There is something of a global fashion for aplogising for things you haven’t actually done yourself to people who aren’t alive to hear the apologies.<\/p>\n

I’m all for Britain becoming aware of the bad parts of its history. All the same, most of our ancestors were peasants or the industrial poor, kicked off the land by Enclosure Acts or thrown out of craft work by emergent industrialisation orbegging in the streets or pressganged into virtual serfdom on ships, while the slave trade was going on. Are we supposed to apologise for being British? Or being white? Isn’t it pretty racist to assume that as “white” people, we are somehow responsible for what other “white” people did. I can pretty well guarantee that my ancestors weren’t profiting from the slave trade, or I’d be a lot better off now.<\/p>\n

Racism grew as the ideology to support the inhuman treatment of the enslaved. Are we to internalise this vile belief system and think that we are somehow a different breed of human from the Africans who were captured?<\/p>\n

There is no genetic basis for theories of race. How often does one have to keep saying this? There is more genetic variation within any given “race” than between “races.” The whole concept ignores the fact that we are all “mixed race”. Almost no people on earth have lived in isolation, without the benefits of genetic diversity, for any measurable time. The existence of a “white” race is a pernicious myth. Surely anyone with any pretence to education or intelligence knows this. If not, what are we doing in our schools?<\/p>\n

We should certainly try to understand the nature of British racism – developed as a justification for slavery, at a given point in time, it evolved into a subtly different justification for colonialism and has continued to evolve throughout the 20th and 21st centuries to support different social forms – e.g. when the UK needed labour in the 1950s and imported lots of “colonial subjects,” it soon had to start to drop most of the racist nonsense. Racism still continues to flourish and to take new forms to reflect our different social and political situation (it’s now mainly directed at Muslims rather than Afro-Caribbeans, for instance.)<\/p>\n

I believe that understanding the nature of racism is crucial for the future of the planet.<\/p>\n

I also believe that apologising for things we (that is US, as living human beings) didn’t actually do is pretty hollow.<\/p>\n

There is plenty more bad around the relations between Britain and Africa.<\/p>\n

For example, the profits from engagement in the slave trade made England such a wealthy country that it was able to take the lead in industrialisation. The failure of England to dominate the palm oil trade – so necessary to an important phase of late Victorian industrialisation – was due to the negotiating success of African traders, who consistently got the better of the European traders as soon as they realised palm-oil was crucial – OPEC-style. this led to European colonial invasion of West Africa. Comonial rule in Africa was very shortlived but left a devastating legacy of invented states and collaborationist local elites which still impacts on African politics to this day.<\/p>\n

If there are current resonances here, they seem to be in the realm of grabbing control of oil through warfare…… Oh, and supporting it with a belief system…….<\/p>\n

Is there any point in apologising for all of British history? A genuine apology should surely include some attempt to make amends. Who should Britain make these amends to? The descendants of the slaves? In what form? Send money to America? Probably not a good idea.<\/p>\n

To Africa? Surely, by definition, Africans WEREN’T enslaved. When the European powers messed up Africa, slavery was well over. But Africa could do with some assistance, beyond the adoption of its best-looking babies by female celebrities, the wearing of Red Noses and even beyond lots of people paying to see has-been rock stars.<\/p>\n

There were no slave plantations, brutally suppressed slave revolts or Jim Crow race laws in England. These are American evils. Out of them grew a classification of humans as Black or White. This is not just patently absurd – flying in the face of the evidence of one’s eyes – it shapes our thinking in subtle ways. It is not necessarily more or less racist than the multicoloured shades of racial distinction that exist in the many other countries. It is certainly different. Most US black people would be self-evidently “white” to most Africans (outside South Afriica or Zimbawe) or North-east Brazilians. Are we so imbued with US culture that we can’t even look at our own history without seeing it through their eyes?<\/p>\n

Here I feel that the uniquely British role in the triangle trade created historical outcomes which are quite distinct from the North and South American legacies, but that we are somehow taking the American guilt on board here and apologising for it along with our own national guilt. But, guess what, we’re not doing anything useful about it.<\/p>\n

In fact, the UK government has made racism more or less invisible, for example, by changing the goalposts so that “anti-racism” is now “diversity,” by shutting down the Commission for Racial Equality and by mouthing siilly apologies for things that happened two centuries ago. Social equality is barely advancing. Many times more “black” kids are being excluded from school, for instance. Integration of cities like Bradford is becoming less and less likely.<\/p>\n

Our ruling class may feel a bit better about itself for saying it’s sorry. Does this achieve anything to anyone else’s advantage? As a nation, England did a lot more to challenge global slavery, when we started to sink any ships caught trading slaves, not long after the UK ban. This actually achieved something concrete – it started to make slave trading too unprofitable to be attractive.<\/p>\n