If the UK has to pay reparations, will other countries?

[Controversialname]

If the UK is made to pay reparations where will that leave other nations who were or indeed still are involved in slavery?

True.

Is anyone going to apologise for (in no particular order): the Irish potato famine, the Highland clearances, the banning of tartan, systematic discrimination against and underpayment of women, child labour in the Industrial revolution, rotten boroughs and ill treatment of mentally ill people in early asylums? Anyone?

Ridding the world of slavery (human trafficking) in 2024 is more important as those people are suffering now.

When you say "we should pay" you mean UK tax payers should pay. What about UK tax payers who are descended from slaves? Will they be exempt? If not, what are they being punished for? What about mixed race tax payers? Do they pay half? Utterly unworkable.

When the world looks back at us buying things on Shein or Temu, buying clothes from factories in Indonesia, we will be seen as tyrants. So I completely agree with you because trafficking is something we can fix today. Making minimum wages by paid to those Indonesian dress makers is doable.

The UK became a rich nation not just from slavery, but sending 7 year old children and expectant mothers down mines, the working class in the British Isles were literally worked to death, but where was their families reparation?
Thank goodness for social reformers, free education and free healthcare.

Obviously slavery is hideous, vile and completely reprehensible on every level.
But asking hard-up Britons in 2024 to 'pay' for what made many of the ruling class obscenely wealthy (and mostly still are) 200 years ago is bonkers.

I agree, we need to look forwards not backwards.

Heard someone make this point on the radio.
Would anyone black/mixed race be exempt? And how would that work?

I agree with a PP that modern day slavery is something that really needs to be tackled. They are actual people that are suffering now.

How far back do we go? The Irish enslaved Scots and Welshmen in the 11th century. Practically every nation has been enslaved by another at some point in history. Shall we go after the Danes for the Viking incursion?

It's ridiculous.

Yes, the ones to be hit hard would be ordinary folk, those of us whose ancestors were down mines or in mills or even slaves themselves, while the rich were sitting pretty on their labour.

We already paid reparations, we can’t keep paying them, we also played a big part in stopping the slave trade at our own expense, that’s an apology in itself. Women in pretty much every country around the world have been oppressed and treated as property, legally raped, underpaid etc, should we start holding our hands out too? It has to stop somewhere.

Apologies have been made haven’t they? Some years ago. How frequently do they need to be repeated?

This is what he said in 2007

Prime Minister Tony Blair said sorry for Britain’s role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

“I have said we are sorry and I say it again … [It is important] to remember what happened in the past, to condemn it and say why it was entirely unacceptable,” he said after meeting Ghana President John Agyekum Kufuor on 14 March

We're the only one that people care about.

I hope not...

Paying for the sins of the fathers? Or more precisely the sins of someone else fathers for many of us.

Returning the levels of overseas investment to third world countries to what they were pre-Toryand helping them to grow as opposed to fighting each other is more likely to be of proper help.

No one can 'make' the UK pay anything

It's an obsession with the past rather than forming solid relationships to mutually find a constructive way to solve today's problems. Monetary Reparations are impossible, anyway; there is no way to compensate for that crime using mere money.

There is a new movie about the Dahomey kingdom, including their role in the slave trade. Dahomey is nowadays split between several countries in west Africa. Who is going to demand reparations off of the Dahomey countries, and descendents of whoever the people were that in 1830 in Dahomey got rich & powerful off the TransAtlantic slave trade?

My predecessors were indentured farm labourers and domestic servants.

They have no shame or guilt.

The Atlantic Slave trade was ended by the UK approx 200 years ago. The Royal Navy policed the seas and there was loss of life in doing so.
No one alive today was a slave, and at the time of the slave trade my own UK ancestors were impoverished and some in the workhouse.
So, I suggest we ask the Italians for reparations from being enslaved by the Romans; then there are all the others, and what about the African countries who collected the slaves and sold them.

This.

As a black woman who has done her research and has two parents descended from slaves, I don't really want mine and my families taxes being used for this.

The idea is as stupid as lowland Scots paying compensation to the Highlands for the clearances. Except where did the Highlanders end up, Canada and the lowlands.

What we as a nation need to watch out for is modern slavery both in the UK and being mindful about the poor people in garment factories all over the world where people are paid peanuts for fast fashion garments that end up in landfill after a year.

In your opinion, yes. Am I supposed to be bothered by what a random stranger on the Internet thinks?