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.
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.
posted by David Davies AM at 3:26 PM
3 Comments:
At last, a top politician saying what most of us feel like saying.
Yes, there is regret, but to keep dragging up the past to ask for apologies from generations not even thought of at that time is absurd.
This just creates an even bigger divide between the different races of people in this country and beyond.
This nonsense about apologising for slavery is itself a form of racism by left-wing ethnical minority millitants and their allies such as Ken Livingstone.
Their mindset is really quite crude and childish.
"Afro-Carribeans are ALWAYS victims and their suffering is always worse that of the white man's pain. Whites are born evil and captialism was created by the white man to persecute the Afro-Carribeans."
It sounds like something out of the Nation of Islam.
Black victimhood is also an inverse form of racism because according to the mindset of the left, Afro-Carribeans can never be anything more other than eternal victims. It is a dehumanising train of thought that does more to discriminate against the black community than anything the most vile BNP member can come up with. The cult of black victimhood deprives blacks of their right to better themselves and their responsibilities to them themselves, their families, their communities and humanity as a whole.
Well said, Africa is a mess because africa made itself a mess.
The constant harping on about slavery in olden says just shows the lack of knowledge over the trade - still going on in the Sudan and elsewhere.
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