Si wrote:.... as the majority of replies have used civil, reasoned argument to dismantle the OPs proposition, I'm of a mind to pretty much leave it as is.
OK guys, teacher's left the room, riot time
mercalia wrote:The great families that benefited from slavery should have rest less nights? My family & I bet most here don't need to, in the times in question we were just as much enslaved, by having no vote?
I understand where you're coming from with that, however I beg to differ. Slave women could be seduced or raped by the masters, then if they fell pregnant, their child could be taken away from them and sold to another slave owner. any slave could be beaten as much as the master wanted, and if the slave died, no consequences for the owner other than losing a slave. A slave remained a slave for life. In exceptional cases, some slaves were freed, but still faced daily struggle to either find work or a place to live, let alone equal rights to justice etc. A slave could not own anything - anything a slave owned, was in fact owned by the master. Sometimes slaves were paid small amounts, but at any time, the master could take the money away. A slave travelling would be assumed to be escaped, and have to prove that they were on lawful business of their master's. An escaped slave could expect no mercy, if caught they could be severely flogged or even worse as an example to others. A slave had to work as hard as required, regardless of their health or ability. A slave would be fed as much or as little as the master saw fit. Despite the illogicality of it, a master might starve slaves until they were too ill to work, even though they had bought them to work.
The list goes on a lot longer.
And even when slavery was abolished in all countries, in the US in particular, ex slaves remained in poverty and often had to work for their previous masters for a pittance. Recent i.e last 100 years of history is readily available, how in the US black people remained second class citizens all the way through the 20th century, in
1955 Rosa Parks led a bus boycott in the USA, in
1967 Richard Loving, and Mildred Loving took the state of Virginia to the US Supreme Court in order to get the racist law preventing two people of different races from marrying. The Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr, a prominent campaigner and advocate of peaceful protest, was assassinated in
1968.
So no. Although life for the British working class was very hard indeed a century ago, and our forefathers had fewer rights, we still had more than slaves. It is true that various African civil rights campaigners were in contact with some leading British trade unionists a hundred years ago to discuss human rights, but we have had the Magna Carta in
1215 which led to the English Bill of Rights
1689 The fact that individual people were badly treated was more down to the corruption of those in power, than a lack of technical rights. Though things weren't perfect, as it took until
1965 for the Race Relations Act, and
1975 for the Sex Discrimination Act.