Our role in slavery ban

Here we go again. At a time when a quarter of primary-school leavers cannot read and write properly and a million British pupils are being failed by sub-standard schools, Whitehall decides to put slavery on the curriculum. Why worry about wholesale illiteracy when there’s a chance to bring political correctness into the classroom?

Slavery is a dream subject for the leftish tendency desperate to pour their brand of politics and history into young minds.

Culture minister David Lammy, a descendant of slaves, says slavery is “an important issue” and yet people are largely ignorant of it.

So the die is cast, the agenda for Blairite citizenship classes is set. And we can just imagine the version of history that will be ladelled out.

It will be the old, old propaganda of wicked England growing fat on centuries of slave trading. It will be a tirade against the evil of the British Empire, the depravity of white nations and the noble suffering of black Africa.

There is another version. It is that Britain dabbled for a few decades in a long-established African industry.

Slavery was organised by Arab slavers, eagerly assisted by African rulers.

It was a vile industry which existed for centuries before white men arrived. To Africa’s shame it endures to this day.

No-one denies that Britain made money from the slave trade, nor that the conditions endured by slaves were appalling.

But Britain also led the world in banning it throughout the Empire, starting in 1807.

And that is only part of the story. By the time Parliament outlawed slavery Britain had already become revolted by it.

The abolition of slavery began not with MPs but with the outraged Christian decency of ordinary English people, rich and poor alike.

Britain should feel proud of ending a great wickedness.

Is this the version of history to be taught in Mr Lammy’s “diversity” classes?

Somehow we doubt it.

Cure patients - don’t fleece them

Tom Watson, MP for West Bromwich East, has had a bad press over recent weeks for conspiring against Tony Blair and producing a silly video in which another Labour MP mimicked David Cameron.

But today Mr Watson is back on form, demanding the right for NHS patients to be allowed to use their mobiles instead of paying “frightening” rates for hospital phones.

The argument that mobiles might interfere with hospital equipment always seemed dubious and has now been debunked.

Tom Watson deserves to win this campaign.

People go to hospital to be cured, not to be fleeced.