It is quite right that we should remember the abhorrent slave trade. We should also remember that British democracy abolished it and that the Royal Navy enforced abolition at the cost of many British lives. I support groups like Amnesty International which are using the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery to raise awareness of people smuggling but I cannot join the self-righteous politically correct “apologies” for slavery which are being demanded by and from people who had nothing to do with it.

Why not demand that modern day Germans make an annual apology for Hitler? Or that the French apologise for Napolean and Louis the 14th? Meanwhile present day Turkey could apologise to most of Eastern Europe for the Ottoman Empire and perhaps the North Africans to the Spanish for Andalusia. Not least of all various Africans – the present day descendents of those who sold slaves to British traders, should also be apologising, though to whom I am not sure.

It would all be too ridiculous for words if it were not for the fact that many African governments, and their western apologists, are playing on this collective outburst of false guilt to try and divert attention from the fact that Africa’s current diabolical state is not due to slavery, but to corrupt dictatorial nature of its present day leaders.