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?

I think the Arab slave trade went on longer and involved more people, actually.

In the Roman empire, the numbers were smaller but a conservative estimate is something like a fourth of the population was enslaved. A similar proportion of the population among the Pacific-Northwestern peoples of North America may have been slaves. There were some cultures where slaves were used as human sacrifices (Dahomey, weirdly depicted as anti-slavery in that silly movie) or even eaten among some peoples.

The Atlantic slave trade had some unique features, but uniquely huge, or bad? I'm not sure I see how.

Canada has paid over $57 billion to First Nations and Indigenous people and there are still ongoing law suits. In addition, many Indigenous people, especially those on reserves, are still in very poor living conditions including limited/no access to clean water. Money doesn't solve all and so much depends on appropriate management of reparations, who has control of the payments once they are made, etc.

Should also add clearly horrific suffering happened to the First Nations and Indigenous communities in Canada, for generations. Making things as right as one can, is very complicated and not solely about money.

I don’t agree with this at all. The government have said they are not prepared to pay them but this government seems to back track on things they have previously said all the time so I wouldn’t be surprised if they do so regarding reparations.

The UK economy is already in failing. Reparation payments will be another nail in the coffin to this country’s future and we won’t realise just how good we had it until it’s gone. There is no ‘great’ in Britain anymore.

Why should people who weren’t alive during the slave trade pay out millions/ billions to another group of people who also weren’t alive during the slave trade? Whatever next? Will we be demanding reparations from Italy for the Roman invasions? It’s virtue signalling to the max and is being exploited by certain nations for financial and economic gain. I wouldn’t be surprised if our economic competitors are pushing this narrative for their own benefit.

Seriously, the Scots and the Irish could demand reparations from Westminster too. It's absolutely bonkers, completely batshit mental to try to grift money from people for something their ancestors may or may not have done.

Every country in the world has had slaves. Every nation, culture and ethnicity in the world has harmed people. All of them.

Every single person on the planet - every last one of us - has an ancestor who did something awful.

Nobody owes anything, not one single penny, to anybody for anything they did not personally do themselves.

The whole idea is completely and utterly insane and driven by greed, and greed only.

Especially when the unrest they create suits their own purposes

I've mentioned before that China's massive involvement in Africa could have unwelcome consequences for the population, and good luck expecting hangwringing and reparations from that particular regime, but usually nobody's interested in discussing it unless it's the west being attacked

Germany paid something like 30 billion to the allies. From memory, they were supposed to pay more.

They still pay repatriations to the victims of Nazi war crimes in Israel.

@TempestTost

Apologies it was not the largest slave trade but it was the largest long-distance forced migration in history.

It has a living legacy. I'm not even arguing for repatriations. Sure where would it end. Ireland's population still hasn't recovered from the great famine where Britain shipped out food grown here leaving everyone to starve. This left a lasting legacy here too. But repatriation wouldn't be the answer there either.

I don't get the minimisation of it by some posters. Why not acknowledge the impact?

Everyone knows major historical events have a huge long term impact. That's what history is.

What are you asking people, to say what everyone already knows like it is is some profound unacknowledged thing?

It's not minimized, it's just not an unfamiliar idea.

This

The Scots were also slaughtered and removed from their homes under the Highland Clearances. Some call it the Scottish genocide, though some racists hate that phrase and try to minimise it.

But again, tumbleweeds.

"As in other parts of the burgeoning British Empire, local inhabitants considered an obstacle to economic growth were either destroyed or removed. Personal ownership of land was anathema to Gaelic society, and this made it easy to expel crofters from their ancestral homes. The population of the Hebrides was decimated. On Rum, about 87% of the population was forcibly removed to Nova Scotia, Canada. On Mull, thousands of islanders were cleared to make way for sheep farming, deemed the only profitable use of the land"

In many instances, crofters had their houses burnt, giving them no choice but to emigrate. Other times, Gaels were ridden down, bound with rope, and put on boats to Glasgow, from where they were sent to Canada. Many died on the journey.

Causing serious mental or bodily harm, and deliberately inflicting conditions intended to bring about the physical destruction of an ethic group are both considered forms of genocide, according to the UN. Like Ireland, the Scottish islands are among the only places in western Europe now home to less people than at the start of the eighteenth century. The Clearances were not only an act of genocide, but an extremely successful one.
For many Gaels however, the Clearances were not the end of their relationship with Anglo-supremacist Britain. More Scots would die in the Seven Years Wars than either Englishmen or Americans, as the British Army hoovered up displaced Gaels, many of whom had grown up in a strong martial tradition. Like Indian Sepoys in East Africa, England used the oppressed people of western Scotland to oppress others in America. Gaels were considered particularly adept at communicating with Native Americans, one savage to another, as the theory went"

The Scots and the Irish were regularly referred to as less than human by Westminster. This is not ancient history, it's all quite well documented and fairly modern history.

https://scottishleftreview.scot/brutality-of-empire/

Again, I would never advocate for someone to have to pay blood guilt money to anyone, it's absolutely insane. There will be Scottish and Irish people who have murdered, raped and ruined the lives of English people. Every last human being alive has an ancestor who has done something horrific and every single country in the world has been involved in slavery and human rights abuses. All of them.

Where does it end? It ends now. Right now.

Not one penny is owed to anybody for anything their ancestors may or may not have done. Not one apology. Nothing. Claiming otherwise is a greedy grifting and nothing more.

Time for some sanity and reality to interjected back into public debate.

@dontbedaft2000 Cornwall's history is pretty unfortunate too. AND they got taken as slaves.

@dontbedaft2000

I completely agree on the highland clearances. Nobody has ever apologised for these I think.

Blair actually apologised for Britain's inaction during the great famine. Which to many didn't go far enough but, at the time, was an important step forward in Anglo Irish relations and therefore important for working towards the Good Friday agreement. So the apology mattered.

I don't see why there should be no apologies. Obviously things that happen in the past continue to matter into the future. They should be taught in school, and the fact that they happened should be acknowledged and apologised for. Because that can pave a path for a positive future,

Yep, it's everywhere. When you actually look at history, really look, there are horrifying things happening all over the place. Look at the massacre of Glencoe. The English king of the time ordered his soldiers to slaughter women, children and men - this was particularly heinous for the times. He underlined "putt all to the sword under Seventy.’” - usually they spared the babies and women so this was particularly grim.

It was also considered horrifying because under the rules of Highland hospitality, nobody was left out in the freezing cold to starve and die. So the McDonalds had been sheltering and giving hospitality to the Campbells under the orders of the king for 12 days. Feeding, caring for them, laughing with them.

When the order to slaughter them came, many of the men would not do it, which is why only 40 were murdered.

It's stayed in Scottish history because it so callous and cruel.

But seriously, every generation has tales like this, every ethnicity, culture, colour, creed.

I won't be ashamed of being born into intergenerational poverty and violence and having to fight in the street as a child.

Much of the poverty and drunkeness I grew up with can be traced back to what is now called intergenerational trauma. The Glasgow Effect is very real too.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jun/10/glasgow-effect-die-young-high-risk-premature-death

But it would be grotesquely unfair, weak and frankly potty of me to blame the English of today for what some of their ancestors did to my ancestors.

I won't take the blame for anything my ancestors did either - not even if it was my father and my mother (not that they did anything to be ashamed of anyway). Because I didn't do it.

And I won't be taking the blame either for having 2 percent Norwegian and 98 percent DNA, since we all know about Norway and the Viking raids.

It's just absolutely barmy to try to blame any person alive for anything they have not personally done or had a hand in. I won't have it.

www.bbc.co.uk/history/scottishhistory/union/trails_union_glencoe.shtml

You can apologise for something you did not do if you want to. That's your remit. I won't be. And I do not accept anybody else apologising on my behalf for something I did not do either. Nor do I want or need any English person to apologise for what happened to my forebears.

It doesn't make any logical sense, it does not help anybody at all.

it is harmful when it others people, divides them by race and tries to make false claims that one race is more cruel, more unfair, more victimised, more oppressed. It causes ruptures in society that we are seeing play out more and more.

Nobody should ever feel any shame at all for something they did not do. I do not feel shame and I will not feel shame for things I had no part in.

And it is harmful when it continues as we now see with these nonsensical ideas that "reparations" should be made, which logically means ever single human being on earth owes another human being money for something their ancestors may or may not have done.

We can discuss historical facts without laying blame or apologising. We can acknowledge the reality that all human ethnicities, cultures and creeds have done inhumane things and participated in slavery.

We can do better without ever pointing fingers of blame and simply working, individually, every single day to do the best job we can being human beings.

I have already pointed out how the apology by Blair about the famine helped pave a path toward the Good Friday agreement,

Anyway Blair also apologied for the slave trade. So it has already happened. It's not about you as an ordinary person feeling shame. It's acknowledging the harm that was done and recognising the legacy it has left:

Perhaps you feel what you pointed out has some relevance. This is incorrect.

Whether or not Blair managed to help certain people doesn't matter.

It causes enormous damage to harp on and on and point blame and demand apologies. It's not stable behaviour, it is not relevant to reality and it causes damage when it destroys the agency of those who - right now today - need to stop blaming others for their predicament. Including the Scots, Irish and any other blamers.

It has caused an enormous amount of damage to many to continue harping on about the past, removing their agency and causing huge divisions, and making millions feel extremely aggrieved for being blamed for the sins of their forebears.

Millions of people were so enraged with Kevin Rudd for his sorry sppech that they voted Liberal at the next election in Australia. His sorry helped paved the way to divisions and ruptures and assisted with the eventual landslide vote of NO to the recent referendum in Australia.

Anyone can make any claim about something a politician did and how it helped or hindered something or other.

It's doesn't matter. Completely irrelevant.

This is what matters:

It is illogical to apologise for things you didn't do. It is wrong to try to bully and shame others into doing so.

As I stated if you want to say sorry for something you haven't done, do so.

I won't be doing that. You get to speak for yourself, not me.

And as I correctly stated, every single human being in the entirety of humanity will have something to apologise for if you insist on blaming people for their ancestors' behaviour.

That can't be argued with. Feel free to continue down this illogical path. I won't be.

So, as stated, I won't be apologising for anything I didn't do, I don't want or need to blame others or hear apologies for things they didn't do.

The McDonalds and the Campbells can keep up their vendetta. I'll move on and behave as a decent individual human, just as everyone else should be doing, without resorting to coddling and apologies for nothing.

Yes I’d have thought the ROMAN EMPIRE would have had rather a significant number of slaves attached to it - they certainly took ppl from Britain as well as other European countries and many others around the world.

Do the Italians dole out reparations?

@Sceptical123

I looked it up

https://www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/nero-man-behind-myth/slavery-ancient-rome#:~:text=Scholars%20estimate%20about%2010%25%20(but,and%20ten%20million%20were%20enslaved.

They estimate the population of the Roman Empire in the 1st century AD was 50 million and probably 10 - 20% of the population were slaves. That makes 5 - 10 million; but the Roman Empire went on in the West to the 4th century AD, and longer in Constantinople. I read elsewhere 1 in 4 in Ancient Greece were slaves.
I see no reason for slavery to decline during the Empire (seeing as it was an accepted part of life among Roman writers), so I guess there could have been 20 - 40 million slaves in 4 centuries. While the transatlantic slave trade may have been further, I imagine to a peasant captured by the Roman army in England, being taken back to Rome was a very long way. The Greeks and Romans did it out of xenophobia - the Romans and Greeks citizens enslaved non citizens, mainly foreigners. I doubt the average French or German slave found it any better, being treated as a chattel by virtue of nationality, rather than race, as in the black African slaves.

I also looked up workhouses. The editor of the Lancet estimated in 1841, 145,000 people were dying a year in workhouses, due to depression about the harsh conditions and shame of being imprisoned there. Needless to say, the government ignored the medical statistics and maintained it was due to dirt. People except the sick, were expected to do tedious, meaningless work for their keep. Anyway, that would be 1,450,000 dying in a decade and for how many decades, before the Victorians developed a more enlightened treatment in workhouses? Ten million?

Workhouses continued until 1930, and the last one closed in 1948. They would have been an object of fear in my grandparents’ life time, as very poor working class people, and still a reality in my parents’ lifetime. Yet the white working classes were paying tax to pay off the loan to free slaves until 2015 - no reparations for their ancestors, who died due to deliberate neglect in workhouses, by the same white wealthy families, as owned slaves.

That’s really interesting @WeWillGetThereInTheEnd I love history and enjoy learning new facets of it.

Thank you for looking into it, I will do the same during one of my many bouts of insomnia 👍🏻

I wouldn't describe the Romans as xenophobic by any stretch. And slavery for them wasn't about nationality in the sense you mean.

Any race or ethnicity could potentially be a Roman citizen, or a slave. In fact a slave could become a citizen.

I should have used the word tribes instead of nationality. However, I remember asking our psychology lecturer how parents could abuse children; and she said anyone can do anything to another person, once they don’t see them as human. She also said, in evolutionary terms, we are still Stone Age tribesmen wandering the plains. If we are still tribesmen at heart, isn’t that how othering happens?

I can only assume the Romans saw themselves as the “in” tribe and the people they defeated in war as the “out” tribes - that’s how they could do anything to them as slaves? I have also read, we can dial empathy up or down - and I assume on the battlefield, men dialled empathy down.