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This has gone far enough.
asserted
This → see → Source
The countries coming after us for slavery reparations, mainly Caribbean states but also some in Africa, are not just rude and ungrateful.
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countries → come → Africa
They are launching a hostile campaign against us, and we should respond accordingly.
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we → launch → us
If Barbados pursues us through the courts for trillions of pounds, we should cancel our aid programmes there.
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we → pursue → programmes
If Ghana wants to lead a Third Worldist posse against us in the UN, we should deny all visa applications from that country.
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we → want → country
We have a range of sanctions to deploy against unfriendly countries, ranging from targeted embargoes to travel bans.
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We → have → bans
We should recognise that we are dealing with hostile states.
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we → recognise → states
To target Britain, which did more than any other nation on the planet to stamp out what had previously been a universal institution, is not just bad manners.
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what → target → planet
Britain was not just early in declaring slavery illegal.
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slavery → declare → ?
It then did something unique, pouring its blood and treasure into a campaign to extirpate the foul institution everywhere.
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It → do → institution
Even when we were engaged in a life-and-death struggle with Napoleon, we were still diverting warships to hunt down the slavers.
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we → engage → slavers
Yes, Britain had been a major player in the slave trade in the 18th century – a time when it was regarded almost everywhere as permanent and inevitable.
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it → regard → century
In the 19th century, though, it broke with other countries.
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it → break → countries
Driven partly by religious conviction, partly by Enlightenment individualism and partly by capitalism, which made forced labour economically obsolete, it banned slavery in its colonies and began a global campaign against the traffic.
That campaign was resisted by many African kings, who saw slavery as both naturally ordained and economically essential.
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who → drive → ordained
It was their hostility that drove abolitionists and evangelicals to demand the establishment of African colonies.
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that → drive → colonies
Jamaica's culture minister, led a delegation to Britain to petition King Charles for slavery reparations earlier this month
Wokesters tend to talk of 'colonialism and slavery' as if they were the same phenomenon.
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they → lead → colonialism
They rarely admit the extent to which the first was intended to stamp out the second.
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first → admit → second
Following abolition, Britain attempted to make restitution in a meaningful way, spending an astonishing 1.8 per cent annually of GDP between 1808 and 1867 on hunting down the slavers, the most expensive moral foreign policy in history.
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Britain → follow → history
If there were a case for reparations in principle (which there is not), that sum alone – not counting the billions given since in aid – covers any debt many times over.
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sum → be → debt
But such is the moral fervour of the reparationists that few want to tell them when they are talking rot.
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they → want → rot
The trouble is our diplomats and officials – and also, often, our MPs and ministers – keep indulging these grifters.
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trouble → keep → grifters
That is the sole reason why they keep targeting us.
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they → keep → us
No one asks for reparations from, say, China (which did not abolish slavery until 1910) or Ethiopia (1942) or Saudi Arabia (1962).
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which → ask → 1910
You know why?
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You → know → ?
Because they don't encourage the shake-down artists.
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they → encourage → artists
Suppose we were to send a bill to, say, Ghana on grounds we had expended a great deal of blood and treasure defeating its slavers.
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we → suppose → slavers
What might today's Ghanaians argue in their defence?
uncertain
Ghanaians → argue → defence
First, they would point out that retroactive law is wrong.
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law → point → ?
We don't generally punish things that were legal at the time, and with good reason.
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that → punish → reason
It would open the door to chaos.
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It → open → chaos
Second, they would argue that slavery was not the only evil in history, and again they would have a point.
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they → argue → point
Can we confidently say slavery was worse than, say, the Cambodian killing fields, the Holodomor (the man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine), the Mongol conquests or the sack of Carthage?
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slavery → say → Carthage
And even if slavery were in a different moral category from other past atrocities, why should transatlantic slavery be treated as different from the forms of slavery that existed everywhere else?
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that → treat → slavery
King Charles is expected to attend the upcoming Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Antigua
Vendetta
I do mean everywhere.
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I → expect → Antigua
Every society, from the Mayans to the Maori, enslaved people.
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society → enslave → people
Britain is unusual only in having eliminated the practice.
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Britain → eliminate → practice
Some 17 million Africans were sold as slaves in the Islamic world, for example, many of them castrated to serve as eunuchs.
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many → sell → eunuchs
Britain's only involvement with that trade was to halt it.
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involvement → halt → it
Yet we see the heirs to that trade, Arab states, cheerfully voting in the UN to demand reparations from Britain.
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heirs → see → Britain
Even if none of these considerations applied, there would still be something peculiarly abhorrent about resuscitating the notion of ancestral guilt.
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none → apply → guilt
…and 22 more, not listed.
The Aporia
