Some thoughts on slavery and reparations.
The saddest thing, I think, about the return of the question of whether Britain should pay reparations for the practice of slavery, now centred on the foreign secretary David Lammy, is the way that such a heinous and sickening...
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The saddest thing, I think, about the return of the question of whether Britain should pay reparations for the practice of slavery, now centred on the foreign secretary David Lammy, is the way that such a heinous and sickening...
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...practice has been politicised. It is, when one thinks for even a moment about what went on in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the scale of suffering involved, hugely affecting and a stain on our national story. Yet the tone of the debate somehow inures us to the...
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...details of this horror. Nevertheless, it is understandable that Britons are angered by the tone and form of the demands. It is implied that Britain should pay reparations absent of any broadly accepted legal framework, or even international norms, to deal with such...
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...historical outrages. If there were such laws and accepted practices, of course, Britain would not be the only country on the hook for reparations, and perhaps not even the priority target. Other such candidates, including Turkey, the Arab nations, China, and the North...
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...west African counties, are often put forward in well rehearsed arguments. The problem being that the 'institution' of slavery, far from being a uniquely British (or Anglo) practice, was simply the most common state of affairs throughout human history. Certainly the...
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...Romans, for all their civilisation and intellectual achievements, would have seen no problem with it. Nor the Ottomans. By which I don't mean that they would not have had this debate, but that they would, for the most part, *not have seen any problem*. I'm too ignorant...
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...suggest that Western, liberal Christianity--with all its focus on caring for the weak, on doing unto others, and viewing humans as equal before God--allowed for a break in the normal state of human societies, and further that the global dominance of Western Christian...
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...empires from the 18th century allowed for the slow eradication of this heinous practice. But it does seem a possibility. So, added to the fact slavery was commonplace, should Britain, as many argue, get offsetting credit for leading the way on eradication? And Western...
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...societies in general. Has any economist looked into the value of that as they have on the toll of slavery itself? Also, why stop at slavery? Shouldn't Jews be compensated for the Holocaust? Armenians for their genocide? Poland was recently claiming reparations from...
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...Germany for the Second World War. And if Britain is to pay reparations to, say, Barbados, should we also pay to China for the deliberately addicting their population to opium? The general practice, of course, is that these old outrages are not punished. The entire...
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...concept of international law as we understand it today only took root a hundred years ago, after the Great War. The idea of punishments for individuals for 'crimes against humanity' is even younger, being drawn from Nuremberg. Should we now go back and start...
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...litigating and passing judgment on the past? If so, how far do we go and where do we stop? I don't mean to be glib, but the entire idea of a nation willingly paying large compensation for past crimes is novel (reparations were paid in past, but only when compelled...
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...by national defeat in war). Mr Lammy, Barbados, and the wider community of intellectuals, political leaders and activists would be far more persuasive if they sought to first create a framework for addressing historical harms, dealing with the questions touched upon...
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...in this thread. First, how far do we punish actions and policies that are now seen as morally wrong, but were simply not by anybody at the time? Secondly, on the matter of slavery, who is liable, which countries were involved, how much, and how do they all net out?
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(By which I mean, the UK was a large participant in the trans Atlantic slave trade, but suffered from the Barbary slave trade: What's the net net?) Thirdly, does fighting to stop slavery (or a genocide, say) count on the credit side of the ledger? Fourthly, what other...
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...crimes against humanity deserve to be addressed in this way? Fifthly, how far back do we go? A fair conversion would ask all these questions, and seek, intentionally, to find an answer. Until then, I think it's not wrong of us to wonder whether the focus of Mr...
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...Lammy and others on Britain is because of personal feeling (understandable perhaps), an instinct common among the British liberal left that Britain is uniquely bad (infinitely less understandable), or just selective targeting for whatever other reason. None of...
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...that would seem objective, or even fair, but that's what we're currently left with. Is it any wonder, therefore, that Britons are outraged by the suggestion? Meantime, let's not make the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade another victim of tribal political war.
ENDS
ENDS
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