Reparations and the idea of money owed by the British people to billions around the world has been reintroduced into the political debate by the Labour Party.
The most famous example of reparations I can think of is those imposed upon Germany following the First World War. The Treaty of Versailles demanded that the Germany compensate countries allied with Britain and France because of the horrors and damage inflicted in the First World War – a conflict that many of us will have reflected upon on Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday.
The other well known example is the demands for reparations following the slave trade. Leaders and tribes across Africa fought and enslaved one another and then sold those slaves to European and Arab slave traders to work in the Americas and Middle East.
Britain was the first major power to end the slave trade and actually used the Royal Navy to fight to bring it to an end – first across the Atlantic and then across the Pacific.
Can we have inherited guilt? Should the descendants of the families of the sailors who ended the slave trade have to pay or should the descendants of the kings and chiefs have to pay? Reparations from whom, to whom and how much?
When former Labour leader, Ed Miliband, introduced the argument in favour of climate change reparations, he did not say whether our guilt was like that of war time Germany or like those who enslaved their neighbouring tribes. Either way, he knows that we have inherited the guilt from the era of the industrial revolution.
We are not guilty of ‘climate crimes’ and we do not owe reparations. British people endured great hardship during the industrial revolution but it laid the foundation for a transformation of the standard of living for people right across the world.
Advances from refrigeration to modern medicine and aviation, for the many not the few, were enabled by their sacrifice.
By contrast, the privileged morons blocking motorways to stop surgeons going to work believe that Britain – you, your parents and ancestors – are morally wrong and Labour are enabling them.
This article was originally published in the Bolton News on 14th November 2022: https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/23124705.chris-green-mp-not-guilty…
