It's not Britons shame, it is the shame of the rich wealthy aristocratic bloodlines that ruled from above, the very same bloodlines who are still in power today who are plugging 21st century slavery aka workfare, and it's sickening.

Strip them all of their inherited assets and influence.

Get ready for the hate and bile from their lackies who trawl comments on articles such as these in 3... 2.. 1.

I'm with you - I always thought the Tories were evil! I don't just disagree with their policies, I think they are cold, compassionateless, greed obsessed snobs! This is verified every time one of them opens their mouth. And they couldn't care less! They seem to delight in lauding themselves and hating everybody else. Reading this, it's all begining to make sense now. Cameron and Osborne telling the poor to work for nothing while they sit on enormious piles of our wealth for doing nothing!

"I always thought the Tories were evil!"

William Wilberforce, one of the most prominent abolitionists, was a Tory.

Bah I deride your use of facts to win an argument on the internet

Gixerstu: very funny!

Thank you but in truth I stole it a bit (and edited) from 'The Simpsons'.

I have no comedy talent whatsoever!

your comment really made me laugh,

Do you mean you don't like the truth?

Welcome to the world of irony.

I admit it doesn't travel well over the interweb

"sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken" - Tyler Durden.

With a name like "theoldstoic" one would have thought he would have detected the hint of comic irony in your comment.

I beg to differ; William Wilberforce sat in parliament as an INDEPENDENT. In spite of being a close friend of William Pitt the Younger. As well as his magnum opus, the abolition of the slave trade, Wilberforce was a founder of “Society for Bettering the Conditions and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor". He promoted bills to make the Factory Acts effective and to relieve the conditions of boy chimney sweeps.I do not think that the modern Conservative Party can take any credit at all.

Dont be stupid, no modern party can take credit for anything that happened in the 19th century. Those were different times with different people with different social contexts.

You can be quite sure that the Liberals (whigs then) benefitted just as much as the Tories of the time. As did many working class people - e.g. those who got jobs on the ships and the tobacco and sugar factories.

And so oddly did many Africans - who made money selling their own kind to the whites as slaves.

Every European country engaged in the slave trade, as did the Arabs and many Africans.

What happened was within the moral codes of the time, and as those moral codes changed so slavery was ended.

You might also care to remember that the Arabs didn't ban slavery until the 1960s.

You won't take credit for the crimes against other people but i'm sure you will take credit as some sort of Great Empire spreading civility across the world right? It doesn't matter when this took place wrong is wrong....Most European countries would still be in the caveman era if it wasn't for African, Arab, and asian connections. Europe would have NO empire if it wasn't for the abundant wealth of Africa, Asia, North & South America...please shove all of your rhetoric up your ass sir. Thank you

Yes many did benefit but the one's who should have been paid compensation still await it, My ancestors deserve to be compensated no if buts of excuse's & i await that day

good luck with that. No "non Caucasian" shall ever recieve a dime from being enslaved. meaningless words of apology are enough. Classic example; Germany pays Israel, but yet adamantly refuses to pay Namibia despite butchering 80% of the Hereros and 50 % of the Nama tribes. The US government with what's left of the Native Americans etc. You're gonna wait a looooong time

And this is the crux of the article. Not Tories or Wilberforce or liberals.

"He promoted bills to make the Factory Acts effective and to relieve the conditions of boy chimney sweeps".

So like Shaftesbury then. Also a Tory. What motivated both him and Wilberforce was a combination of Christian faith and a sense of noblesse oblige. Both came at these issues from a Tory perspective, even if that led them to the same conclusions as those from more radical factions.

In classifying Wilberforce as an independent I think you are missing the fact that party labels were somewhat indistinct in the 18th and early 19th centuries; to an extent they have been imposed by historians in later years. The label Tory was partially tainted by association with Jacobitism and Catholocism. Pitt never identified himself as a Tory, referring to himself as an independent Whig. Nobody now doubts though that Pitt's administration was Tory in inclination. Given Wilberforce's support for that administration, and his views on other subjects (on morality and questions of challenges to the existing social order Wilberforce was deeply conservative), I think it is as fair to classify him as as Tory as Pitt.

I didn't start this discussion because I claim credit for the modern Conservative Party for the abolition of slavery, rather to challenge the view that seemed to be coming across in these pages that Tories and their ideological predecessors are perpetually on the wrong side of history.

are you trying to say that if it wasn't for the conservatives, we would still have slavery.

that's a ridiculous argument. there were many good men throughout our history, they weren't "conservative", they were reformers!.

What he is saying is that Tories were involved in ending the Slave trade. Sadly you are so bigoted and ignorant you can't bear any facts that counter your pre-conceived beliefs.

Well said.

So the Modern Conservative Party can't take credit (which obviously it can't) but Sanchez here is fine drawing parallels with Cameron's anscestors? Left wing hypocrisy really does know no bounds.

I take it that your comment is ironic?

Those were different times, that was in the days of Whigs vs Tories, when the Tories were the closest thing the country had to a party that represented the people over the aristocrats.

The term "Tory" meant something very different back then.

"...Tories were the closest thing the country had to a party that represented the people over the aristocrats".

Not really. The Tories supported the traditional hierarchy of Church, King and landed gentry against the rise of a more urbanised, more secular and more pro parliament (a parliament elected largely by the wealthy) Whig aristocracy. Neither faction can truly be said to have represented the mass of ordinary people, indeed both would have been horrified by the notion of the participation of the great unwashed in government.

It was the religiosity of many Tories such as Wilberforce that led them to make common cause with the more radical Whigs in supporting abolition of the slave trade.

As above, Wilberforce was an independent.

William Wilberforce was still an independent.

yes different teams but let me guess you sit on the side where the grass is greener...

'The term "Tory" meant something very different back then.'

I have to disagree simply because the tory so call success if based on slavery FACT. I don't think there is a single regret from Mr Camron and co...

so until you see some level of regret (and i mean more than a statement) then Tory party will still be them old Torries

Slavery ended nearly 200 years go, and we ended the slave trade over 200 years ago. You may choose to feel guilty about the moral codes of the past and the actions of people who died well over 100 years before you were born, but I don't. I never feel guilty or embarrassed by the actions of others. You are responsible for yourself, not your ancestors. And the blacks sold their kinsmen to white and Arab slave traders, just as tribes and kingdoms in the ancient world sold their neighbours and enemies as slaves, and the Aztecs sacrificed them.

Are you sure it's all over???
"More than that, it said that only children under six would be
immediately free; the rest being regarded as "apprentices" who would, in
exchange for free board and lodging, have to work for their "owners" 40
and a half hours for nothing until 1840."
Doesn't that also remind you of your timesheet or what you get paid to just afford your rent and food?

Moving forward, should you truly be guilt-free, you wouldn't justify slavery on the grounds that slaves were 'allegedly' sold by kins of theirs and -if I understand your conclusions well- hence, legitimately acquired by your ancestors...
If you had any bone of responsibility, you would spend less time being an apologetist and work a little more towards understanding the 'sources' of your 'ongoing' privileges and promoting a fair world where your race -as a whole- don't happen to miraculously be the fraudulent alpha male it stands as today...
Anyway, whether you like it or not, the days of the Western Empire are coming to an end and, for the like of you, it will suddenly make sense that reparations for the victims of your ancestors'evils would have served you better than waving your empathy goodbye...

No need to feel shame, just pay up. That's what matters. It doesn't matter how many years ago. Do not successive governments have to repay debt incurred by a previous government? No one refuses to pay by declaring that someone else borrowed the money. So while individuals don't have to feel guilty, the state should. And the state should rectify a wrong and pay Caribbean societies for the imbalance they created that has led to large masses of poor struggling black people and a few well off white folks owning all the land and assets. The socioeconomic problems this has created are innumerable.

Maybe the empires that didn't abolish till much later can start? Like the Arab, Ottoman, Spanish...?

"yes different teams but let me guess you sit on the side where the grass is greener..."

I'm really not sure what you mean about that, I hate the whole political class. All of them. Traditionally a Labour voter, but now I just hate them all.

William Wilberforce campaigned for abolition of slave trade because industrial revolution has taken place. Human labour would not be needed as machine has replaced them.

This is an argument that was a counter claim for what was seen at the time of abolition and afterwards as a bit moral statement by Britain. Countries who did not agree with abolition and in fact were penalised by Britain, who kept warships in countries like The Gambia to physically stop them slaving, had to make a counter claim as to why the British were doing this totally in their own interests so that the British would not gain any moral high ground.
As this article states it wasn't in the interests of the British to sacrifice such a huge amount of cash in compensation, so this argument wears thin.
The saddest thing if all is that instead of the descendants of slaves who live free lives in places like the UK celebrating abolition most aren't even aware of the part the British had to play in this, of the sailors who died (many white, black, Chinese) to stop this trade. I live near Clapham in London where Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect started on the road to abolition, I've tried asking around to see if any black people know of the significance of this but no, it's not common knowledge and perhaps should be.

Why do you expect every modern day black people to know this? Is it because they're black? I agree that ignorance is a horrible thing but many people from different races don't know their history. I agree with you that they all should though. Marcus Garvey said "A man who doesn't know his history is like a tree without roots."

Most of them don't even know that the people who sold them as slaves were fellow black Africans.

There were also Jewish police units who we're overseers of other Jews for the Nazis in the Ghettos of Germany and Poland, some took up this mantel out of fear and preservation for their own lives and others unfortunately for financial privileges.
By this rational I guess the 6 million dead Jews deserved what they got because some of their own people we're complicate? And I guess they should never have been given repatriations of the tune of a 100billion for the same reason?

This is obviously not my sentiments but this always seems to be the rational when discussing the condition of black people.
Always those with the least experience of that reality seem to know and understand the harsh truths better than the effected group themselves? Lol

This analogy doesn't work. Africans and Arabs were enslaving other Africans long before Euros turned up. Centuries before. Euros didn't force them into enslaving other Africans, it was an industry already.

Why do you keep pushing this argument? Does it suddenly make slavery ok or absolves Britain because some evil blacks were involved? What's the point, really?

But, how do you know this? Did you read the information in the family archives? Or are you a scholar of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade? Are you also aware that one of Jesus' own twelve sold him to his captors. Does this, too, absolve of blame the Romans who executed him?

There's no excuse for ignorance, aye, but as a black man I couldn't put any significance on any problems the British had to face to abolish slavery, i.e. I'd be happy someone holding me captive has let me go but I wouldn't dwell on or care so much how much distress they endure to set me free...'they'd rather live with the idea that they suffered than the country they live in proudly set them free.'...I won't comment on this last bit, but I'll ask you to reflect and realise it is nonsense in the context of slave trade.

Very well made point !

Your position is such a convenient one. Lol

This white hero complex is a little too much, just another example of whites patting each other on the backs for finding a moral backbone after 400yrs.
16billion in compensation to a bunch of slave masters, rapists and murders is hardly something that blacks need to be grateful for!
The actual reason slavery ended was because of mass slave revolts ( the Haitian revolution, the Jamaican uprisings and the the 100s of slave revolts throughout the Americas ), too many white people we're being murdered and it was becoming a much too costly system to maintain therefore it had to be ended in a way where europe could save face and some how look like liberators.

And if England felt so bad about slavery why did they then go into Africa and then push forward with colonialism? ( enslavement of Africans inside of Africa )

We should be grateful for living free lives in England? Lol
I'm sorry, the same England where we get called nigger on the pitch and have banana skins thrown at us, where police and the judicial system have along history of unfair and many times violent treatment towards people of colour, the very same England where St Marys school in west London has to be forced to give a public apology for telling kids to come up with a business plan of how they would recolonize Africa?
Caribbeans should be thankful for the privilege of living in the UK??
I like the way you fail to mention that we we're already paying in to the British empire has being a part of the British colonies. This has been a one way sucess story for the England, we came here to rebuild this country after the second world war then preceeded to get our arses kicked for the next 50yrs.

Your posts really show your ignorance of British history, and that you do not know the difference between automation and mechanization.
The machines you refer to had to be manned by many thousands of workers - including young children - as did the mines which provided the fuel to power them.
The only difference between them and the slave labour abroad was that the home version were not enslaved by force; but if they did not work they starved.
You should also read up the conditions they lived in, the laws which controlled them, the very high mortality rate, and low life expectancy; before you are perhaps tempted to consider their daily lives any better.

Could not agree more, but people are so polarized by colour it make laugh

Spot on.

Simply not true. Industrialisation took place in Britain, where the number of slaves was tiny and mostly domestic servants, but not in the Caribbean, where cane-cutting continued to be done by hand.

English common law since 1215 would have made it legally dubious to hold any person as a slave. That's not to say there were no slaves held illegally over this long period time. English law did not apply in colonies.

Utter rubbish. The industrial revolution began in the UK where there were few slaves. Some workers were displaced by machines but overall it provided much more work - many people left the countryside for factories. The majority of slaves were used abroad and when freed continued to work as employees doing the same job - it would be a while before machines were built that could be used on the cotton, sugar and tobacco plantations. Wilberforce campaigned for slavery against the interests of his peers because it repulsed him. While I am ashamed of our past profiting from the misery of others I believe Brits can be proud of having a man like this in our history who stood up for what was right and led the way in stopping this atrocity.

Same argument can be made about women's rights. It only happened because of the industrial revolution, it had little to do with the suffragettes et al. Some things are inevitable as a result of mechanisation and manual automation.