It seems that in recent years there been a section of the population who have been intent on making this country responsible for all the ills of the world.
Our politicians have failed seriously to ‘fight our corner’. They have fawned over foreign despots while allowing their own country to sink probably to its lowest peacetime level ever. At the same time, through the media, we are encouraged to carry the ‘weight of the world on our shoulders’ and to which we respond with both voluntary and financial support despite the fact that our means are deteriorating day by day.
This does not only apply to the present day but we are expected to accept responsibility, for wrongs committed centuries ago, the latest ‘flavour of the month is the slave trade.’
The thought of apologising for something that happened three or four hundred years ago is both stupid and presumptuous on our part.
We cannot put ourselves back into a timezone when many countries would consider it normal to deal in slaves. The slave trade was very wrong although little if anything is said about the fact that Britain was the first country to realise this and stopped the practice before successfully fighting for its abolition. It does not seem to fit in with agenda of the politically correct who would have us flayed daily for our mis-deeds and those of our ancestors.
We are talking of an era when Britons were deported and transported halfway around the world in slave like conditions.
For stealing a loaf of bread, an offender may be shackled to a prison wall and left to die, or if he was lucky he may be hung, drawn and quartered, his body displayed on public view for months.
Torture and extreme poverty were the order of the day. Even early in the 20th Century, most people lived only one rung above the life of a slave. Do we need to mention the Romans who cruelly enslaved the British and then threw them to the loins or the Vikings who raped and pillaged and enslaved those left. Will it be a matter of official apologies all round?
Like every other country, Britain has done things for which by modern day standards we should be ashamed, but we have also much to be proud of. We must remember and learn the lessons of the past but our real energy should be concentrated on the future that we all want for our grandchildren.
A Johnson, Ampleforth Drive, Stafford.
8 Comments
The Romans enslaved the British? I think you need to go back to school.
Quite a difference between conquering a place and enslaving the populace.
Politicians have made mistakes. They have also helped arrange things to our benefit.
The decision to invade Iraq 3 times in the last hundred years being one of the poorer ones perhaps. Maybe we should have stayed anyway.
Yes, be nice if past ills could be forgotten but I can’t see it happening with our education system.
Martin
I think you need to remember that the Romans were very nasty to many British people and forced Boedicia to top herself. They may have built some straight roads and left us some nice baths in Bath but they were often quite unpleasant people.
I also don’t see what the problem with invading Iraq is, don’t you understand the economic need for controlling oil fields regardless of the military cost?
YEP YOU SAID IT-CONTROL OF THE OIL. Its about time someone said the truth but don’t forget also as one war shuts another one must be started all in the name of economics. We must keep our forces employed by some genuine means.
Martin and Andy<
The Romans may have envisaged those “Straight roads” and “Nice Baths” not to mention “90 miles of 20 foot Wall” across the neck of The British Isles but who do you think did the Donkey Work …….. I’ll wager it wasn’t The Romans……………………
Yes, the Romans tended to be hard on rebellions.
With good reason.
And copied by other countries, including us, down the centuries.
The whole point of forcing Britain to apologise for past misdeeds is that if the present day British government can be made to accept responsibility for things such as the slave trade then as sure as night follows day it’s only a matter of time before some Cherie Blair type human rights lawyer lands the good old British mug taxpayer with a whopping great bill for compensation.
As a British national, I am not going to pay one penny towards reparations. It’s not going to happen. I was not alive then, obviously, I have never enslaved anyone and I don’t support slavery. Oh, and exists today, between Africa and Asia - but for some reason that doesn’t seem to strike a cord in those who are using this issue as a political and in some cases, racial battering ram. It is racist, narrow-minded and unquestionably offensive to ask us to apologise for something we simply did not do. Over my dead body.
John, I’m glad you won’t pay a penny towards reparations.
Exactly how do you manage that if the government decide to use taxpayer money to pay?