Slave Trade

[flip-flop]

Should we apologise? We abolished the trade over 200 years ago, and our navy were rigorous in intercepting slave ships after we had abolished the trade, so should we still apologise?

Personally I can't see the point - the world was a whole different place 200 years ago.

[pixie_woo]

Wardy, I didn't know you subscribed to the Nietche school of thought. Interestingly, so did Hitler!
(sit back and watch the fur fly)

[aristotle]

An apology is only of any value if it comes from the person who caused the offence in the first place.

[##Wardy##]

Sp, of course i know how to spell KRAUT. I thought with the PC Brigade, it would be banned like ****** or ****. OR even ********!!!!!!.

Gladly I know how to spell "Nietzsche", which for some may be worrying.

[joko]

i don't think we are obliged to apologise as we are not the ones who did it ( and how exactly would we apologise anyway, logistically? and to who?)

but hey, why not? wheres the harm in making a gesture?

[MustafaTickl]

For heaven's sake apologise. Then they will launch a claim against us for vast sums of money. Then we can give them the Olympic Stadium. And the Mayor of London. And John Prescott. And the Foreign Secretary. Perhaps they will give us Beyonce as a memento.

[Booldawg]

possibly less than 2% of the British populataion were either involved in or benefited from the slave trade. It was also a Britishman, Lord Wilberforce, that finally got the slave trade abolished. So, no I dont feel particularly guilty or feel the need to apologise.

[johnizere]

gerkin....try Poland.

[brachiopod]

I don't think that's our Ward-Minter, you know.

I suspect it's an imposter - our own W-M may have been controversial - but at least he had wit, humour.... and he could spell.

Unfortunately, it is the real fender though - I can tell these things......

[NH]

I thought Minter was an imposter anyway? So faking one's identity as Minter means you're faking a faker? Pffft....

[Pippa68]

Whilst I was in New York last year I met a black guy (Gulf War vet...I bought him a Wendys :o) who started banging on about how I should 'take him back' to the UK as I had promised him this and that and his people had got a 'big fat nothin'.

I politely told him I had promised him a Wendys, and had delivered accordingly.

[tyler06]

sp1814 all blacks ancestors where slaves and brits ancestors where masters outrageous.read the book WHITE GOLD by giles milton

[Pippa68]

But does that make us responsible now, tyler? I have nothing to apologise for as I don't own any slaves.

[tyler06]

no slavery has been going on through history.and still is.

[Theland]

My father who died last year was a slave for three and a half years, as prisoner of war in Malaya, and worked building the Burma railway.

He was beaten and starved and weighed only five and a half stone at the wars end.

He and his comrades never got an apology from the Japanese government, or any compensation.

Blairs government gave them all �10,000 each in 1998, (what was left of them).

I think an apology would have helped, when he was alive, but it would be worthless now. Same with the slave trade, there's nobody directly involved to apologise to.

[tyler06]

1800s who had a better life a slave in the deep south.an 8year old up a chimney down a mine.get over it was bad for most except the upper class

[Theland]

In Liverpool, a major port in the slave trade, working class lived in squalor and filth and poverty, but as tyler 06 implies, slaves were a valuable commodity, and were at least for the most part, treated better than some of the British lower classes.