Thornyone wrote:Mike Sales wrote:It should not be forgotten that the ancestors of the Windrush generation were kidnapped as slaves and taken across the Atlantic to make money for the British.
This would be more accurate if you’d written “some of the British”. At the time of the slave trade a great many of “the British” were also living in near-slavery. After all, this was the era of (white) child chimney sweeps and exploited labour (including child labour) in e.g. the textile mills. It was also the era when men could be kidnapped to perform naval service and a time when poor whites could face being transported to the other side of the world for what would now be deemed very minor criminality. I doubt whether many of these poorer individuals would have felt that they were living off the labour of African slaves. Of course, given that the policies of middle class politicians led to immigration having a disproportionately greater effect on the lowest classes of British society, often impacting on their way of life in a far more direct way than it impacted the ruling class, it is inconvenient to acknowledge this fact. It is also inconvenient to acknowledge that Arab traders and some black Africans too, were major players in the black slave trade. (Please note that I am not an apologist for slavery, and I also think that the recent treatment of the Windrush immigrants currently in the spotlight, has been appalling).
I agree with most of what you say, and indeed thought of making your main point, but I felt that a full account of the slave trade might be a bit too much for an internet posting. One of my thoughts which I nearly put down, was that my ancestors of whom I have knowledge were colliers (those digging, not those profiting) and saw little money from the slave trade.
There is a distinction worth making between African and Arab slavery, and what we did. Slaves in Africa were within a social system they knew, and though no doubt there was cruelty, it does not compare with being wrenched into another world, with a very high mortality on the way, and vile treatment in the plantations.
The triangular trade was one of the ways in which Britain exploited other countries, and the capital gained was part of the foundation of our economic success, and our present relative wealth. Even the descendants of coal miners have benefited.