Britain is sued by 14 Caribbean nations for the 'damage' it did through slavery

[fierytrini]

More than 150 years after Europe abolished slavery, the Caribbean is preparing to sue Britain for its part in the wholesale trade of human beings.

A coalition of Caribbean leaders will meet today in St. Vincent to discuss a landmark legal claim for reparations - that could run into the hundreds of billions of pounds - for a legacy that many say still lingers across the palm-fringed archipelago.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2577312/Caribbean-leaders-sue-Britain-slave-trade-150-years-abolished.html#ixzz2vepCFqWG
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Over ten million Africans were stolen from their homes and forcefully transported to the Caribbean as the enslaved chattels and property of Europeans,' the claim says. 'The transatlantic slave trade is the largest forced migration in human history and has no parallel in terms of man's inhumanity to man.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2577312/Caribbean-leaders-sue-Britain-slave-trade-150-years-abolished.html#ixzz2vepJlUQ2
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The author of the article seems so upset about this situation as there are many references to the UK being the first to abolish slavery.
Clearly, missing the point that, the UK benefited greatly from slavery.

Read the full article at
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2577312/Caribbean-leaders-sue-Britain-slave-trade-150-years-abolished.html

[fierytrini]

Adding to this, another article from the same site by Max Hastings, calling it insane to pay reparations for slavery.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2577932/MAX-HASTINGS-Yes-slavery-evil-But-insane-force-pay-damages-age-old-wrongs.html

Some excerpts include
"Britain will be at the forefront of this claim,’ says Day enthusiastically. ‘We undoubtedly face more claims than others because we were the primary colonial power in  the Caribbean and primary operators of the slave trade."

... has, admittedly, become a norm in our society, is a belief that cash compensation is the appropriate response for every error of mankind, including payments to parents to ‘compensate’ for dead children, cheques for shoppers who trip on paving stones and policemen who fall over their truncheons.

The second notion, even more pernicious, is that litigants may continue to pursue claims, especially against governments, after the passage of decades — and now of centuries.

Here is the ultimate triumph of the victim culture: justice may be sought against modern defendants for ‘wrongs’ committed by their ancestors.

His argument is that Britain, "should never forget that the conditions of white workers in the factories that made Britain rich and great in the 19th century were almost as dreadful as those of slaves.

While dear old Queen Victoria reigned at Windsor, small children were still being pushed up chimneys by sweeps and were working ten hours a day down coal mines even as Trollope’s amiable country parsons savoured breakfast in their rectories.

If the logic of today’s Caribbean ‘action plan’ is followed, the descendants of the oppressed working class would have a fabulous legal claim against modern Britain.

The lack of reciprocity in the pursuit of grievances, too, invites our cynicism.

Slavery was an unspeakably evil commerce. But many societies across the world — the ‘Land of the Free’ foremost among them — were in it up to their necks, as were a host of African tribal chieftains and Arab traders."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2577932/MAX-HASTINGS-Yes-slavery-evil-But-insane-force-pay-damages-age-old-wrongs.html#ixzz2vfvFzgFb
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