May 2007, BEP letter re Slavery

(Letter to Bristol Evening Post, May 2007)

Subject: Slavery

Dear Sir,

Slavery

Please let's move on.

There may indeed be an argument that the absolutely bestial cruelty inflicted by some slave owners upon their victims in the West Indies and in America are even more inexcusable because they were inflicted by people from a relatively advanced state of civilisation.

However, on the question of guilt and compensation, I do not think that the complainants have a valid case today.
If we go back eight or 10 generations to the heyday of western slavery, I have 250-1000 ancestors, and so do all British people now living.

It is quite false to picture the British or other countries as homogeneous societies, not interbreeding with other countries. In Britain today, one person in four has a foreign-born parent. The ideal of collective responsibility is therefore as unreasonable and unjust as the principle of collective punishment. There should be a statute of limitation - certainly not more than 100 years- beyond which complaints cannot be considered.

In this "guilt by descendancy", may I point out that the United Nations decided, long ago, that the present or past occupation of territory by a certain community cannot be regarded as a pretext for occupying that territory. Hitler was quite wrong to claim the Sudeten land in Czechoslovakia because it was inhabited by ethnic Germans, and the Jews have no claim over Palestine any more than the Celtic Bretons can claim England.

African complaints about slavery should be met with a clear statement that such brutality was wrong, and a reproach to those, African or not, who practised it. But the descendants of an African slave-trader cannot be held responsible in any way for their ancestors' sins, and neither can the descendants of a European slave trader.

It is a principle of law that a man or woman is responsible for their own actions, and to some extent for the actions of their minor children or wards, or their pupils, agents or employees. But the buck surely stops there.

Are we going to blame the present Duke of Wherever for the fact that his land was originally stolen from the people. What dangerous nonsense.

The Africans were at it decades ahead of anyone else, and still are. Well before mssrs Colston and others got involved, tribes were stealing other tribes' and trading them for trinkets. It is still going on in many parts of the world today, and it is to its eradication that all efforts should be directed.

Our ancestors put it on an efficient basis and it is this which has so annoyed them.

Most people, it seems to me, would be more tolerant of capitalism and enterprise if it were less successful or if they'd thought of it first.

This extreme jealousy can be seen in other current events as well, perhaps the main one being Zimbabwe's self destruction - blamed on the Brits of course.

The victim industry has become extremely irrational, expensive and damaging to community cohesion. Many of the articulate, educated, complaining descendants are no doubt in a much better position than they would have been had not their ancestors been removed forcibly from their homeland, tho' such logic seems to escape them when a trough of compensation loot is within their grasp.

Hence they see the need to foster guilt in their rescuers.

Yours,

Roy