Park named after William Gladstone could be given new title over slavery links
What slavery links?
Early in his political career, four-time Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone lobbied for compensation for former slave owners
Lobbying for an effective method – OK, call it what it was, bribe – to end slavery is links to slavery now, is it?
I don’t think that link’s working, Tim.
Fixed.
Year 0ne at any cost for any reason.
gawd. Illiterate morons up in arms because they misunderstand financial language. Or even just language.
“Compensation” Just Means “payment”. As in compensation for hours worked. Railway and electricity shareholders were “compensated” when their companies were nationalised – it just means they were paid for their shares. There is ***NO**** implication of fault or error or benefit. Just because in today’s world “compensation” is the word used in injury payments morons jump up and down and assert that “compensation” means “payment for being injured”.
It wasn’t a bribe, it was making good for the government seizing the owners’ property rights. I’m glad they freed the slaves and I’m glad they lubricated the process with money; compared to the murderous warfare in the USA paying up was far cheaper.
Wasn’t his father a slave owner that received compensation for said emancipation?
Oh, it’s Brent. A toilet that would be massively improved by an ICBM.
Appropriate that the link was broken.
‘It wasn’t a bribe, it was making good for the government seizing the owners’ property rights. I’m glad they freed the slaves and I’m glad they lubricated the process with money; compared to the murderous warfare in the USA paying up was far cheaper.’
I agree.
The plantation owners operated on credit through the year and settled their debts when they were paid for their harvests. The value of their slave holdings were used as part of the security they offered for the loans and for probate. Had they not been compensated they would have been effectively be bankrupted, with all the ramifications that would have had in The City. So the money went to the plantation owners and came straight back to The City.
And considering that the amount paid to the slave owners was forty percent of the entire national budget (and five percent of Britain’s GDP at the time), the ramifications for The City would have been horrific.
The cupboard where they now keep the hoover in 10 Downing Street was where Gladstone locked his slaves when they failed to “perform” properly. The shackles are in No 10’s “Black Museum” alongside Lord Salisbury’s gimp suit.
I wonder if people ask whether they should have paid twice as much in order to deport all the former slaves back to Africa?
Otto- you jest (i think) but he put the lambda symbol in his diaries. The guess is that he flagellated himself on those days.- but could’ve been another.
Isn’t that when he went out to save prostitutes, HB ?
Well supposed to look like a whip- so possibly he did some saving that way too.
Compensated emancipation couldn’t be done in the U.S. because the national government didn’t have much money, and what they had they got in tariffs from the slave owners. The slave owners would be paying themselves to free their slaves.
“It wasn’t a bribe, it was making good for the government seizing the owners’ property rights. I’m glad they freed the slaves and I’m glad they lubricated the process with money; compared to the murderous warfare in the USA paying up was far cheaper.”
+ a lot
“Compensated emancipation couldn’t be done in the U.S. because …” the federal government didn’t have the gumption to change its tax regime to pay for it. So it indulged in slaughter instead, which somehow it did pay for.