Political Crossfire Forums

[The_Right_Honourable]

First post back for AGESSSS. Maybe 2 months now but i needed to vent ^^.

On British tv theres a show tonight (called "The Empire Pays Back" haha) all about this guy trying to get big companies and instituitions to apologise for slaveryand presents the Queen with a bill for 7.5 trillion...

What has this guy been smoking? On a practical point how the hell is the Queen going to find that kind of money? Secondly why the hell should she pay!

Its complete nonsense. Britain banned slavery in 1834, America had to fight a bloody civil war over it and even then Lincoln only did it to stop Britain siding with the South! Cynical american politics once again...

The blurb mentions that the slave owners were compensated with £20 quid but that the slaves got nothing. Yeah im sure freedom didnt count for much...

Slavery is a terrible thing and it helped to build the greatest empire in history but at a time when slavery was a massive part of the British economy it was banned. Morality came first.

Id like to see the US do something similar instead of continually jumping in bed with dictators and despots...

So anyway since im unlikely to meet this person and call him a derranged fool i thought i ease my anger out into text form.

[thundertaker]

The blurb on the TV guide for this said that he justifies it by giving the example of Germany compensating victims of the holocaust. But, er, he seems to overlook the rather obvious difference being the victims being compensated for the Nazi holocaust are alive and actually suffered. Slaves and their immediate families are long dead. So just who are the people in line to receive this bonanza?

[Simon De Montfort]

Reparations would be paid to people who were not slaves by people who did not own slaves.

[Snow Patrol]

Quote: The Empire Pays Back
8:00pm - 9:00pm
Channel 4
VIDEO Plus+: 8009
Subtitled

Here's a historical irony: when slavery was abolished in 1834, the government of the time put up £20million to compensate slave owners. The slaves, on the other hand, got nothing. Now, Birmingham academic Dr Robert Beckford wants to right that wrong and pursue reparations for the trade that helped build the British empire. His argument is riddled with flaws, but it makes for a powerful programme that offers some startling insights. Where Beckford's case is strongest is on the issue of a monument. You can see how someone who takes his name from the family who once owned his forebears might be justified in feeling that if we can honour the dead animals of war with a monument, why can't we create a memorial to the millions who lived and died in slavery?
http://www.radiotimes.com/ListingsServlet?event=10&channelId=132&programmeId=31896265&jspLocation=/jsp/prog_details.jsp

Reparations are a complete waste of time, a momument of some kind would maybe have some justification.

[thundertaker]

What makes him think reperations taken from people who had nothing to do with slavery to give to people who did not suffer under it compensation is a great thing for race relations? Idiot.
Having all that university education proves nothing when it comes to having any common sense.....

[Ingsoc]

Yes, actual slavery in America may have ended 150 some odd years ago, but blacks were never really free and equal until much later than that, if even at all today. Hell, the KKK was ruining around hanging blacks 50 years ago. Blacks were quite simply treated as sub-human being not too long ago, segregation, etc... So, I can see were the guy is arguing the point. Hell, if the Germans had to pay reparations to the jews, than why not England and America repay the blacks, I don't discriminate.

P.S. Slavery is still rampant in much of the world today. It is far from dead.

[The_Right_Honourable]

Yes but it wasnt like that in Britain. We didnt have aot of blacks until the post war years when they came over from the carribean. There was racism ofcourse but nothing like in the states.

Ofcourse we used indians as virtual slaves but the west is still doing that today...

If we have to pay back the blacks then the north africans have to pay us back for the millions they took in the time of the barbary pirates! Or making Italy pay the rest of europe war reparations for the Roman empire?

You just have to move on. Sure a memorial sounds nice. But we did set up Sierra Leon as a state for freed slaves...

[thundertaker]

And the US set up neighbouring Liberia for the same purpose....

[PGohs]

Wow! I'm surprised that there are people in England begging for reparations from slavery!!! American blacks have a little bit more of a leg to stand on, since, as you said, it lasted in America much longer. However, even in America, no-one alive today has been a slave owner, nor has any descendant of American slaves been a slave.

This type of attitude toward history only serves to extend the injustices found in our history!

[Classically Liberal]

The West Virginia coal miner fueled this nation (literally) for decades in the previous century. All while being paid next to nothing, being forced to live in company towns, constantly forced into more and more debt, and then left to die in squalor as the coal dried up. Not to mention the destruction of our communties by absentee landlords.

I expect my check in the mail by next Thursday.

[thefranzkafkafront]

There was a program on it on channel four at 8pm, i missed it did anyone catch it?

[thundertaker]

thefranzkafkafront wrote: There was a program on it on channel four at 8pm, i missed it did anyone catch it?

Yeah, even the good doctor balked at the £4,000,000,000,000 compensation bill that would have been required for any reperations. I think he decided at that point that a memorial would be more appropriate..... :roll:

[Snow Patrol]

thundertaker wrote: thefranzkafkafront wrote: There was a program on it on channel four at 8pm, i missed it did anyone catch it?

Yeah, even the good doctor balked at the £4,000,000,000,000 compensation bill that would have been required for any reperations. I think he decided at that point that a memorial would be more appropriate..... :roll:
The guy didn't once say who would actually recieve any possible reparations or how they could be traced, what a complete waste of time.

[Snow Patrol]

PGohs wrote: Wow! I'm surprised that there are people in England begging for reparations from slavery!!! American blacks have a little bit more of a leg to stand on, since, as you said, it lasted in America much longer. However, even in America, no-one alive today has been a slave owner, nor has any descendant of American slaves been a slave.

This type of attitude toward history only serves to extend the injustices found in our history!
Nobodys begging for reparations in Britain, it's one pseudo intellectual from Birmingham being a sensationalist knob for the sake of getting exposure on tv.

[thefranzkafkafront]

Why is he begging the queen, i mean of all the people, she dosent have the money or the ability to get it?

Is he stuck in the 17th centaury.

[The_Right_Honourable]

I geuss if your a professor with a 'radical' view tv companies just throw money at you...

[thundertaker]

thefranzkafkafront wrote: Why is he begging the queen, i mean of all the people, she dosent have the money or the ability to get it?

Is he stuck in the 17th centaury.

He also totally ignored the fact that George III was a vociferous opponent of slavery and refused to buy sugar or coffee from slave plantations, or that the British Empire did more than any other instutition in the world to stamp out slavery once it was abolished in the 1830s, with the Royal Navy going to considerable expense to intercept slave ships heading for the new world. Why didn't he factor those into his calculations?

[JDnCoke]

Eh, a memorial? That's a tad patronising: "Here poor black people, we feel sorry for what our ancestors did to you, so here's a pretty brick!"

Yuck.

Although it would be impossible to compensate the slaves, perhaps helping Africa more is the solution. Since European imposed border's in Africa has caused racial war for the past 3 decades.

[eynon]

Classically Liberal wrote: The West Virginia coal miner fueled this nation (literally) for decades in the previous century. All while being paid next to nothing, being forced to live in company towns, constantly forced into more and more debt, and then left to die in squalor as the coal dried up. Not to mention the destruction of our communties by absentee landlords.

I expect my check in the mail by next Thursday.

:clap: :clap: :clap: well said... :-D


:-| I'm really surprised a show like this even got on the air in Britain, and people moan that America has a left-wing media :roll:

Ok reparations for slavery, well I know that this whole movement in the states is based on the "40 acres and a mule" promise made by some Union generals and politicians during the civil war. Problem is that the authorities that made said promise didn't have the authority to make it in the first place.

Course if were holding the federal goverment to promises they welched on then decendents of slaves can get in line behind the decendents of revolutionary war veterans, and a number of other groups congress has screwed over the years.

On top of all this wasn't the civil war kinda reparations to begin with? Yes I understand that the war was fought for a number of reasons, some having nothing to do with slavery....but it was an issue none the less AND the war did result in the liberation of the slaves. So isn't the millions of Dollars(1860's dollars) and 340,000 dead Yankee boys(plus even more crippled both physically and emotionally) enough of a reparation?

Hey that gives me an idea....our goverment should send the decendants of slaves reperations...I can piture the bill now:

Payment made for the suffering of your ancestors........$25,000
Money you owe to the federal goverment for fighting war.........$10,000
Money you owe Northern states for raising regiments for war......$5,0000
Money you owe to decendents of Union soldiers who suffered during or after war(due to death, injury, or mental trama)......$10,100

money you owe....$100



All that said, I would be very open to the idea of providing reperations to the families of people who suffered due to federal and state goverments inaction(or action) that resulted in a lynching.....case in point:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4155732.stm

if a racist state goverment killed or let some-one be killed then they should probely give the surviving family some type of reparation.

But none for slavery...... :x

[y_not_peace?]

racism will never die. It will twindle in the souls of those who never can except peace, it will be rejected by those who have seen the power of peace.





to add on the very first post:
"America had to fight a bloody civil war over it and even then Lincoln only did it to stop Britain siding with the South! Cynical american politics once again... "

American had to fight a bloody civil war over it and even then FREDRICK DOUGLASS only did it to stop Britian siding with the South!

Fredrick Douglass was Lincolns backbone, without him the North wouldve still not gave a dam about blacks (hi =m and W.E.B. Dubois).