Sins of the Fathers

I was set a blog-challenge a wee while ago in the context of reparations for slavery: “…unless you are a person of colour or descended from immigrants at that time … you will have somehow benefitted from the proceeds of slavery… At what point in the long chain of benefits do we decide that individuals and organisations should not be held responsible for slavery?”

If I were a Christian, I’d simply point to Ezekiel 18:20 (King James’ version, of course): “The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father”. Funnily enough, lots of Christians are demanding reparations – a hypocritical circle to square.

Two sources
My knowledge of colonial Britain is, as it is for most people, incomplete and flawed. To help correct some shortcomings I did a bit of cramming, including Colonialism – A Moral Reckoning by Nigel Biggar and Empire Land – How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain by Sathnam Sanghera. Biggar’s starting point is that Britain’s colonial intentions, slavery aside, were grounded in the positives of Christianity and the Enlightenment. In contrast, Sanghera’s position is that the driving forces for colonialism were racism and greed. I think that Biggar, an ethicist, is the more accomplished historian, despite his infallible logic coming across as a tad cold-hearted. Sanghera, a novelist, writes more humanely, but he analyses everything through the sole historic lens of colonialism, as if nothing else was going on at the time and as if we hadn’t had a history before the mid-17th century. This weakens some of his otherwise compelling arguments.

Specifically, Biggar is against reparations. Sanghera tiptoes towards supporting the idea, being explicit about his desire for the repatriation of looted artefacts and better teaching of history in schools. Both books sweat facts, too many to check and, in any event, the writers seem to agree on a lot of the data; it’s their interpretations that differ as to context, causes, consequences and moral judgements. When scholarly opinions differ so widely, can anyone ever work out who should pay how much if anything in what form to whom for how long and for what?

Scene-setting
Back to the basics of slavery: it’s abhorrent; the vile treatment of captives compounds the evil; Britain was complicit for about 150 years from 1660; it’s impossible to quantify the suffering in monetary or any other terms, because nothing would or should ever be deemed sufficient.

Now for some extra context and possible mitigation. Slavery has (present tense) been around for millennia. Brits have been enslaved as well. Other nations, including on the African continent, are far more guilty of slavery than Britain, in terms of number of victims and duration; indeed, Africans traded their own to Westerners. Brits led the charge to abolish slavery in British territories and then policed the seas to abolish the global trade. Many descendants of slaves have benefitted, and still are, from colonial investment. Britain has done a lot of other good in the world, including defeating Nazism. We’ve also done bad stuff.

Some say it’s wrong to judge the past by today’s standards. I agree, as long as past and present standards are dissimilar. Many Brits, from about the second half of the 18th century, argued that slavery was repugnant and campaigned for its abolition. People knew it was wrong back then; we know it's bad now. It’s therefore valid to condemn 18th-century Britain from a 21st-century perspective and vouch that we shouldn’t have taken part in the sordid business.

What if we hadn’t taken part? Think Sliding Doors on steroids, or a plague of gigantic butterflies, wings flapping, changing the course of history (à la Chaos Theory). I’m going to stick my neck out and forecast (postcast?) that other nations, including African, would have continued with slavery for far longer without Britain’s abolition-momentum. In other words, by becoming involved with slavery, Britain did the world a net-favour.

Profits and Losses
Obviously, our motives weren’t honourable. We didn’t enter the trade to free the slaves; we did it for profit. Some people and companies got filthy rich, and direct and indirect taxes paid to the Crown must also be considered, but any ‘calculation’ would be incomplete and inaccurate. Just as it’s impossible to know the financial impact on the economy from Brexit because of contemporaneous influences of Covid and Ukraine, by how much Britain benefitted financially, net, from slavery (as opposed to from more palatable colonial activities and non-colonial influences) is impossible to say. For one thing, we have to take into account the huge costs of globally policing the abolition of the trade.

Genocide?
There was more to colonialism than slavery, and slavery wasn’t the only atrocity. Some have claimed that any reparations bill should therefore take account of all colonial iniquities. In that case, all the good stuff we did should be offset against the bad.

Various commentators have accused Britain of genocide, which the UN defines as the intention to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. The slave trade was evil but it wasn’t genocide. As for other apparent atrocities, Sanghera hones in on the treatment of Tasmanian Aborigines in the 1830s as “the only true genocide in English colonial history”. Biggar rebuffs this and other examples. He explains that not only was the intent to destroy disproven in Tasmania and elsewhere, but government policy was, in fact, one of assimilation, protection and enlightenment, not subjugation or annihilation. In Tasmania, the intent of the authorities (as opposed to some settlers) was in line with government policy, but implementation failed for a number of tragic reasons. Sanghera points to other instances where the authorities, military and settlers did commit murder, mass-murder even. Horrific as these events were, they weren't an existential threat to the indigenous peoples. That was down to disease (not an intent), the sheer numbers of settlers and their monopolising of resources, exacerbated by inter-tribal warfare. In many cases, agreements with communities that started off constructively and peaceably descended into chaos and violence once the incoming population became too hot to handle, in terms of numbers and attitude.

A more astute accusation than genocide involves the concept of ‘cultural relativism’, which was unheard of back then. Cultural relativism recognises that ethical practices differ among cultures; what’s considered right in one might be considered wrong in another, and vice versa. In other words, no one society or culture is superior to another; they are merely different. For example, whereas an 18th-/19th-century Western attitude towards a perilous, nomadic, hunter-gathering, pagan community would be one of horror and pity with an instinct to ‘pacify’ and ‘educate’, such attitudes and ensuing actions today are condemned as, at their worst, ‘cultural genocide’, which is another concept not around hundreds of years ago. This is definitely a case where we shouldn’t judge yesteryear by today’s more enlightened standards.

Balancing act
I haven’t scratched the surface of the good, bad, neutral and relativistic aspects of Britain’s colonialism and slave trade, which is impossible in just 2,000 words. Then again I don't think that's necessary to answer the posed question. Biggar and Sanghera agree that it’s not a balance sheet of good and bad. This is self-evident, because a meaningful balance sheet needs all the numbers and all the facts on all the issues in their individual as well as collective contexts. We’re never going to achieve that. Without a balance sheet, we won’t know, as I said earlier, who should pay how much if anything in what form to whom for how long and for what.

That is to say, seeking reparations for historical or ongoing financial disadvantage owing to slavery or wider colonialism can’t be justified, because the data is woefully incomplete. In addition, seeking reparations for the suffering and deaths of slaves is questionable from a moral standpoint: it’s impossible to quantify the suffering in monetary or any other terms, because nothing would or should ever be deemed sufficient. The slaves would still have suffered.

Having said that, I have nothing against 'descendants', including corporations and non-governmental organisations, of those who profited from slavery making some sort of a gesture. That’s up to them. They shouldn’t be coerced into anything or be judged unfavourably whatever they decide. The Royal Family is a special case. Given their unstinting service that has significantly bettered Britain and the Commonwealth, if not the world, they don’t owe anybody anything. The reluctant KGVI helped steer us through the war. The humble QEII dedicated her life to our service with her quiet diplomacy, leading by example, never complaining, staying out of politics, shaking hands with murderers and terrorists. And now the troubled KCIII. He’s less polished than his mum; nevertheless he gave us the Prince’s Trust, raised awareness of environmental issues, and his multi-faith inclusivity is an example to everyone.

Three ways forward
Hmmm. Have I talked myself into washing my 21st-century hands of the whole slavery affair? No, I haven’t. The problem I have is that whatever we do, however much we were to pay in reparations, the slaves would still have suffered. If only we could turn the clock back, slide the doors, and not cause the suffering in the first place. That’s not going to happen, but we can do the next best thing. We can limit present and future suffering from slavery. All nations / large organisations guilty of historic slavery, including African, should jointly fund a global 'Modern Slavery Taskforce'. In this way, resources would be directed 100% to those who unquestionably need help now, instead of to those who might not need anything, or to whom nothing is due, or to those who are themselves are descended from slave traders and owners.

As advocated by Sanghera, the case for reparations in the form of repatriating looted artefacts is more easily supported empirically, but it's still not without difficulties. One example is Germany recently returning a group of Benin bronzes to Nigeria. Apparently, they’ve vanished into a private collection instead of being exhibited in a museum as promised. I can hear some Western curators mutter, ‘I told you so’.

Not tied to reparations, but a good thing anyway and as argued by Sanghera, would be improved teaching of colonial history in schools and beyond. This would help to moderate rhetoric on both sides and contribute constructively to the ongoing healing process. It would only work, however, if the teaching were accurate and balanced and the racist concept of ‘white privilege’ disallowed. 

Answering the question
The original question was, “At what point … do we decide that individuals and organisations should not be held responsible for slavery?” As this refers to historic slavery my answer is 'Ezekiel 18:20'. But if the question were to refer to modern-day slavery, my answer would be ‘never’ because, until slavery is truly abolished, which will require permanent policing, everyone is responsible for it as a result of the things we buy, the services we procure, the blind-eyes we turn, the myopic political stances we take and the government resources we expend and devour at great opportunity cost.

Bottom line, literally:
Our responsibility lies with those who are suffering now, not with those whose suffering ended a long time ago.