National reparations commissions in the region will also approach Lloyd’s of London and the Church of England with demands of financial payments and reparative justice for their historic role in slavery.
This is getting silly now. We’ve agreed for thousands of years that children aren’t responsible for the sins of their fathers. This attempt to resurrect Babylonian era values is absurd. Critical thinking is clearly absent in modern schooling.
It has nothing to do with punishing children for the sins of their fathers, it’s about paying people for the work they did. Living descendants of slave owners still benefit today from the unpaid labour, to pay reparations isn’t a punishment, it’s the smallest possible attempt to make the victims of slavery whole.
it’s about paying people for the work they did.
Okay, so pay slaves for the work they did. But we can’t, because they’re long dead. So that’s not what you’re asking at all. You’re asking for people who never owned slaves to pay people who were never slaves. Not all British white people are wealthy as a result of historical slavery. In fact, most British were dirt poor and never owned any slaves at all. Today, their ancestors remain dirt poor. You’d ask them to pay recompense for something for which neither they nor their ancestors are guilty.
I’m white and of Irish descent. My ancestors were subject to genocide under the Irish Potato Famine. Am I morally owed restitution? Further back, my ancestors were subject to slavery along the North African coast and Middle East for hundreds of years in the Barbary slave trade. Am I owed reparations from the numerous countries involved in that? To me it quickly becomes apparent that any feigned moral outrage begins and stops at white people. Everyone’s ancestors are guilty of atrocities if we go back far enough. Everyone’s ancestors were subject to atrocities as well.
we can’t because they’re long dead
If someone died today who was owed £100,000 for some work they did, would the debt be written off, or would it become owed to their estate?
most British didn’t have slaves
Did you forget what thread you were commenting on? This is about the royal family, not some random East Londoner from the 17th century.
am I owed restitution
I would say so, yes. But it’s not “moral”, this is nothing to do with morals, it’s to do with the reality of the situation - Irish people have historically been victimised for the benefit of others, especially the British, and so I would 100% be in favour of the UK making some sort of payment to try and mitigate that problem. I do have to say that, morally speaking, (but not technically) I think it’s lower on the priority list, because white Irish people have a pretty decent quality of life now, and imo it would be better to try put money where it would be most needed before paying overdue debts to more prosperous people
The UK government was still paying off former slaveowners as recently as a few years ago
Honest question: Is there any legitimate expectation of them actually paying up?
Probably not, and even then it’d be taxpayer money, which is totally unfair.
Is there precedent for this? What happened in the US for example? Or Belgium? Or Portugal?
Wasn’t Belgium one of the countries that had the biggest hand in slave trade? I remember reading they were horrific. Yet, they’re barely spoken about in the same sentence.
Good luck with that 🙃
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Earlier this year, the Guardian revealed that direct ancestors of King Charles III and the royal family bought and exploited enslaved people on tobacco plantations in Virginia.
Research by the playwright Desirée Baptiste unearthed a document instructing a ship’s captain to deliver the enslaved Africans to Edward Porteus, a tobacco plantation owner in Virginia, and two other men.
Support for the research was part of Charles’s process of deepening his understanding of “slavery’s enduring impact”, the spokesperson said, which had “continued with vigour and determination” since his accession.
“It is part of our shared history that caused enormous suffering and continues to have a negative impact on Black and ethnically diverse communities today,” the company stated on its website.
“There’s no doubt that those who were making the investment knew that the South Sea Company was trading in enslaved people, and that’s now a source of real shame for us, and for which we apologise,” Gareth Mostyn, chief executive of the Church Commissioners, told BBC radio earlier this year.
Adrian Odle, a lawyer and commission chair, told the Telegraph that British institutions are compromised by their ancestral guilt, saying “every property that the royal family is in possession of has the scent of slavery”.
The original article contains 638 words, the summary contains 204 words. Saved 68%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
The Royal family responded “But we already made reperations to the slave holders!”
