46,000 Britons were slave owners on the day that slavery was abolished in 1833 and all received a share of a £17 billion compensation payout from the Government
The usual lefty self-hating crap about slavery, mixed with innuendo and hatred of the English.
The shocking scale of British slave ownership has been revealed in scores of official records which have found that thousands of modern-day Briton’s are related to owners who received huge sums in compensation when the trade was abolished.
A five year project by University College London has compiled the identities of 46,000 Britons who owned slaves, mainly in the West Indies, on the day that slavery was abolished in 1833.
So what? The past is a different country. The point being; we abolished it, which, given the time, made our society one with a higher moral standard than many of our contemporaries. We then policed the high seas freeing slaves. This was a good thing, not a bad one.
Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha, Benedict Cumberbach, Ben Affleck and author George Orwell are just some of the high profile ancestors (sic) of the slave owners revealed in the files.
So what? Or are we suggesting the sins of the fathers be visited upon the sons and their sons, and their sons (or, given the usual Indie junk journalism, their ancestors)? Are the modern generation of Britons supposed to feel guilty about the actions of our forebears? Oh, do fuck off.
Upon their liberation the Commission paid out the modern equivalent of £17 billion in compensation to the UK’s tens of thousands of owners – the largest government pay-out since the 2009 bank bailout.
So, not actually the £17 billion that is screamed in the headlines then? A lie, in fact. A deliberate inflation designed to press home the idea that these people are somehow guilty of something. The idea that today, some two hundred years later, they are in some way benefiting from it. Again, do fuck off!
If these people are so worried about slavery – and it is a vile practice – then they should start campaigning against the slavery carried out today – in the Middle East, for example.
So, no, I don’t feel guilty. I wasn’t born, neither were the people listed in the deplorable article.
You can’t change history, I wan’t there, and don’t blame me for what my ancestors did.
When I used to teach family history research I remember one of my group talking about one of his ancestors who was hung for sheep stealing. He was embarrassed by it. I said “Hey that’s really interesting. Wish I had one like that! You lucky bugger!”
No, I don’t feel guilty either.
” The point being; we abolished it, which, given the time, made our society one with a higher moral standard than many of our contemporaries”. Yes slavery was rightly abolished in 1833, but, that was only throughout the empire, (well, apart from Ceylon, owned by the East India Co.) Slavery was still legal here until 2006. Our masters must be proud.
Surely it is only God who unleashes wrath due to sins of the fathers unto the 10th generation.
I am equally sure that thousands of UK citizens are related (very very indirectly of course) to Ghengis Khan. Maybe we should start apologising for his barbarity?
I wonder if I’m related to a previous slave-owner? If so, then I want my share of that £17 billion right now!!
46000 out of the total British Empire population of the time comes to well under 1% of said population.
In any case, slavery was not invented by Europeans. It has a long, bloody, and very awkward history that leaves nobody at all smelling of roses—including Africans, who were perfectly happy to sell the spoils of their own wars to slave traders.
Slaves were also *expensive*, so no, the vast majority of the population at the time would not have been slave owners. This is also true of the ancient Greeks, Romans, etc. as well. Slaves were always a luxury, owned by the wealthy few, not by the lower and middle classes, who have always been the majority in most nations throughout history.
We are not our ancestors. That’s the thing about social and cultural growth: it takes time. Time that is used to heal old wounds. Repeatedly scratching those old cultural scars helps nobody. It’s hard to leave old grudges behind when the media keep scratching those old scabs whenever there’s a slow news day.
Slavery was also completely legal, until the decision to change the law was made…
In Pompeii (which readers will know was buried when Vesuvius erupted in 79AD) there was a notice by the water butt in the main street. It read something like, “No urinating here. Citizens will be fined; slaves will be whipped”. Why the difference? Presumably, because slaves had no money to pay fines.In Heracleum, around 300 people perished while sheltering in the boathouses on the beach. Researchers believe that many of them were slaves. If you take payment for work out of the equation, and substitute ‘keep’, it is not unlikely that the life of a slave was quite pleasant – free food, clothing and shelter with some time off in exchange for work. What would be the point of having slaves and treating them badly? There a record that a mother successfully pleaded for the freedom of her son, who was a slave in a Roman library. He refused the offer of freedom, preferring to continue to work in the library. Many slaves were offered their freedom after a certain length of time and some of them became very wealthy men. Of course, there would have been cruel slave-owners also.
I’m not justifying slavery. I’m saying that people who had no concept of ‘money’ might have been quite happy to swap a hard and risky life for ‘all found’.
A payout in 1833 is the largest since 2009? Says it all…
So it cost the British Government/taxpayer £17 billion to emancipate slaves… and nobody died as a consequence.
How much did it cost the USA and at what Human cost in the 1860s to do the same thing?