MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: For those seen as a soft touch, the demands for money will never stop .H
The transatlantic slave trade was a monstrous episode in the history of civilisation.
Over the course of two centuries, millions of black Africans were bought and sold like cattle.
These wretched people were transported across the ocean in chains and put into back-breaking work on plantations in the Caribbean and America.
Britain certainly played a large part in this pernicious enterprise. The cotton spun in mills, the coffee and sugar traded in bustling markets, were the result of forced labour. And while it is a myth that the slave trade built the British Empire, this country benefited greatly from it.
But how much should we be held responsible today for the sins of our ancestors? And can those grievous wrongs be righted centuries later by cash payment?
The question of slavery reparations will be brought up by Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley (seen with Sir Keir Starmer) and others at the Commonwealth heads of government summit in Samoa later this month
Sir Keir and David Lammy will barely be off the plane before they are ambushed by Caribbean leaders demanding we pay a £200 billion bill
These questions will come into sharp focus at the Commonwealth heads of government summit in Samoa later this month.
For the first time, the issue of reparations for Britain’s imperial wrongdoing will be on the agenda.
Sir Keir Starmer and David Lammy will barely be off the plane before they are ambushed by Caribbean leaders demanding we pay a £200 billion bill to atone for historic misdeeds. So how will the Prime Minister and his Foreign Secretary respond?
The bill is so outrageously large it makes Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s alleged ‘black hole’ resemble loose change.
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Even if partially paid, it would bankrupt Britain. That alone should convince the Prime Minister to firmly reject it.
However, the request for reparations does play into the infantile anti-colonialist narrative so beloved of the Government.
From Sir Keir taking the knee to Mr Lammy’s absurd suggestion that he could empathise with Ukraine’s suffering because he was black, Labour couldn’t be clearer that it is embarrassed by Britain’s post-colonial legacy.
Paying up would inevitably lead to more calls for reparations, which could never be large enough to satisfy the activists.
So Sir Keir must not lead us down this path. Behind the monochrome narrative of colonialism lie many shades of grey. Britain didn’t invent slavery. It was commonplace among the indigenous peoples of Africa, South America and parts of Asia long before European colonisation.
West African chieftains and Arab middlemen enthusiastically colluded in the enslavement of millions. Should they also pay?
And what about the progeny of the one million-plus white Europeans seized by Barbary pirates from North Africa? Don’t they deserve a cheque too?
The bill is so outrageously large it makes Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s alleged ‘black hole’ resemble loose change
What is too often forgotten or wilfully ignored is that Britain was also pivotal to ending slavery. Not only within our empire. We made it our mission to abolish this appalling trade in human misery wherever it reared its ugly head. And we succeeded.
Should we get some sort of discount on the compensation payments we allegedly owe?
There’s also the fact that if we keep looking over our shoulders to the slave trade of the past we are in serious danger of turning a blind eye to it in the present.
Of course, it’s hardly a surprise smaller countries are clamouring for us to pay compensation.
They will have been emboldened by Sir Keir recklessly and needlessly surrendering the strategically vital Chagos Islands to Mauritius. That powerfully transmitted the idea Britain is a soft touch and Labour will betray the national interest in the name of decolonisation.
The truth is, it is futile to judge history by today’s standards. For while we can learn from the past, we can’t change it. To pretend we can atone by paying guilt money is simply fatuous.
