This relates to the BBC article [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66596790] which states “the UK should pay $24tn (£18.8tn) for its slavery involvement in 14 countries”.
The UK abolished slavery in 1833. That’s 190 years ago. So nobody alive today has a slave, and nobody alive today was a slave.
Dividing £18tn by the number of UK taxpayers (31.6m) gives £569 each. Why do I, who have never owned a slave, have to give £569 to someone who similarly is not a slave?
When I’ve paid my £569 is that the end of the matter forever or will it just open the floodgates of other similar claims?
Isn’t this just a country that isn’t doing too well, looking at the UK doing reasonably well (cost of living crisis excluded of course), and saying “oh there’s this historical thing that affects nobody alive today but you still have to give us trillions of Sterling”?
Shouldn’t payment of reparations be limited to those who still benefit from the slave trade today, and paid to those who still suffer from it?
(Please don’t flame me. This is NSQ. I genuinely don’t know why this is something I should have to pay. I agree slavery is terrible and condemn it in all its forms, and we were right to abolish it.)
I don’t know exactly how to answer you, but the effects of colonization and slavery are still felt today in many former colonies. For instance, a lot of countries were created on a map with a pencil and a ruler without any regards for ethnic groups or culture, which is why there are so many straight lined borders all around the world, this created instabilities and conflicts within the countries. Many of them were also decolonized, pretty much overnight (the colonizers left, without organising elections or handing over the country to newly formed local authorities), which left them completely disorganised. I don’t have an opinion specifically on reparation, but colonization and slavery left durable scars in countless countries around the world, and they are still felt to this day, with very little chance of ever healing.