Apologies for past injustices - where do you stand?

We should learn from our mistakes and move on and educate the present young so they are aware.
The Roman Empire would not have existed but for slaves. The Vikings took British slaves to Iceland. Slavery was going on in Africa internally with tribes selling to Arab traders before it was expanded by France, Portugal and Great Britain as it was then.
None of these facts makes it right but we should learn from them to educate the young and move on.
Perhaps more attention should have been paid to how the Caribbean countries felt before William was sent out.

Learning from history and doing better now can be more affective than apologising for events we had no control over.
Helping Ukranian refugees springs to mind

MaizieD

volver

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitehall_Accord

The Whitehall Accord. Good old Henry Dundas, aka Henry IX.

I fail to see the relevance of that to Napoleon reinstating slavery.

OK, apologies for continuing a diversion to the thread. Henry Dundas is a figure of great interest in Scotland right now. He has a statue

There was an agreement that Britain could exert control over some of the French colonies in the Caribbean, agreed with French counter revolutionaries. So when the French Revolutionary government abolished slavery, the cry would have gone up from the counter revolutionaries, that they needed to bring slavery back or the colonies wouldn't be controlled by the French any more.

So Napoleon brought slavery back.

Happy to be corrected by someone who knows more than me.

The question that really intrigues me is 'Why are people so bloody respectful of the people who are enjoying that wealth today?'

Yes, that puzzles me too. Since I came to live in this country I have been acutely aware of 'status'. Whether that is how much money you have, the car you drive, the kind of house you live in, schools your children attend. For instance I sooon learned that if you lived in a semi detached house you were seen as a 'better' person than if you lived in a humble terrace house. Status seems to be an obsession. I guess it makes some people feel superior. It still doesn't answer the question why others feel the need to revere it.

Conservatives are called that for a reason.

GrannyGravy13

As is mine MaizieD

So explain please what 'erasing history' has to do with this thread, which is primarily to do with acknowledging and dealing with our history?

And how displaying one statue in a museum is 'erasing history'.

As is mine MaizieD

GrannyGravy13

sorry MaizieD didn’t realise that your new role as thread prefect means I or anyone else has to ask you before we post anything?

Just my opinion, GG13. It's allowed...

volver

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitehall_Accord

The Whitehall Accord. Good old Henry Dundas, aka Henry IX.

I fail to see the relevance of that to Napoleon reinstating slavery.

sorry MaizieD didn’t realise that your new role as thread prefect means I or anyone else has to ask you before we post anything?

GrannyGravy13

MaizieD

Come on, GG13 & GSM. I really, really want to know who is attempting to erase history on this thread?

There are certainly a number of people trying to minimise it...

I was not referring to anyone on this thread saying they wanted to erase history MaizieD

I was against the statue being vandalised and removed in Bristol. In my opinion all these so called bad statues should be left with an added plaque describing the history of the man, both good and bad.

We have to acknowledge our past, and locking statues and memorials away is tantamount to erasing history.

Educating each generation of the wrongs of the past should hopefully ensure that they are never repeated.

You said it, though and GSM ran with it:

Acknowledge our past, good and bad, not erase it.

Why say it if no-one had mentioned it?

It's like a culture war mantra that people just trot out unthinkingly. People pulling down a hated statue of a slave trader were trying to 'erase history'. National Trust properties trying to raise awareness of the source of a property's former owners wealth were 'trying to erase history'.

Please, please; if the stupid phrase isn't relevant to anything that has been said during the discussion, don't use it.

And, FFS, putting a statue (one single bloody statue, not 'statues') in a museum with an explanation of how and why it got there and is no longer standing outside Is NOT 'locking it away'. Please tell me about these locked away memorials, too. I don't keep my finger quite as closely on the fake culture wars button as others clearly do...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitehall_Accord

The Whitehall Accord. Good old Henry Dundas, aka Henry IX.

volver

And Napoleon re-instated it, I believe, because slavery was still going on in the British colonies and there were threats from former slave owners that Britain would take over the French colonies and use slave labour there, unless it was reinstated?

History is rarely linear.

Completely failing to see the logic in that, volver. How would the British be able to take over the French colonies just because the slaves were 'free'?

I suspect his motive was more economic than anything else. Free slaves = less efficient working practices = diminished revenues ?

MaizieD

Come on, GG13 & GSM. I really, really want to know who is attempting to erase history on this thread?

There are certainly a number of people trying to minimise it...

I was not referring to anyone on this thread saying they wanted to erase history MaizieD

I was against the statue being vandalised and removed in Bristol. In my opinion all these so called bad statues should be left with an added plaque describing the history of the man, both good and bad.

We have to acknowledge our past, and locking statues and memorials away is tantamount to erasing history.

Educating each generation of the wrongs of the past should hopefully ensure that they are never repeated.

I think there are two separate issues emerging from this thread. One is that of apologising for past cruelties to our fellow humans; the other is, for me, the question of the wealth accumulated, and passed down through the generations, by the exercisers of that inhumanity.

I don't think we have to play top trumps over how that wealth was generated; whether it was via slave labour in the 'colonies', almost slave labour in factories, dispossessing the poor of their lands in the pursuit of profits or exporting foodstuffs from a country in the grip of a famine it is all founded on the pursuit of wealth over humanity.

The question that really intrigues me is 'Why are people so bloody respectful of the people who are enjoying that wealth today?'

And Napoleon re-instated it, I believe, because slavery was still going on in the British colonies and there were threats from former slave owners that Britain would take over the French colonies and use slave labour there, unless it was reinstated?

History is rarely linear.

Come on, GG13 & GSM. I really, really want to know who is attempting to erase history on this thread?

There are certainly a number of people trying to minimise it...

And in case we're getting all superior about abolishing slavery, France first abolished it in their colonies in 1794.

And Napoleon reinstated it... (saying this for historical accuracy rather than defending the British record)

And the British only abolished the slave trade. It took them another 27 years to abolish actual slavery.

Why wouldn't descendents of the Great Famine ask for an apology GSM? It's not top trumps on Suffering. We certainly can't change the past but it doesn't mean that the many, many horrific injustices of the past should be glossed over and disappear without trace. Apologies may be useless, mealy mouthed, too little too late concessions to make any kind of difference to the actual humans who endured the atrocities but surely recognition, their stories told and honoured, should be the least the descendants of those who actively promoted and vastly profited from vile decisions and policies resulting in abject and, in so many cases, ongoing legacies of misery can do?

DillytheGardener I haven’t seen anyone denying that the slave trade was absolutely dreadful and barbaric on this thread. (Apologies if I have missed something)

I’m seeing a lot of ‘whataboutism’ on this thread in an attempt to minimise and diminish the horrors of slavery and the subsequent contemporary legacy of the imbalance of both wealth and power between the slave owning countries and the enslaved.

But I hope we can all agree that separating peoples from their country, culture, family, to be raped to procreate more slaves then resultant children ripped away from their family, forced to work, tortured and killed if they tried to flee, killed if they became sick and ill, tortured if they couldn’t keep up with their workload over generations, and the legacy that has left on these countries that were raped and pillaged, is one of the greatest stains on British history.

I have been reading this thread with interest as I don't really know where I stand on making apologies for historic wrongs. So its interesting to see both sides.

However the allegation that the descendants of people taken as slaves were better off than the ones who stayed behind, because they would have been poor? That's kind of pointing me in one particular direction.

And in case we're getting all superior about abolishing slavery, France first abolished it in their colonies in 1794.

Germanshepherdsmum

Well said GrannyGravy. To erase the past does a disservice to all who suffered. To acknowledge and learn from it honours their memory.

I'm sorry, GG13 & GSM . Who, exactly, is trying to erase the past here?

There were victims of slavery here and in parts of Brittany when Barbary raiding parties carried off their hapless victims from the west country who suffered the awful fate that anyone who became enslaved did. Some may remember when a huge search ensued after Madeleine McCann went missing a little blonde child in Morocco was sighted as a possibility, she was in fact a Moroccan child living in the Atlas Mountains with her family. It was reported that those genetic traces that made her stand out were from long ago but still found today.

And those who were left behind and starved because the government refused assistance Dilly? Were they better off than slaves?