Britons are widely ignorant of the scale and legacy of Britain’s involvement in slavery and colonialism, a survey has found, with the vast majority unaware how many people were enslaved, how long the trade went on for, or for how long UK taxpayers were paying off a government loan to “compensate” enslavers after abolition.
The poll, released to coincide with Tuesday’s UN International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, was commissioned by the Repair Campaign, which is working with Caricom to secure reparatory justice for member states through health, education and infrastructure projects.
The sample of more than 2,000 people representative of the UK population found 85% did not know that more than 3 million people had been forcibly shipped from Africa to the Caribbean by British enslavers.
Talk about having your cake and eating it.
Taxpayers paying for the freedom of enslaved people shows how dedicated the British people were to ending the Atlantic slave trade. The fact that they try to use this as a negative in our history stuns me. You can spin it as “compensating slavers” but the fact is the person was free. And at that time the UK did everything in it’s power to free as many as it could by any method.
Yes, the empire has it’s history with slavery and British citizens were involved in the slave trade. However British sailors died fighting to end to transatlantic slave trade. Sometimes, I expect there was British on both sides.
If you’re going to educate people about our history you have to teach the negatives and the positives, and not spin the one in to the other.
Ya the “we spent money” makes the writer seem like and idiot.