I will not pay for wrongs I didn’t commit
OK, you have convinced me. There SHOULD be compo paid to people sold into slavery.
The Government should pass a law this week.
Anyone who was snatched from Africa, transported across the Atlantic in a ship in grotesque conditions and forced to work on a sugar plantation should get a handsome payout.
Shall we say £ 50million each? OK, £ 100million – a nice round number.
Form a queue, and don’t forget to bring your “proof of slavery” documentation. We should be able to start dishing out the money by the middle of next month.
And the owners of the slave boats, the slave traders, the slave drivers and the plantation owners should personally foot the gigantic bill.
Easy.
Sorted.
Job done.
What’s that? The West Indian slaves are all long, long dead?
So are the owners of the slave boats, the slave traders, the slave drivers and the plantation owners?
Well, that’s that, then.
Can’t say we didn’t try.
Case closed. NEXT!
However, that is not what the reparations campaigners want.
Meaningful
Labour MP Bell Ribeiro- Addy last week asked Rishi Sunak if the Government would make a “full and meaningful apology” and “commit to reparatory justice”.
In this case, “reparatory justice” means compo.
And this compo is to be paid to the DESCENDANTS of slaves.
In other words, people who have not suffered slavery.
Getting compo for something bad that has NOT happened to you would set an, at least, interesting legal precedent.
It goes hand- in- hand with the idea that white people should feel guilty for the sins of their long- dead ancestors.
Yes, it is important that we all learn about the bad things in our own history as well as the many good and glorious achievements.
But holding me, a white man in 2023, responsible for slavery is as silly as pinning a medal on my chest for fighting in the Battle of Britain.
So when Bell Ribeiro- Addy asks “the Government” to pay “reparatory justice” to all the descendants of slaves, she is really asking the taxpayer.
She wants you and me – who were not born until more than a century and a half after slavery was abolished – to pay for the misdeeds of those who have long been dust in their graves.
And that – to use a legal term – is BOLLOCKS!