Thoughts on this?
So I had this idea:
Not long ago there was talk about this research that showed that colonialism wasn’t profitable for the countries undertaking it.
What was omitted though was that somebody did profit. Private citizens. Companies.
So what I thought is: they’re still around. The ones who did profit and their families and companies. And lately it seems they kinda own us all.
So how about reparations for all the ones who lost out in the gold rush. Who own no land, have no property, no capital. From all nations.
Well yeah, during the Empire era my city was a hub for processing commodities from the colonies. People moved from the surrounding countryside to the city to work in the mills under generally awful conditions, and then when it was over the mill owners moved out of the city and took their wealth with them. Now the city is abandoned and rundown - a familiar story.
Today, billions of pounds are spirited away out of the country’s economy to tax havens. Colonialism never ended.
Britain needs to sort out its current behaviour towards immigrant communities - remember the windrush thing? The shit with the Nepalese British army soldiers? All the other bullshit? Sort out the current problems before looking at historical moral obligations.
Although TBH I kinda feel like no nation, group, race, community, whatever - should feel obliged to make amends for shit their ancestors did long before they were born. One example of this is the Germans - too often they’re kinda held responsible for the Holocaust and Hitler, even if it’s just joking. When most of em weren’t even born when those atrocities happened. It’s not fair to blame em.
So yeah, I don’t think Britain should be held responsible for shit that happened before living memory. However shit we did within living memory, that’s different, maybe we gotta debt to pay there.
My ancestors were forced to immigrate to the Americas. UK owes me money
My condolences.
It will be a short conversation I imagine.
In the future it might not be though. Developing countries are getting richer and they have growing populations. Britain’s population isn’t growing that much. Even public opinion within Britain may one day favour reparations, let alone outside of Britain.
A large part of the British population would like to do something as well.
Issue it, they know anything close to replacing the harm would bankrupt citizens who had nothing to do with the events.
When you think of the cost of paying back slave owners. As evil as the whole idea seems to us in this time. The cost placed our nation into debt until 2015. And that was a debt that basically built our economy. Seriously, few recognise this, but the UK benefited way more from paying off slave owners then from slavery or any other event in UK history. But still left descendents who never participated in slavery and were non-existent during those choices. Paying off debts for 182 years.
Reparations that do not actually leave the UK would be meaningless. So the request translates to people born 200 years after the actions with a debt that will only remove investment from the nation, harming future children who did not exist at the time.
Unfortunately, even those who want to do something find it hard to argue what.
Until the reparations debate can move towards a suggestion that helps all nations. It will be hard, no mater how powerful ex slave nations become. In fact, if your predictions are correct (and I agree they likely are) Move power in the southern nations will result in less ability for the north to make effective payments of any kind.
The conversation is needed. And has been since at east 1833. But without a time machine, that conversation is going to need to be more about building an equal honest future than repairing the past.
I think I heard on the radio the other day someone saying that reparations should be less about handing cash to descendants of slaves, and more about investing in descendants of slaves, which I guess would mean ensuring that those descendants have an equal access to education and job opportunities, and maybe other adjustments. Whether that’s a good idea, I guess society would have to decide, but I thought it was interesting.
Have the conversations.
My thoughts - Starmer must have an image consultant
And that image consultant told him those glasses suit him, and they just don’t
He needs a thinner frame so his face doesn’t look as pudgy
Countries should not be pushing for reparations when it was them selling their people into the slave trade.
It’s historical revisionism.
You’re not wrong about the slave trade in Africa, which is why the conversation should be about the British Empire and colonialism instead.
Edited because I’m a doofus who didn’t read the article first and the other comments are talking about imperialism because they didn’t read it either
