There's a small, and somewhat justifiable piece of irritation by Pete Baker over on Slugger regarding Peter Hain's apology on behalf of Northern Ireland and Wales for the slave trade (much irritation in the comments here also and Hugh Green's preemptive irritation over his next apology here).
Somewhat justifiable, but not totally.
I am a little sympathetic to the general scepticism about Hain's motives and the utility of these things (and to Hugh's pointing to current misdemeanours). And also to Sammy Wilson's point, which I didn't know until I read it.
Where I don't have any sympathy is with the implications of a lot of this, stated explicitly by Belfast Gonzo in the thread to the Pete Baker's post (comment #2). Gonzo says that 'I’m damned if Peter Bloody Hain is going to apologise on my behalf for something I had no part in.'
Well indeed. I too played no part in the slave trade. However, I can't help but notice that I was born into a household some 10 times wealthier than 80% of households on the planet and many hundreds of times wealthier than a sizeable proportion of the population of west Africa. I think it's fair to say that I am reaping the benefits of the legacy of empire, including slavery, as they continue to acrue in Britain (and Ireland). After all, my ancestors didn't wipe the slate clean when slavery was abolished. They, and we, kept the loot.
It may be that this is just good luck on my part, and it may be that I had no agency in all of this. But doesn't reaping the benefits mean that I'm somewhat responsible? Or at least that I'm somewhat responsible for the current global dispensation?
I agree that an apology is futile, and would prefer to see some action (though in fairness Blair's government, if we ignore the elephant in their foreign policy room, has not been the worst on this front), but I can't abide the 'nothing to do with me' reaction.
I agree. I think part of
I agree. I think part of this is down to people being averse to considering that they may not have received everything they have on merit. As it happens, I have my doubts about how much my own ancestors were better off as a result of slavery. That is, I may have benefitted more from the foundations laid by the slave trade than they ever did.
This being the case, it seems quite correct to say, as Hain did, that people from Britain and Ireland have an obligation to speak out against modern day bonded labour and human trafficking. I just happen to think that Hain is a conspicuous hypocrite for doing so.
There was a guy on Today FM the other day whose name I didn't catch, a journalist, who said something along the lines of 'I'm opposed to all such apologies of this type, they just feed a sense of victimhood', which is the typical knee-jerk reaction that really gets up my nose.
As it happens, I have my
As it happens, I have my doubts about how much my own ancestors were better off as a result of slavery. That is, I may have benefitted more from the foundations laid by the slave trade than they ever did.
True enough Hugh, although the people of Ireland were significantly better off than most people even in Europe by the early 20th Century. Some of the benefits of empire almost certainly trickled down over time (not to mention the indirect benefits of the famine, but that's another even more controversial story), though perhaps not at the time.
On Hain, think I agree with you. He's been saying these sorts of things for a long time, so at least he's consistent. He just seems to be saying it more now. Still, it's the ultimate in ad hominem thinking (in the philosophical sense) to decide that an argument is senseless because the person making the argument is questionable.
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