Reparations? you must be joking

Britain’s leading role in abolishing slavery is finally being recognised

A British sailor removes the leg irons from a liberated African slave. The Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron seized more than 1,500 slave ships and freed 150,000 slaves.

When I was elected Rector of Edinburgh University in 2009 there were many contentious issues on campus: university tuition fees, Scottish independence, Palestine to name but three, but the intellectual climate was very different.  The debate about same sex marriage, as I recall, was conducted in a pretty civilised manner, without the kind of ferocious partisanship gender issues provoke today.

No one back then would have talked seriously about banning lecturers, condemning books or refusing to discuss gay marriage.  It is inconceivable that members of the academic staff would have supported the censorship of a film because its title was “Adult Human Female” as happened at Edinburgh recently. 

Or that the University Principal and the Court would have agreed to cancel Scotland’s greatest philosopher, David Hume, because of an allegedly racist footnote in an 18th Century essay.  That would have been regarded as the most outrageous act of narrow-minded philistinism.  It would just never have happened.

It is facile to judge someone who lived two and a half centuries ago by the sensibilities and prejudices of today, as Scotland\’s most distinguished historian, Tom Devine, argued - forcefully but in vain.  Anyway, Hume opposed slavery and was one of the leading figures in Enlightenment: the very philosophy that helped make self-evident the proposition that “all men are created equal”.

That phrase of course comes from the American Declaration of Independence which has inevitably been denounced as “sexist, racist and prejudiced”. No one denies that slavery existed and that some of the signatories, like Thomas Jefferson, owned slaves. Even Quakers owned slaves in the 18th Century and justified it with quotes from the Bible.   Native American tribes were also slave owners, though that of course doesn’t justify their treatment by New World settlers.

But historical documents have to be read in the context of the times in which they’re written to understand and assess their historical significance.  The petulant dismissal of texts because of the shortcomings of their authors, sometimes called “presentism”, is one of the most pernicious features of our modern culture wars. It doesn’t just apply to historical works. The cancelling or bowdlerising of 20th Century authors like DH Lawrence, Norman Mailer or Ernest Hemingway because they do not follow language codes acceptable to the guardians of linguistic propriety, is another dimension of woke philistinism. 

The ransacking of literature for signs of ideological deviationism has even led to a reappraisal of the revolutionary thinker Karl Marx. His works have been filleted to reveal many racially offensive remarks, especially about Jews whose God, he said, was “hucksterism” and who are cast as evil agents finance capital. This is the origin of a strand of socialist antisemitism which has left some echoes today in the BritishLabour Party. Again, social media has collapsed time, so that Marx’s works are seen as no different to books written last year. There is no historical perspective or appreciation of the fact that Marx was talking about his own Jewish race.

The internet has achieved the dream of Zen New Age gurus of the 1960s. It has created an eternal now. The British Empire is no longer regarded as something that happened in the past but is a contemporary reality that needs to be challenged and defeated in the here and now. Moral condemnation must be total and unrelenting.  It is seen as racist to point out that Britain actually led the world in abolishing the slave trade or that the British navy blocked slave ships as they left the Coast of Africa. This is anathema to those who seek to “decolonise the curriculum” - academic activists who think that in some occult manner giving a rounded account of the phenomenon of imperialism perpetuates it.

Yet, to point that out, or that the British Empire fought against slavery in Africa and India, is not to apologise for Britain’s previous participation in the Atlantic slave trade or to condone imperialism. It is however an intriguing and important dimension to the history of chattel slavery and something of which this country should take a measure of qualified pride. It was a movement led by ordinary people against those who profited from what they regarded as an evil.

Abolitionism was a huge political issue in the late 18th and early 19th Century Britain. It united people across social classes in pursuit of a moral ideal that was still regarded as eccentric and unrealistic in most other countries in the world at the time.   All empires in history promoted slavery, including white slavery. Not for nothing does the very word “slavery” derive from “Slav” - the Eastern European peoples who were enslaved, en masse, by everyone from the Vikings to the Ottomans. Many African and Middle Easter states continued to practice slavery long after Britain abolished it.  It is still around today. Why are we urged to ignore Britain’s leadership in bringing this evil trade to an end?  It’s like saying the National Health Service should not be celebrated because millions of poor people suffered before it was created.

Now, I do not seek to become an apologist for the British Empire and colonialism. Nor do I regard myself as a British nationalist, any more than I regarded myself as a Scottish nationalist when I voted Yes in the 2014 independence referendum. But over the years I have come to regard the near revulsion with which academics and the left portray this country and its history to be profoundly dysfunctional and wrong. Indeed, I think a degree of respect for the history of one’s native land is essential for it to function as a democracy.

That is why it is so regrettable that half of generation Z adults, according to a recent Times opinion poll, apparently believe that Britain today is a racist country, and say they wouldn’t fight for it in a war. That seems to be the bitter residue of the last decade and a half of “no borders” globalisation, identity politics a the demonisation of history.

Progressive reductionism portrays any form of nationalism as inherently bigoted and unworthy of respect. In its more extreme forms it also regards democracy, which was the historical offspring of nationalism, as suspect because voters are liable to vote for someone like Donald Trump. This pernicious ideology only serves to undermine social cohesion, gives consolation to Britain’s enemies (they do exist) and to weaken national governments in their efforts to rein in multinational corporations. Woke capitalism is a complex issue bound up with corporate fashion and regulatory arbitrage. It provides a cloak of moral probity to what is, after all, the importation of cheap labour. It really needs a discussion of its own. Suffice to say that following the Trump election, corporate CEOs are discovering that their commitment to DEI - Diversity, Equality, Inclusion - was little more than skin deep.

As the Wokeapocalypse rips through Western society many of the ideas and attitudes that seemed so fixed and unchallengeable only ten years ago are now evaporating like so much steam on an overheated stew. And anti-colonial grifters (including once the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy) seeking reparations from hard working British taxpayers for the sin of slavery, which was perpetrated by every empire in history, need to be reminded just who it was that fought to end it.