UKC

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66596790

Now, if the Saudis and Russians could just buy the parts of London that they don't already own, I reckon we could settle this bill.

Yours sincerely, the BBC (Bullingdon Boys Club)  

I'd say there is slightly more chance of all white and black people in the USA emigrating to Africa and Europe and leaving the country to the Native Americans than there is that the UK will pay £18 trillion in slave reparations.

Sad but true.

For example, after leaving the Afghanistanis in the lurch with the Taliban we are now demanding they stop trying to escape here where they would be safe. How morally corrupt our little cabal of nations is.

For me that is different. Putting aside for now the question of who all share responsibility for the current state of Afghanistan, it is at least clear that it is current, living, politicians and armies who effectuated it.

Once you start going back through two or three dead generations, let alone a dozen, where exactly do you stop? Should the USA be paying the French back for all the support during the war of independence? Should the Germans be paying Italy for the sacking of Rome? Should the Vatican be paying everyone for the human race being cast out of the garden of Eden?

Living people should be made to bear the consequences of their actions. You might also argue with validity that wealth amassed directly from a crime could be taken away even it was 1 or 2 generations ago, perhaps it depends on the circumstances. Or in the case of ancient relics, there is a good argument for their return to country of origin if they were plundered. But I just don't buy into the idea that a country should be held morally responsible for something that happened hundreds of years before anyone alive was born (or before that country even was a country for that matter).

There is also the question of changing standards. A few hundred years ago it was perfectly ok to duel to the death with someone because they said your mom was fat. Now it is not acceptable (at least not in anywhere I know of). It is unreasonable to retroactively label every person who fought one of these duels as a murderer because we are applying our societal rules and norms to a completely different situation where they would probably have been viewed with considerable confusion. It is standard practice in democratic countries that new laws passed by the governing establishment do not apply retrospectively for exactly this reason - it isn't reasonable to expect a person to predict the laws that will exist half a century in the future and follow them.

Or the Barbary pirate states paying reparation for the slaves they took? Or Mongolia to pay reparation for sweeping across Asia & Europe...? Or...

It all gets a bit silly.

Or the Romans paying reparations for their occupation of these islands.

After all, what have the Romans ever done for us?

On this basis York should claim from Holyrood for losses defending the city in 1319, and ask the UN to seize a chunk of the Norwegian Sovereign wealth fund as reparations for Viking raids…..

I wouldn’t want to be a Campbell either, they will be bankrupt settling their retrospective debt to the McDonalds.

The problem is that the descendants of slaves are still very much feeling the economic damage from the theft of hundreds of years of their ancestors labour. 
You might want to read up on how generational wealth (or lack of) propagates.
It's also worth pointing out that as recently as the late 1940's (at least, but can't be bothered checking) slave owners were still being compensated for their loss of "property".
 

I'm dubious about this. There are many reasons that a slave's descendent might be poor today but after a century and half I just don't rate the original slavery as being one of them. In the USA for example, the descendants of slaves have endured a huge amount of racism in the much more recent past (the lives of their parents or even themselves) and a measurable amount of racism today coupled with economic policy done the American way (keep the poor poor and the rich rich and use the american dream to fool the former group into accepting it). These strike me as the reasons for continuing low economic status, not the original slavery.

I have a fair idea of how the wealth propagates and why it does. I'd be interested to read about how being poor propagates though (in a western democracy) if you have any recommendations.

That's a whole other debate though - much more along the lines of "the legal system can be bent to the whims of the rich and powerful through the purchase of clever lawyers". And under that umbrella all sorts of heinous and just downright stupid stuff goes on.

I read something interesting by Ta-Nehisi Coates in (?) The Atlantic which pushed my thinking - initially along the lines of yours - somewhat in the direction of redjerry's.  Basically talking about "redlining" districts in the wake of abolition & well past the Jim Crow years, & effectively excluding black people from property ownership.

"I'm dubious about this."
Oh well, that settles that I guess.

The rule of litigation is you have to have money and be locatable to be sued. 

Both problems: The people responsible are long dead and this 'conservative' £18tn figure is much more than the total wealth of the UK - you could confiscate all the property of every person and commercial entity and it still wouldn't be enough. 

I believe the UK debt accrued from compensating slave traders in the 19th century was paid off in 2017.

As much as paying ex slave owners is a massive sickening injustice, if it enabled slavery in UK overseas territories to end then it's far better than the alternative.

It also demonstrates how far the UK was willing to go to end the practice of slavery. The UK patrolled the Atlantic coast intercepting slave ships from Europe. The UK gets criticized for it's involvement in a practice from almost 500 years ago, a practice continued for a minority of wealthy families, but the UK's part in the abolishment of slavery 200 years ago says far more about our value as citizens of this country and it's something we should be proud of.

Although any option is imperfect and won't please all the people all the time... there seems to have been better outcomes when people have followed "truth and reconciliation" types of approaches than "blame and reparations" types of approach especially for historical (and especially older historical) wrongs. 

There was a chap on LBC the other day, think he said with roots from Jamaica, and he volunteers in some sort of capacity on discussion groups with ethnic minorities and reparations comes up quite a lot.

He said that generally speaking African Americans want money as reparation. 

Whilst apparently he found African groups are more interested and open to reparations in the form of trade agreements to elevate their countries. This is something we could get on-board with and it's somehting we should be aiming to do anyway. Win-win.