Caribbean nations are to formally demand slavery reparations from the Royal family, The Telegraph can reveal.
Lloyds of London and the Church of England are also set to be approached with demands for reparative justice for their role in the slave trade and plantation system.
National reparations commissions in the Caribbean want to bypass the British Government and pursue financial payments directly from British institutions with historical links to slavery.
No, now bugger off.
Folk who live in the Caribbean now as a result of that historical slavery are better off than those whose ancestors were not enslaved and who are now living in West Africa. It’s not possible to reparate for someone being made better off.
Bugger off therefore. Vile race based grifters the lot of ’em.
It doesn’t matter if they’re better off or not.
The correct answer is Bugger off. Neither you nor we
were alive at the time and neither of us can be held responsible for our ancestors behaviour.
You’re a nice bloke Chernyy.
Of course I believe that the blacks owe us reparations for dumping their paupers, convicts and enemies on us via the poor old slave traders.
Caribbean nations are to formally demand slavery reparations
I already gave money to the Black Babies and Live Aid, but there’s no end with these people.
UNSUBSCRIBE
Once you pay the Danegeld, Steve…
Paying money to these people is like letting them pull on a loose thread on your jumper.
They keep pulling until your jumper no longer exists. You get cold and they’ve got lots of lovely wool they don’t know what to do with.
It could be fun to agree to pay, but using useable commodities from the time the slave trade was abolished.
Salt, light, sugar, spices, potable water being much cheaper now, the recipients could be given an amount of those things valued at several years labour at that time.
Who enslaved the slaves?
Black Africans.
They should demand reparations from the kingdoms of Ashanti, Benin, Cameroon etc
Well the CoE is almost certainly going to cave isn’t it? Which is going to make life more awkward for the rest of them.
36 million plastic Paddies in the USA will see themselves as having a good case to sue the UK or its institutions over various historical wrongdoings (massacres, plantations, famine) some of which are more recent than that. I don’t see any logical reason why it would stop at slavery reparations, it’s not as if the slave trade is the only dodgy thing the British state or its predecessors was ever involved in.
Unfortunately I doubt any British government would have the nerve to sue the German state or the descendants of the Vikings or Barbarby pirates, even if one eventually caved in to foreign reparations.
Why not just restore the status quo? Ship them all back to Mother Africa…
And anyway… What DID the Romans do for us?
We’ve already paid reparations, freeing the slaves, offering free passage back to Africa (less than 10% took up the offer), which nearly bankrupted the country, and in the lives and injuries of the Royal Navy sailors and Marines, estimated to be more than 16000, involved in anti slavery duties. How many, I wonder, would wish that their ancestors had never been enslaved, by other Africans by the way, and they had grown up on the African continent? Wasn’t it Mohammed Ali who said something like, “I’m so glad my Granddaddy was put on that boat.” after his fight in Zaire, where hedged the opportunity to see what his life could have been like?
And why single out the UK? For over 50 years after Britain abolished slavery, the USA, France, Spain, Portugal, still carried on the slave trade, and don’t get me started on the North Africans and Arabs, still active today.
“Folk who live in the Caribbean now as a result of that historical slavery are better off than those whose ancestors were not enslaved and who are now living in West Africa.”
Wouldn’t it be more accurate to phrase that:
“Folk who live in the Caribbean now as a result of that historical slavery are better off than those whose ancestors were also enslaved but who didn’t find a buyer and are now still living in West Africa.”
Spain was slave trading centuries before the British, they have a much greater case against the Spanish.
@ Penseivate
No, it was one of his entourage of journalists.
Why single out the UK? Because we speak English and Americans find it too much like hard work to learn enough French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese or Arabic to pursue ridiculous claims in a foreign language.
“It’s not possible to reparate for someone being made better off.”
It is possible. Suppose you are driving to the airport to catch a flight and I collide with your car, causing you to miss your flight. It would be reasonable for me to pay for a replacement flight. And that would remain the case even if your original flight crashed killing all on board. You would have been made better off by missing the flight as it saved your life, yet still entitled to the cost of the replacement flight.
The important point is that any compensation is strictly limited to the immediate consequences and this counts both ways. Your entitlement is unaffected by the collision saving your life, but also does not take into account more remote consequences such as losing a very lucrative business deal due to being delayed.
In the case of slavery, the victims can be considered entitled to compensation for what was actually done to them. So, for example, a slave who escapes and maks a better life for themselves in a foreign country would be entitled to the same compensation as one who did not escape (though the latter might get more due to a longer period of slavery).
But those entitled to compensation are those who were enslaved – not their descendants. If any payment is to be made, it must be done by naming the victim, awarding them the appropriate amount and, if they are dead, tracing their descendants, splitting up the inheritance in accordance with the usual rules for inheritance (so reading any wills, following intestacy law etc). Generally we don’t do this kind of thing unless the death is recent due to the sheer impracticality of it.
Any proposal to simply pay a group of people today based on mere likelihood of having had enslaved ancestors desires payment on the grounds of membership of a group, which is essentally the same as racism.