Mar 01 2007
What should countries apologise for?
Like the present government I hate slavery.?? I have no objection to our country saying we are??sorry that??British slave traders made money out of this barbaric trade more than 200 years ago. If we say this we should also say we are proud of those who campaigned against the trade, and through public protest and Parliamentary action achieved its abolition in the UK. Few of us know whether our ancestors were the good guys or the bad guys in this passionate argument of 200 years ago.
I do wonder how far, however, we should extend this judgement of the past by the standards of the present.
When. for example, are the French going to apologise for all the British people they killed in the Norman invasion, and in the Napoleonic wars when once again they wanted to violate our shores?
When are the Spanish going to apologise for the fear and suffering caused by the Spanish Armada?
Some people in the UK always want to see the UK as the wrongdoer. Sometimes our country was the victim of war and barbarism, sometimes it was the crusader for the right cause.
On many occasions our country has stood up for the freedom and right to self determination of the smaller nations of Europe.??That is something we should celebrate.
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
I think an apology for being in Iraq would be in order but other than that I feel nothing but pride for being English.
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When are the citizens of Athens going to apologise for slavery?
When is Italy going to apologise for Roman enslavement of Dacians?
How about the Arab merchants who enslaved Africans on the East Coast of Africa? I vaguely recall some Indian involvement in slavery too.
Who else has apologised for slavery? Why just us? Verbal masochism?
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A country can no further apologise for a past generation’s sins than I can apologise for my grandfather’s.
But I don’t have the precarious volatility of international relations to worry about.
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I am sure that I read that some Arabs are still enslaving non muslims in Africa.
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IRJM: “When is Italy going to apologise for Roman enslavement of Dacians?”
Yep. The Italians are responsible for the expulsion of the Jews from Isreal. They started the middle east problem.
Oh! and lest we forget, the crusades were not started by Christians. Any suggestions who Christian Europe should demand reperations from for the subjugation by the sword of half the continent. Remind me again, who has most of the oil money??
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I suppose slavery is born from a determination to deny another person or persons their basic humanity. That is to say, we seek to demonstrate that another person is less than we are, we have to, or we could not deny them their freedom. We are human, they are not, and they should be treated as an animal: punished when they are bad, rewarded when they are good, but never, never to be considered as equal. One should deny that the slave possesses any of the human characteristics, which one possesses: there is nothing about them that is human, because one is human, and they are slave.
In truth, of course, we all know how we should behave, but we tend to err towards what is easy, rather than what is right. I don’t doubt that this was something that our forebears had to struggle with. However, if everybody else is doing it, then why not cash in? If there’s a lucrative opportunity presenting itself to us, then it takes a strong person to resist that, in favour of what is “proper”.
In answer to the question put, why, indeed, should the UK be the only country to apologise for its historical actions? Why apologise, why make reparation, when nobody else is doing that? Even Plato, great thinker though he was, felt that slavery was a fact of life. In Plato’s case, of course, we should understand the position according to the time he lived in, as Mr Redwood suggests: it is not possible to judge the mores of the past by today’s standards, simply because what is accepted as proper conduct now, would not have been conceived of, at the time, and it is not possible for us to think in that way. How would the work have got done, in Ancient Greece, had there been no slaves?
However, I think one possible justification for making good the past, if only in terms of an apology, is that otherwise the past is never truly past. Perhaps it is difficult for those who are not the descendants of slaves to fully appreciate the weight of that knowledge on one’s shoulders. By not making an apology, one might argue, tacit approval is given, which is understood by those who follow.
Black people in the USA engaged in a long battle for reparation, which had no sooner been partially won in the form of “positive discrimination”, than it was taken away again. Black Americans are still suffering the knock-on effects of slavery, even now (indeed, let us not forget that they lived in a segregated society, and were identified as “less”, within living memory). Black Americans, I am led to believe, are poorer on average, than their white counterparts, and they are poorer because they are less well-educated, and they are less well-educated, because they live in areas where educational provision is not of the highest standard (ie, poor areas), they live in these areas because they are poor. That’s a difficult cycle to break out of, especially if one understands that it is desired that one should occupy that position.
Even today, black Americans often consider themselves to be less valuable than whites, I understand. Indeed, I believe that there is a recognized phenomenon, whereby black people “act white”, in order to get on, and that betrayal of their own self is considered damaging. This should not be wondered at, because a couple of generations back, black people were required to be deferential towards whites. That sort of behaviour becomes engrained in the psyche, and is passed on, generation upon generation, without any reference to “reality”.
Perhaps that’s worth trying to correct, although I doubt that this will be achieved by the symbolic banning of derogatory language in New York. Words are only as valuable as the sentiment behind them, and one might as well save one’s breath, if one does not understand why one should apologize.
Best regards
Matthew Holford
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I think, in considering whether or not an apology is an appropriate course of action, we need to consider whether slavery is forgiveable. In my own opinion some acts are unforgiveable. The Holocaust strikes me as a prime example, the Nazi ringleaders were not forgiven, they were hanged. Their crimes were unforgiveable in my book, but I would never dream of asking a young German to apologise for them.
I would go as far as comdemning our ancestors ‘crimes’ of involvement in the slave trade as unforgiveable. Many Africans were also involved, capturing and selling the members of rival tribes to European traders in exchnage for other commodities. It strikes me as highly inappropriate for todays generation to apologise, effectively asking for forgiveness from the decendants of those who suffered however. Should native Africans apologise to Afro-Carribeans / Afro-Americans too?
Slavery does still exist in modern Europe. We hear stories of people-traffickers enslaving young women, forcing them into prostitution. Yet under the legal system of modern Europe any of the gang members that were convicted of these appalling crimes would probably one day be released, and as such be forgiven. No European nation still executes people for such crimes.
It is the same ‘human rights’ brigade that would campaign for me to apologise, and in some cases pay reparations to the decendants of slaves, that campaign against the death penalty, and effectively for the forgiveness of today’s slave traders.
Personally I will quite happily state that my ancestors crimes (if they were involved, which I will don’t think they were) are unforgiveable. However I would also be in favour of those organise slavery in today’s world taking the short walk and long drop, something the same human rights groups oppose.
The best thing the UK can do to reaffirm it’s committment to the abolishion of slavery is re-double our efforts to tackle this unforgiveable crime where it raises its ugly head in today’s world.
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I am interested in Steven_L’s thoughts, on this subject. I’m not sure that we need to identify whether or not slavery is forgiveable, when considering whether we should apologize, or not, but we should less that pass.
Let us assume that we do need to look at the question of forgiveability (a word, which I imagine I have just made up). Let us also assume that slavery is unforgiveable, which I take it is what Steven means, when he writes “I would go as far as comdemning our ancestors
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