
posted 25th October 2024

What should you do if you have treated someone unjustly: if you have taken or damaged something that belongs to them, or inflicted suffering on them that they do not deserve?
The first step is to admit that you have been unjust. This is what an apology is; an admission that you are in the wrong. It marks a shift in the relationship between you and the person you have wronged. You accept that there has been injustice, and you take responsibility for that injustice.
But what if the injustice was done not to one person by one person, but by many, many people to many, many people? What if the perpetrators and the victims came from different countries? And what if it happened a long time ago and all the people involved are dead? How can justice be done then?
The Atlantic slave trade, which lasted from the mid-sixteenth century to the early nineteenth century, involved millions of people being kidnapped from Africa and forcibly transported to work on cotton and sugar plantations in the West Indies and the southern states of America. Approximately one third of those transported in this way - over 3 million people - were taken by British traders. Enslaved people suffered appalling conditions in the sea journey from Africa, locked up in the holds of ships with little or no sanitation, half starved and subject to fatal diseases. Many of them were thrown overboard when they got sick so that their owners could claim insurance on them as 'damaged property'. Once they arrived in the West Indies or America, they continued to be treated like animals. They were forced to work long hours in blazing heat, and were beaten if they didn't work hard enough, answered back or tried to escape. They had no independence or freedom; they were bought and sold as their owners' property; the women were often raped by their owners, and any children they had were also the property of their owners.
The Atlantic slave trade was a monstrous, revolting, spectacular injustice done to millions of people over hundreds of years, with consequences which continue to be felt to this day. It was theft, kidnapping, rape, torture and murder on an industrial scale. To do nothing in the face of injustice is a further injustice. But what, actually, can we do about the slave trade? Should we - can we - apologise?
For an apology
Making an apology for the damage done by the slave trade is nothing more than stating the truth. This happened. It shouldn't have happened. We did it. It was wrong. We regret it.
Even though no living British person was directly involved in the slave trade, all British people, to a greater or lesser extent, have profited from it. The Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century was the foundation of the prosperity we enjoy today; the cotton industry, which was powered by slave labour, was a major component of that economic success. We would not be where we are now without the slave trade. While we - living British people - may not be directly responsible for the suffering inflicted by the slave trade, we are liable for it, because we have prospered from it. Say someone steals a phone from someone else at knifepoint, and then gives it to you. You may not have been the one who actually held the knife, but if you use that phone, knowing it was stolen, you are profiting from the injustice of the original theft.
We need to take responsibility for the evil actions on which our prosperity was founded. A formal apology by the British people - represented by the king or prime minister - would be a way of accepting that responsibility. As well as being an act of justice, it would be good for us as a nation. It would give us a more honest view of our past, and thus of our present. It would stop us deluding ourselves that Britain is somehow inherently superior and entitled to special treatment, and so might help us to make better decisions about our future.
Against an apology
An apology is just words. Words are easy. Words do not put right the wrong. They do not address the continuing injustices caused by the slave trade. It costs very little for the king or prime minister to have their speechwriter craft a few well-shaped sentences, and for them to deliver them in a solemn voice.
We can - and certainly should - acknowledge that the slave trade was a monstrous injustice. But it would be absurd to apologise for it. An apology is an acceptance of responsibility for a wrong action. You cannot apologise for something you did not do. If the king or prime minister were to apologise for the slave trade, that would debase the language of apology. They, along with the rest of us, were not alive when it happened.
If they say they are apologising on behalf of the British people who were involved in the slave trade, that too is meaningless. Those people are dead, so cannot give their consent for an apology in their name. In any case, even if they could be magically brought back to life, the overwhelming majority would probably be completely unapologetic about what they did then, just as they were when they first did it.
Apologising for something that happened two hundred years ago keeps us stuck in the past. What was done to those millions of enslaved people was shameful, but it cannot be undone. It is pointless to focus on something which cannot be changed. In many ways, apologising for the past is the easy way out: sorry that we exploited your ancestors, but don't expect us to do anything for you now. Much better to focus on what needs doing in the present. There are any number of injustices happening in our time, which we can acknowledge through an apology, but can then go on to fix.
Motions that go with this topic
1. This house believes King Charles / the Prime Minister should apologise for Britain's role in the slave trade.
2. This house believes King Charles / the Prime Minister should apologise for the British Empire.
3. This house believes King Charles / the Prime Minister should apologise for Britain's history of racial discrimination.