery as to how one of my grandmother’s maiden name was spelled. I know nothing of my great grandparents. My grandparents were variously shop worker, factory worker, housewife, plumber. So not bad in the general scheme of things. They were literate at least and had some basic schooling.

I’m sure there are public records but I’ve never looked. But there are no family bibles, no trust funds, no paintings, no inheritances, no heirlooms or even sentimental treasures. There are a couple of photo albums and one wedding ring. None of them belong to me or my parents. That’s it.

So beyond that, I have no idea who my ancestors were. I presume that they were white, because I’m white. I’ve no idea what the did for a living, where they lived, how they lived.

I don’t think I owe anyone anything. I don’t think anyone owes me anything. I was born poor because I came from generations of poor people who were, no doubt, taken advantage of by richer people. But there are no signs of this. No records. Nothing. It’s an invisible inequality and it’s everywhere. The human race is immeasurably, inevitably unequal, and always has been.

So whilst I think that modern-day slavery in all its forms is abhorrent and should be stopped, and whilst I know that there are poor communities everywhere that need help today no matter what their roots, I can’t work out how to square the circle of very-much historic slavery.