Everything is wrong in this country

Yes WWII was recently finished paid for to the USA- who else??

I do think there is a distinct difference between paying for wars and trafficking humans for personal wealth. Perhaps the very wealthy like Cameron could have picked up their share of the bill and repaid it themselves? Complicated I know but morally right.

Indeed! David Olusoga did a documentary about the issue. He interviewed some aristocrat, who was still living in the ancestral home, which had been built with slave compensation.

I don't know what kind of loans the government took out for the compensation money, but it's true that all sorts of debts take decades, if not centuries, to pay off. The UK only finished paying that Americans for WW2 land lease (I think) a few years ago. If you dig deeply, there might even be some loans for WW1 or even Napoleonic Wars. I'm not sure exactly how the post-WW2 spending on the NHS or welfare state was financed either.

I agree that the way slave-owners were compensated were compensated was appalling. At the time it was considered that it was the only way emancipation would get through parliament. Don't forget that, at the time, only a fraction of the population could vote and the ones who did were the wealthiest and the very people who possibly had "shares" in slaves.

www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/29/slavery-abolition-compensation-when-will-britain-face-up-to-its-crimes-against-humanity

It's sort of irrelevant whether the compensation money was directly paid in the here and now to descendants of slave owners. It must be the case that at least some very wealthy families owe that wealth to the inheritance across the generations of money given to their forebears as "compensation" for being legally prohibited from owning and trading human beings.

A Mirror article states:

"The government pledged in 1833 £20,000,000.00 million in order to reimburse the owners of slaves when slavery was abolished in Britain. The sum, while big now, was monstrous in 1833, [apparently £2,340,888,484.84] and it took the British taxpayer 182 years to pay off" [apparently in 2015].

Why many people were extremely angry about this is that the government borrowed this huge amount and recouped it via tax payers. Slaves were not compensated for being auctioned off like cattle to the highest bidder and thereafter exploited, physically and sexually abused, and sometimes murdered, by their owners.

Because it has taken over 180 years for governments to pay off this debt, the descendants of slaves have actually been involuntarily contributing, by means of tax, to the compensation paid to the people who enslaved their forebears. How crazy is that!

Heartbreaking isn't it ...

Personally, I moved to UK in 1970. And I loved it, embraced it, admired it, enjoyed it - London, the West Mids and the East Mids- and travelled all over- and fell in love with it, head over heels. Be it the secret beaches of Corwall, Devon, North Norfolk, or Pembrokeshire, the Dales and the Peaks, the Cotswolds and Rutland- and the large multicutural town where I lived the longest, raised my kids, did my Degree, had a full career. And we moved back to my place of birth on retirement NOT because we had come to hate it - like many who moved- but because we wanted a change, and my very elderly parents desperately needed help- and we fell in love for a very very old wonderful house up in t'mountains.

Kept a property in the UK, have DDs and GCs there, family and friends- and come back very regularly and travel all over.

But what I truly really loved, the mix of people and cultures, the tolerance and love, the GSOH, the care for those less fortunate- is what is all disappearing now- because of the B word- we will be there 2 days after the election- and we so look forward to being with DDs and GCs - but in a way we are dreading it. Even in early November- people felt so divided, that magical, friendly, open and tolerant GREAT Britain just did not feel the same anymore - it felt changed, in a way that we found heart breaking. Not because we don't love it- but because we DO!

sarah ''I say to those who persistently run down this country if you can find better what's stopping you ?''

Many have - sometimes a case of 'grass is greener' and all that. Some have done so because they felt there were too many foreigners in the UK, too many not well integrated, who did not speak English well, who lived in ghettos among themselves, eating their own foods, with their own shops, their own Churches, etc, etc. So they moved- and did exactly that ... (there are many excellent exceptions). And some - unbelievably, availed themselves of free movement- and then VOTED FOR BREXIT- to stop others from being able to follow. Some are here on GN -and just can't see the hypocrisy and irony of it all.

One thing is for sure, after Brexit- what will stop people will be the changes in permits, visas, exchange rate, availability of healthcare, and possibly a backlash against Brits in some communities.

sarah you see I actually might prefer to use my vote in the hope that I can change things.

Chewbacca
My very thoughts. I say to those who persistently run down this country if you can find better what's stopping you ?

Hi Inkcog, to get back to your question, which has been partially answered, and because you mentioned a cup of coffee, there are Social Bite cafes in some towns where you pay more than the cost of your drink, with the extra money going to pay for food for the next homeless person who comes in and asks.

I found mine on the map and clicked on it.

For some reason my surgery isn't on the list.

Some bedtime reading for you Maizie (and anybody else):

archives.history.ac.uk/history-in-focus/Slavery/articles/emmer.html

You're right Maizie. The talk I attended stressed that very point. There are details of the recipients on the UCL site. Most of the money actually went to people who had never been anywhere near a plantation. People bought shares, which were effectively loans to the plantation owners, and the portfolios were often inherited. There were loads of annuitants and others who discovered they had just a few shares as part of their investments.

This link shows the cuts to be made in individual areas.

My surgery is due to have cuts of £65000, which equates to a doctor or two nurses. The regional funding loss is eyewatering!

nhscuts.org.uk/

OK - still think the principle stands though.

My point was really that it wasn't just slave owners who benefited from compensation. The money was spread much wider.

Yes, it may have kept some put of debtors prison; I suspect they mostly stayed in the West Indies in supervisory roles with diminished status. I haven't researched that far...

Must have helped keep them afloat and out of debtors prison though

A lot of the slave compensation money wasn't paid to the slave 'owners' at all. The sugar trade was declining badly by the 1830s and many of the plantation owners were so heavily in debt that the 'compensation' payments went straight to their creditors. Who could have been people who'd never set foot in the West Indies or owned any property out there.

Just a bit of an aside...

Apparently David Cameron's ancestors were slave owners and were in receipt of the compensation you refer to.

Cheers grow

I guess tax payers were still paying in 2015 because they were still paying off government debt, but I think the people with an interest in slave ownership (whether as owners or shareholders) were paid off in 1833. Apparently, it was 40% of the Treasury's income that year, so would have had to take out a loan to pay.

Yes, you can go and have a cuppa. I wasn't disputing what you said. I was just curious about what you meant.

Indeed they were. The UCL database has information about the stately homes which were built. Much of the money was also used to fund the building of railways.

David Olusoga is one of the people pushing for the British government to compensate countries in the West Indies and elsewhere. He certainly knows a lot about slave ownership.

It was a huge stain on the UK's history and we owe an awful lot to slavery (especially the building of railways). The slaves themselves were treated appallingly. Even after emancipation, they still weren't properly free and many suffered discrimination. Their descendants still do, of course. You'd honestly think that the government would have learnt a few lessons and treated the Windrush generation more sensitively and humanely.

I went to a talk about it a couple of years ago, presented by one of the researchers from UCL. I'm still wracking my brain about who exactly should pay and whom should be compensated nearly 200 years later

I assume I can stop looking now?

Oh I see. I must have misunderstood as there were 10 of us around the table, and my friend is a college lecturer, and I assumed I’d heard correctly. But presumably the principle still stands about the tax payer?