Apologising for the slave trade

[Pennies]

Today marks the 200th anniversary of the slave trade and there have been calls recently for there to be a formal apology from Tony Blair and / or the Queen.

Will it make any difference?

My personal opinion is that you can't apologise for someone else's actions - it would be a bit like me apologising for Tony Blair's sanctioning of the war in Iraq (and I have never voted for him so I haven't even approvied those actions vicariously IYSWIM). It would be an empty apology, wouldn't it?

I can't see that it would ever change anything, or am I missing something.

Caligula, am I the only person on this thread who gets their history anywhere other than the pages of the Guardian ?
The idea that "others" are inferior to "us" is one of the oldest notions we can trace in human history.
Even where the "others" cannot be distinguished from "us" even by DNA testing, racism may be found.
People are group animals, we gang up on others. Might not be good, but it's hard wired into our brains. We look for signs that someone is "one of us", and treat them differently.
People do slavery, for the same reason cats lick their balls, because they can.

I've no doubt that some owners did indeed trump up race as a justification, but they would have thought of something else. Religion is often useful for this purpose.

But DC I thought you went to a crap state school. DP who went to an average state school was never taught about slavery. Go figure. Perhaps there were too many black kids in his school.

What exactly do you think - 'talking like a nigger' is. Do explain!

I am not saying the Roots was the best TV programme ever made what I am saying is that despite it's popularily it was never repeated. There are also fuck all programmes about slavery on TV. Is Trevor really not white? Gosh that astounds me.

I haven't read the Guardian for a couple of years actually DC. Try and get over this Guardian fixation, it's tedious.

"The others" being inferior to us is certainly an old notion, but the idea that they were not actually human, was a relatively new one and let's face it, the idea that the Greek culture was inferior to the Roman one for example, hasn't actually had a long lasting psychological and social impact. Anti-african racism has.

We weren't taught anything about slavery at all, I was born in the sixties.

And we weren't taught anything about the British empire either, a massive ommission from the curriculum imo.

me too caligula, I went to a (almost totally white) primary and subsequently (totally white) grammar school and am still having to educate myself about slavery, the British Empire and countless other things not considrered important for me to have been informed about in the 70s and 80s. Latin, hockey, and the War Poets predominently ...

I was taught about the slave trade in africa, and slavery as a concept generally. I wasn't taught about the tudor dynasty, the napoleonic wars, the british empire (except as it related to the slave trade), the edwardians, the mongols, or countless other things.
Does that mean I or my school were practising denial about any of the topics they didn't teach that year?

Blu, or someoen else please expalin (because I honestly don't know) exactly how much wealth britain gained solely as a result of the slave trade and how that is represented today in society?

Can someone please also tell me about these stereotypes 'we' are suppoused to have about black people and how they relate to the slave trade?

I feel that reparations should be made to those who can prove that their quality of life has been affected by the part of the slave trade perpetrated by the British Empire, and that The Queen, as head of The British Empire, should pay them.

sunnyjim of course it doesn't mean your school was in denial. Historical topics go in and out of fashion. The nazis and the holocaust is currently the big one, apparantly.

When I was doing O level, the fashion was for local history and learning how to use and evaluate primary and secondary sources. We didn't learn any traditional Tudor stuff either, until A level. I know an awful lot about the history of Deptford though. And you can imagine how terribly useful that's been.

I think it's important to study the slave trade and the British empire because of the massive impact they have had upon world history and world politics. But obviously the syllabus is pressed for time and it doesn't help that everyone's allowed to give up history at the age of 14.

I'm with Colditz on this. Besides, it's mostly the church trying to get the whole Easter/guilt/forgiveness message out isn't it ?

Oh and they'd given up teaching history when I was at school in the 80s/90s in favour of 'personal development' whatever that was (I used to sleep through this non-subject or do my maths homework)

Message withdrawn

Yes I think there's a distinction in apologising / acknowledging on behalf of the British government/ church/ East India Company/ other institution and on behalf of the British people.

Because to apologise on behalf of the people implies that all the people were involved and all benefitted equally. And that there was somehow a homogenous mass whose interests were all the same. It ignores the children working in factories who didn't benefit from the slave trade and weren't complicit in it.

Acknowledgement is important though.

The reason I don't think that black people should be taught about slavery as part of their history is that it's too easy to send the wrong message, and that white kids can learn stuff that is useful to them as well.

From slavery, and the Irish potato famine that afflicted my ancestors, I learned that the powerful people will crap on you.
As it happens in both cases the Brits were involved, but if you look at the way Britain was run, the Irish weren't treated that much worse than poor English people. When people got poor in Cornwall they died just as surely as Cork.

Britain was an intensely religious country during this time. Yet not only did the big churches do very little to change people's attitude, they profited from slavery. What the CoE has not apologised for is the rampant theft of money from charities that funded the very comfortable lifestyles of their executives.
The CoE cosied up to the people in power, a pattern followed by almost all big relgions at all times.
The BBc is so far up the CoE's arse that it waves from their mouth.
The Quakers fought a brave and honourable battle against slavery. See that on the BBC ?
No.
Quakers have less political power than the BNP, which does seem to correlate with them behaving much better than most religious sects.

The issue is power, not religion, not racism,
not even money.
It's quite clear from their behaviour that that big slave owners really quite enjoyed having power over people. This is a common human trait, though not a good one.

People are prepared to do really bad things to get power over others. They get a kick from bossing 200 people around that you simply don't get from the same power over 200 combine harvesters.
That's why the South lost in the US civil war. The white subhumans simply could not organise themselves properly, and had so indulged their power fantasies that the grotesquely inefficient human powered industries were crushed in steel and steam.

bloss, if TB were to say sorry though then it is possible that there is legal redress to be had via compensation so in which case it would cost millions+

I don't think stating that Africans who sold their compatriots into slavery should also apologise is immature and unuseful (well, as the first to raise that aspect, I would, wouldn't I?). I do think it is important that all parties to an atrocity should acknowledge their part.

Not sure how anyone would calculate the wealth accumulated by any person/nation as a result of slavery, nor how you would calculate any loss suffered. There are people on both sides of the coin who have lost and who have gained (e.g. there are people alive today who, thanks to the slave trade, are not subject to Mugabe and his ilk).

I have a fairly mongrel mix in my ancestry, including Irish, English, French, German, plus some others no doubt. Should my English side be apologising to my Irish side for the potato famine?

I think it might be useful to acknowledge the errors of our ancestors, and to use this acknowledgement as evidence that we have progressed and matured.

While I am personaly sorry that the slave trade exsisted (and you would be rather monstrous if you did not regret it) I fail to see how my appologising for something that I took no part in will help anyone.

At the time of the slave trade my family were farm labours, who 'progressed' to mining. However awful their lives feel no reason to demand an appology from the english mumsnetters (the mine owners were english).

This who 'Say sorry' thing reminds me rather on my late FIL.

Late FIL was forever applogising for oppressing Native Americans (he lived in the States). He felt dreadful about teir plight and would show off his liberal cerdentials by touting his pentiance for their conditions. The man was Scotish and to the best of my knowledge was the first of his family to venture to the states. His family played no part in the oppression of Native Americans.

By doing so he could salve his liberal concience. However he never once appoligised to any of kids kids for fucking off and ignoring them for over 4 years.

Far better that we sort out the mess we have now, Rather than show how penitant we are for something over which we had no control.

We had a debate on this in Ethics class last week.

Most of us felt that us apologising as individuals was worthless- I mean, my family werent slave owners, they were farming peasants.

HOWEVER under the 'persons' definition comes many rganisations who have directly profited from the slave trade. If the notion of not carrying through what another post-holderdid before you was applied to them, it would be impossible to mainatin- company debts, contracts etc.

So I think as individuals its worthless but there are lots of companiess out there who have a lot of grovelling to do.

And do make yourselves aware of those companies worldwide who STILL use slaves, please. IMO thats the best way to honour the slaves- stop it from happening. I posted it the other day and I'll do it agin

29 million slaves in the world now

A friend tried to provoke me last night by starting a debate on this. I didn't bite.

Oh and I am informed by Gleny Kinnock that action to further fight slavery now, and also with regards to the education about slavery in schools, is underway atm.

here

and heree

If there are any specific qwuestions about salvery and figures I might have the info (beginning a dissertation on the subject- DC you'd like it, Christianity and Slavery- have loads of books about)

Woohooh, something DC and I agree on. The Quakers are bloody great.

Peachyclair has valid points, the last legal British slave died a long time ago.
I have absolutely no problem with taking out modern slave owners hard.
There are indications that Britain has more than it's fair share of sex slaves, we can properly resource the abolition of that for a start, but that's not enough.
The government (and by implication we voters) are quite happy to use extraordinary rendition against suspected terrorists, why not slave traders ?
That's what we did last time...
Although domestic slave owners like the Church of England were compensated (note their "contrition" doesn't extend to giving the money back), Royal Navy ships fucked with slave traders big time. Part of the friction between the USA and the Empire in the war with American in 1812 was down to Americans not liking this one little bit.
I'm not saying we should attack the USA, (though napalming Boston has always been an ambition of mine), but we can arrange for a number of slave owners to meet their maker quite spectacularly, if we really wanted.

DC not Boston ffs! One of the few cities in the US that I actually like!

freckle - no, I didn't quite mean that, that it would be immature and unuseful to think it would be a good idea for African perpertrators to acknowledge what they did...what I find immature and unuseful is people who say 'well why should we apologise when other people did bad things too'.

I agree with you that acknowledgement that wrong happened in a range of societirs in the support of the slave trade.

In any real sense, I don't feel that apologising is the right thing to do...but acknowledgement, yes. I haven't much patience with white people traipsing about in chains, either.

But the slave trade went on for so long, and unlike many examples of contemporary slavery, was sanctioned by government, fully legal, and people worked hard to justify it. It wasn't an unauthorised crime (like now, it was an industry. As I understand it, the Portuguese would not agree to anyone with a soul being enslaved. Since in thier view, that meant catholics, converts were freed - thus accounting for the many black catholics in the Caribbean. But the justification was that black people did not have souls and it was therefore perfectly legitimate to treat them like beasts of burden.