The Spectator’s Notes | 3 March 2007

One must keep repeating that the bicentenary being celebrated this year is of the abolition of the slave trade by Britain. From the amount of breast-beating, you would think that it was 200 years since the trade got going. There is huge concentration on the Atlantic slave trade, which is not surprising since this was the one chiefly pursued by our white British ancestors. I am an interested party in the great reparations debate since some of my maternal ancestors had fortunes dependent on slavery (my sense of guilt is mitigated by the total disappearance of those fortunes), while one of my paternal ancestors, William Smith, was a lieutenant of Wilberforce in the House of Commons. Will these two strands cancel each other out and leave me having to pay nothing? I hope that people take the opportunity to pay attention to the history of slavery in other forms as well.