Oh, Fuck Off!

There  are times when “fuck off” is the only appropriate response, given the vacuousness of the issue.

Sir Geoff Palmer, Scotland’s first black professor, has welcomed a groundbreaking report into how Glasgow University benefited from the proceeds of slavery. He said it posed “uncomfortable questions” for British society as a whole and called on institutions that had profited from the slave trade to make amends.

Oh, for goodness sakes! Palmer can go boil his head. Slavery ended two hundred years ago. Get over it. Slavery was not confined to whitey nor the transatlantic trade. There are no uncomfortable questions for our society as a whole whatsoever and there should be no reparations. Not one single penny. Nor should there be any grovelling apologies. Not one. This country policed the oceans stamping out the trade and spent more of its GDP doing so than it earned through the slave trade. Unless the English and Irish can seek reparations from Morocco and get them to ask uncomfortable questions? Oh, no, of course not. Those slavers were mostly brown people so that’s all okay, then.

The report, published last week by Glasgow University, is based on more than two years of research and reveals that the institution benefited directly from the slave trade in Africa and the Caribbean in the 18th and 19th centuries to the tune of almost £200m in today’s money.

So what if it did. It’s long gone history. They did things differently then.

The university has now launched a wide-ranging and ambitious “reparative justice programme”. Ironically, the university was at the forefront of the movement in the 19th century to abolish slavery. It will now create a centre for the study of slavery and a memorial or tribute in the name of the enslaved. It is also working to establish ties with the University of the West Indies.

Oh, for crying out loud! There is no need for any reparative justice programme and doing this merely encourages every racist bastard with an axe to grind to come knocking at the door demanding a handout. The university has done its bit – it did it a couple of hundred years ago. That’s it. Job done. By all means teach the history – for we should never forget history – but stop fucking apologising for something that happened hundreds of years before any of us were born.

The report’s findings, though, carry profound implications far beyond the cloistered spaces of this 546-year-old university. The unrelenting and forensic detail of the study also raises questions about how the wealth of the city of Glasgow and other parts of Scotland was derived.

And long since spent, given that Scotland sought financial help from England resulting in the act of union at the beginning of the 18th Century and we’ve been financing them ever since. Fat lot of good the trade has done them in the long-term.

“Some Scots have told me they’re mystified why no one told them any of this, but who did they think made the tobacco?” said Palmer, professor emeritus at the school of life sciences at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.

Some Scots are ignorant of the past? So?

“Now, I think the country faces a very uncomfortable question which the Glasgow University report has raised once more: to what extent did slavery make Scotland great?”

From a purely historic relevance, fine. Scotland, like other European countries benefited. But that’s it. Long dead history. Don’t forget, by all means, but don’t wallow in it either.

Palmer, while paying tribute to the scholarship of the Glasgow University report, and the desire to make reparations, put Scotland and the UK on notice. “We can have all the equality laws and anti-racism legislation we like,” he said, “but if no other institutions, firms or organisations which also benefited from slavery declare this and seek to make amends then it’s all meaningless.

Fuck off. Seriously, just fuck off. There is no need for any amends to be made – not unless you are the kind of arsehole who thinks it’s okay to visit the sins of the fathers on the sons unto the seventh son.

“After this report there is no way the city as a whole can stand by and not act in a similar fashion and I fully expect us and other academic institutions to follow Glasgow’s lead.”

Hopefully, they will be told firmly where to get off.

Watch – they will be coming for Bristol next.

13 Comments

  1. Let’s offer to undo the consequences of slavery, we’ll give Geoff Palmer a one way ticket to West Africa. Nobody benefited more directly from the North American and Caribbean slave trade than the descendants of the poor wretches who were slaves.

  2. This reparations business is, in fact a two way street, and more should be mentioned about going the other way:

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/07/26/we-british-would-be-delighted-to-accept-reparations-for-the-slave-trade-and-slavery/#671085f56b5f

    “Another way of putting this is that as the Caribbean descendants of slaves are richer than the West African descendants of non-slaves then how can giving the Caribbeans more money make up for damages caused by slavery?”

    Basically, the argument goes, since the descendants of slaves are, today, actually better off than had those slaves never been slaves (because they’d still be in mud huts, cooking rocks or whatever,) thus it is those descendants who should really be giving whitey money for making their lives better.

    Not that that argument is going to win many friends, but still…

  3. Is it fair to point out that the people who were profiting from the slaves working in the cotton fields were the same sort of people who were profiting from the poverty of the workers in the cotton mills.

    My ancestors worked in those cotton mills. Where do I queue to get my compensation?

    • Dear Mr Saga_lout

      When capitalists profit, so do their workers. If the workers didn’t profit, neither would their employers.

      Only socialists think capitalism is a one way street of capitalist exploitation of down-trodden exploited workers, presumably because they are a) ignorant of basic economics, b) they think the employees are ignorant of basic economics and c) it is profitable for them to think this way. It certainly beats working for a living.

      DP

      • Dear Mr DP

        The slaves also profited, or their descendants did. So, using the arguments of this black professor, I would like my reparation as well.

        Yours, not entirely sincerely 😉
        saga lout

  4. A slight error, there: slavery did NOT end 200 years ago; it was only the white-man’s (more specifically, British) involvement with it. Other than that, the trade is still on-going, only nowadays, they call it “human trafficking”.

    • That was going to be my point. If this guy is so concerned about slavery, working toward getting modern slavery stamped out would be more constructive. But that is much more difficult than spending other people’s money.

  5. Slavery Reparations, where to begin?

    Egyptian slavery?
    Greek slavery?
    Roman slavery?

    No, that was culture. Only UK & USA was exploitation.

    Mr First Black Professor (on merit?) should be rejoicing not joining SJW cry babies.

  6. No, reparations are in order. Glasgow university should be closed and it’s assets confiscated. The proceeds should be used to repatriate black people to West Africa, setting them up with the wealth of the average West Age and starting with those black people who teach or study at said institution or have done so. Finishing when the money runs out or when we run out of volunteers. Then repeat for other institutions that call for reparations.
    Those black people who think they would have been better off left in West Africa will have what they want. Those who think otherwise ditto. And it all gets paid for by those who think it’s a good idea.

  7. Why do these privileged people never go after the Arab and African nations? After all, that’s where the start of the slavery supply chain was, and in some countries, still is.

    These so called ‘intellectuals’ also conveniently forget that the UK was highly instrumental in ending most of the slave trade. Over a hundred and fifty years ago. If he’s after reparations, how about some gratitude for freeing the poor sods who their own people and the Arab nations put in chains?

  8. I posted something very similar yesterday but a bit shorter. there should be no reparations. the slaves and slave owners are long dead. It was legal back then. Once outlawed the Royal Navy enforced the law and stopped slavery. We did more than our bit to make up for the slave trade. If this Palmer doesn’t like it he doesn’t have to remain in the UK.

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