The abolition of slavery in Britain is 200years old. Commemorating it is a good way of bringing it to the attention of a wider public who are not fully aware of this era of British history. We don't learn about such things at school, or at least I didn't when I was there, but then we didn't learn about a whole swathe of other parts of history either.
Gillian Reynolds captures some of the frustration surrounding the topic of slavery in her article in the Telegraph today; frustration on both sides, from blacks and whites. Descendents who want reparation for wrongs committed to their ancestors are at loggerheads with those who believe that it's pointless apologising in modern times for actions carried out generations ago. That whole period was infinitely regretful, but an apology from the State would be meaningless. Nations all over the world have committed atrocities since the beginning of time. Why single out one particular atrocity, centuries later?
Gleaned from Wikipedia, some interesting information on slavery:
"There were slaves in mainland France, but the institution was never fully authorized there. However, slavery was vitally important in France's Caribbean possessions, especially Saint-Domingue... In Paris, on February 4, 1794, Abbé Grégoire and the Convention ratified this action by officially abolishing slavery in all French territories. Napoleon sent troops to the Caribbean in 1802 to try to re-establish slavery. They succeeded in Guadeloupe, but the ex-slaves of Saint-Domingue defeated the French army and declared independence." "The Arab world has traded in slaves like many other cultures of the region. It was one of the oldest slave trades, predating the European transatlantic slave trade by hundreds of years. The Arab or Middle Eastern slave trade is thought to have originated with trans-Saharan slavery...
...As many African slaves may have crossed the Sahara Desert, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean as crossed the Atlantic, perhaps more. Some sources estimate that between 11 and 17 million slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 to 1900, compared to 11.6 million across the Atlantic from 1500 to the late 1860s. The Arab or Middle Eastern slave trade continued into the early 1900s...
...The Arab trade in slaves continued into the 20th century. Written travelogues and other historical works are replete with references to slaves owned by wealthy traders, nobility and heads of state in the Arabian Peninsula well into the 1920s. Slave owning and slave-like working conditions have been documented up to and including the present, in countries of the Middle East. Though the subject is considered taboo in the affected regions, a leading Saudi government cleric and author of the country's religious curriculum has called for the outright re-legalization of slavery."
"Slavery persists in Africa more than in all other continents. Slavery in Mauritania was legally abolished by laws passed in 1905, 1961, and 1981, but several human rights organizations are reporting that the practice continues there. The trading of children has been reported in modern Nigeria and Benin. In parts of Ghana, a family may be punished for an offense by having to turn over a virgin female to serve as a sex slave within the offended family... In the Sudan, slavery continues as part of an ongoing civil war; see also the Slavery in Sudan article. Evidence emerged in the late 1990s of systematic slavery in cacao plantations in West Africa."
Instead of breast-beating it would be far better to campaign to outlaw modern-day slavery. Maybe the descendents of slaves could take up the fight to ensure that enslavement is eradicated from the planet so that what happened to their ancestors never happens to anyone else.