This relates to the BBC article [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66596790] which states “the UK should pay $24tn (£18.8tn) for its slavery involvement in 14 countries”.
The UK abolished slavery in 1833. That’s 190 years ago. So nobody alive today has a slave, and nobody alive today was a slave.
Dividing £18tn by the number of UK taxpayers (31.6m) gives £569 each. Why do I, who have never owned a slave, have to give £569 to someone who similarly is not a slave?
When I’ve paid my £569 is that the end of the matter forever or will it just open the floodgates of other similar claims?
Isn’t this just a country that isn’t doing too well, looking at the UK doing reasonably well (cost of living crisis excluded of course), and saying “oh there’s this historical thing that affects nobody alive today but you still have to give us trillions of Sterling”?
Shouldn’t payment of reparations be limited to those who still benefit from the slave trade today, and paid to those who still suffer from it?
(Please don’t flame me. This is NSQ. I genuinely don’t know why this is something I should have to pay. I agree slavery is terrible and condemn it in all its forms, and we were right to abolish it.)
Thats an overgeneralization. Some white peoples were enslaved while not all black peoples were slaves. The question is more complex than presented.
I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and let you know that white people were indentured servants. While the conditions were just as bad as the slaves, indentured servitude was for a finite amount of time, while slavery was for life. This allowed the white people a chance to rebuild wealth and their children did not have to experience their parents’ conditions. Slaves never had that chance.
It depends on country. There were countries where indentured servitude was for entire life, except for cases when a landlord freed a serf or a serf bought own freedom. Landlords could buy, sell and judge serfs. Example: Russian Empire, where serfs had no rights.
I thought we were talking about the Transatlantic slave trade in the Americas?
Somehow it turned into blacks vs whites, which is not ok for me.
There were multi-generation serfs and indentured labour in the British isles. There were also slaves taken from the isles, though a very long time before then.