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Andy Burnham, always eager to say something different from Starmer, has said that the UK should apologise to the Caribbean nations for slavery. My own view is that this is a big mistake, both on grounds of what is fair, and because an apology implies an admission of guilt and opens the way for legal claims for financial reparations.
Two commentators who say that no apology is appropriate are Tony Sewell and Nigel Biggar.
“Britain was the first mover and primary actor in ending the transatlantic slave trade and slavery itself. Incidentally, trans-Sahara and trans-Indian Ocean slave trading went on unabated. So what, many of you may be saying: you stopped a slave trade that you started. I look across the room to many of our west African leaders, who know full well that this awful trade would not have happened without their ancestors selling on their own slaves and war captives. The guilt must run both ways. I have heard it said that Africans and Arabs only indulged in ‘household’ slavery and that the British treated humans worse than animals. There are no degrees of slavery — this was a universal evil.
“Britain passed laws banning slavery across the world and deployed our Royal Navy to fight other European nations who continued with this practice. We held the line until the trade fully ended. Between 1808 and 1860 the West Africa Squadron seized 1,600 slave ships and emancipated 150,000 slaves, while losing more than 1,500 sailors. Historians have described it as the most expensive international humanitarian intervention in modern history.
“The anti-slavery movement became part and parcel of the fabric of British society in the late 18th and 19th centuries. It spread among Quakers and the new evangelical movement, and poor working-class activists like the Chartists, and even upper-class ladies refused to take sugar in protest against the evil trade.
“Those advocating for reparations argue that the Industrial Revolution and Britain’s long-term wealth were fuelled by the income from slavery. In a forthcoming Institute of Economic Affairs paper, Professor Doug Stokes argues, ‘The dynamics of slavery are complex. While it enriched small groups of Britons, it did not enrich the nation. The best evidence from recent work suggests at most a gain of a decade’s worth of income growth per capita, concentrated in places like Lancashire.’
“What seems to disturb many people is that the families of slave traders were compensated for their loss after emancipation while the enslaved got nothing. It is now clear that this payoff was tactical, designed to buy out those interested parties in order to speed up emancipation.
“It is clear to me that ordinary people in the Caribbean realise that the campaign to wrest funds from Britain is driven by their own elite. Young people in Jamaica, Trinidad and Guyana are not on the streets burning the British flag and demanding reparations. Nor are they in Lagos, Accra or Delhi. They all ask hard questions of their current leadership, not of a past colonial master.
However, the argument that Britain should pay recompense for slavery is historically distorted, morally unfair and politically opportunistic. It depends on a cartoonishly simplistic tale of white people exploiting black people.
Did Britain benefit “tremendously”? Not according to one of the most eminent living historians of transatlantic slavery, David Eltis, who reckons its contribution to Britain’s industrial economy was “small” and its contribution to the economy of Liverpool — Britain’s biggest slaving port in 1750 — was “trivial”. The winner of the 2025 Nobel prize in economics, Joel Mokyr, agrees.
Transatlantic slavery was, while gravely unjust, not extraordinary. Difficult though it may be to appreciate, until the early 19th century slavery and slave-trading were practices conducted on every continent by people of every skin colour. Even escaped black slaves in Jamaica in the 1700s and freed slaves in the American South up to the 1860s kept slaves of their own.
Africans and Arabs were involved in African slave-trading and slavery for far longer and on a far larger scale. One estimate calculates that at least 34.5 million enslaved Africans were exported over the Atlantic to the Americas, through the Sahara to the Mediterranean and across the Indian Ocean. Since Arabs and Europeans seldom did the slave-raiding themselves, Africans themselves were responsible for the primary enslavement, including, it is said, the ancestors of President Mahama himself. The British share of the trade was about 9 per cent.
In 1804 it’s reckoned there were 45 million chattel slaves in the world — most of them in Asia — of which those in the British West Indies amounted to 1.7 per cent. In about 1850 the Fulani people deployed up to four million slaves on vast plantations in what is now northern Nigeria. So, at that one time there were more slaves in that one part of Africa than all the 3.26 million the British took across the Atlantic in two and a half centuries.
One report in 1797 has it that up to 1,500 people were sacrificed at royal funerals in Asante. Three centuries later, in the 1860s, Sudan was reckoned to furnish the Arab slave trade — annually — with 35,000 prepubescent African boys, to produce about 3,800 eunuchs. In other words, nearly 90 per cent died in the process of being forcibly castrated with a razor.
The argument in favour of British reparations not only distorts the truth about the past but also refuses to take into account the fact that Britain was the first major power in the history of the world to abolish both slave-trading and slavery, permanently. It then led the world in suppressing the practices in Brazil, throughout Africa and in Australasia. To single out the British — of all peoples — for slavery reparations is outrageously unfair.
So, rather than yield to the politically opportunistic exploitation of misplaced white guilt, the King and his government should publicly lament the inhumanity of worldwide slavery and the fact that some Britons ever played a part in it. Then they should point to Britain’s unequalled and sustained commitment to suppressing slavery all over the world from 1807 onwards, and invite Commonwealth members to collaborate in eradicating modern slavery in states such as Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Sudan and Libya. That would free this week’s meeting to constructively attend to the environmental and educational challenges of the present and not be divisively mired in the past.
[Post edited 1 Nov 9:48]
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Should the British state apologise for slavery? on 10:06 - Nov 1 with 781 views
That's a decent read and how most informed people would view slavery over the last 300 years. The reality is that slavery has existed since the ascent of man and still exists today.
This myth to promote it as an exclusively white - and more importantly British - crime is tiresome as it is opportunistic.
Not all, but many people of African heritage have a hard time accepting the historical reality that Africans themselves were responsible for it and that they also abducted and enslaved around 1.25 million white Europeans from the Mediterranean and Atlantic coastal regions between 1530 and 1780.
“Cunnilingus and Psychiatry brought us to this …”
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Should the British state apologise for slavery? on 10:38 - Nov 1 with 743 views
My methods are not favoured by some but by god i speak the truth. The caller out of bullshit since that letter to Paul Clement made planetswans famous. For a while.
Britain borrowed heavily to pay for freedom of slaves The debt was only paid off in 2014 This was two hundred years later It is madness but its post colonial guilt that too many suffer from So the likes of Riberira Addy want this generation to pay directly for the sons of our past over two hundred years ago A simply fook off is often the best retort
Should the British state apologise for slavery? on 16:31 - Nov 1 by Wingstandwood
I think it's about time that virtue signaling WOKE-droids stopped repeatedly placing victimhood upon people of colour!
If it's not slavery guilt, its Robin Di Angelo 'white privilege' guilt, or its guilt for shootings by police an ocean away etc.
It's about time white saviors stopped patronising black people just so that they can look so darn moralistic.
People of colour are not fringe supported in anyway by this govt or by any of these maggots of woke They would not want any black or Muslim living next door on their house on the country or city apartment block Black people , Asian people are being manipulated by lefty politicians and media It is grotesquely patronising
Should the British state apologise for slavery? on 16:47 - Nov 1 by onehunglow
People of colour are not fringe supported in anyway by this govt or by any of these maggots of woke They would not want any black or Muslim living next door on their house on the country or city apartment block Black people , Asian people are being manipulated by lefty politicians and media It is grotesquely patronising
It is indeed grotesquely patronising , like the complaints about Fiona Bruce because she called a black guy "black", because he just happened to be black.
The WOKE-droids were offended by the term "black", when I guess many black people wouldn't, because they would not see it as something to be ashamed of unlike the antagonists on a mission to be gratuitously offended on behalf of.
Argus!
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Should the British state apologise for slavery? on 18:01 - Nov 1 with 419 views
Should the British state apologise for slavery? on 17:21 - Nov 1 by Wingstandwood
It is indeed grotesquely patronising , like the complaints about Fiona Bruce because she called a black guy "black", because he just happened to be black.
The WOKE-droids were offended by the term "black", when I guess many black people wouldn't, because they would not see it as something to be ashamed of unlike the antagonists on a mission to be gratuitously offended on behalf of.
We defintely shouldn't apologise, acknowledge it, say how wrong it was but also point out nobody alive in Britain today is responsible for the transatlantic slave trade AND it was the British who did the most to stop it.
Why should innocent people pay reparations for slavery to people who have never been slaves? Why shoud the innocent pay for crimes they didn't commit? Why should people who weren't the victims get reparations?
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Should the British state apologise for slavery? on 20:58 - Nov 1 with 308 views
Should the British state apologise for slavery? on 19:51 - Nov 1 by SullutaCreturned
We defintely shouldn't apologise, acknowledge it, say how wrong it was but also point out nobody alive in Britain today is responsible for the transatlantic slave trade AND it was the British who did the most to stop it.
Why should innocent people pay reparations for slavery to people who have never been slaves? Why shoud the innocent pay for crimes they didn't commit? Why should people who weren't the victims get reparations?
That is a superb/rational take on the absolute lunacy of it all!
Argus!
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Should the British state apologise for slavery? on 08:33 - Nov 2 with 204 views
Should the British state apologise for slavery? on 20:58 - Nov 1 by Wingstandwood
That is a superb/rational take on the absolute lunacy of it all!
It goes like this We were wrong to colonise countries and take their wealth We shouldn’t have had slaves There again , same applies to Romans Danes Dutch Belgians( the worst) French German Portuguese Italians and America Altogether now Sorry
You’d have thought 200 yrs would have seen them get over it but no( why ? Because it means free money flowing into their fooked up economies
Meanwhile, we should stay well away from the Caribbean They despise us
Should the British state apologise for slavery? on 08:33 - Nov 2 by onehunglow
It goes like this We were wrong to colonise countries and take their wealth We shouldn’t have had slaves There again , same applies to Romans Danes Dutch Belgians( the worst) French German Portuguese Italians and America Altogether now Sorry
You’d have thought 200 yrs would have seen them get over it but no( why ? Because it means free money flowing into their fooked up economies
Meanwhile, we should stay well away from the Caribbean They despise us
The last sentence is nothing like I have found. Wonderful Islands and on the whole wonderful people. But I can imagine how some with strange attitudes are despised.
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Should the British state apologise for slavery? on 09:00 - Nov 2 with 172 views
Should the British state apologise for slavery? on 08:42 - Nov 2 by Whiterockin
The last sentence is nothing like I have found. Wonderful Islands and on the whole wonderful people. But I can imagine how some with strange attitudes are despised.
Morning Well , not with me Sucking teeth , rolling eyes and often indolent They want the tourist income but underneath lies a seething resentment which is evident in many MPs of Caribbean extraction
It’s odd isn’t it, the French have always had a bad reputation but I have spent a lot of time in France and found them excellent people and it upsets me to see the riots in France There is a common theme now with riots in Germany, Italy and now Portugal
Should the British state apologise for slavery? on 09:00 - Nov 2 by onehunglow
Morning Well , not with me Sucking teeth , rolling eyes and often indolent They want the tourist income but underneath lies a seething resentment which is evident in many MPs of Caribbean extraction
It’s odd isn’t it, the French have always had a bad reputation but I have spent a lot of time in France and found them excellent people and it upsets me to see the riots in France There is a common theme now with riots in Germany, Italy and now Portugal
It’s mankind’s nature
"Morning Well , not with me"
I rest my case.
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Should the British state apologise for slavery? on 09:31 - Nov 2 with 141 views
Should the British state apologise for slavery? on 09:31 - Nov 2 by onehunglow
That’s fine It’s different perceptions isn’t it You see things one way,and I another
What’s the next case ?
Possibly you should have said that they despise you and not us. As I said I have had a different experience, with dozens of visits over 40 years , even having dinner with one family in their home. Possibly if your attitude was different less people would despise you, your words.
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Should the British state apologise for slavery? on 11:28 - Nov 2 with 80 views
Did we not apologise to Ireland for being beastly and the family stuff I don’t seem to recall Gerry and Marty saying sorry for killing British soldiers Apologies when forced upon are disingenuous
Note to Charles 111 … carry an umbrella yourself ya pitiful bugger
Camilla must have been soaked through to her satin corsets
Literally every country in the world has committed some kind of atrocity or other over the last few millennia. Not to belittle the slave trade which was obviously awful in every way but it’s just one example of millions where humans have been shitty to other humans and if everyone was obliged to apologise for every bad thing their ancestors did it would never end.
You don’t hear the same calls for Mongolia to get down on their knees and beg for forgiveness for Genghis Khan and his Golden Horde rampaging, raping and pillaging across the largest contiguous empire in history for example.
This phenomenon is mainly driven by Britain hating politicians and ‘comedians’ who on one hand often campaign for an increase in public service spending and welfare whilst unfathomably and simultaneously demand we send trillions of pounds of reperations in the form of tax payers money to far flung countries to absolve us of an imagined injustice that we are all somehow responsible for despite not being alive at the time.
There are some seriously dangerous and deranged people in our political system, it’s infested with them and some of them make it as high as government. We should be absolutely terrified if these morons ever get their hands on the levers of power.
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