Quote of the day 26th March 2026

"Russia, China and Iran vote with others to demand trillions in reparations from UK taxpayers…and the Labour government abstain!

Britain led the fight to end slavery.

Why didn’t Starmer’s representative vote against this? Ignorance…or cowardice?

We shouldn’t be paying for a crime we helped eradicate and still fight today."


Kemi Badenoch on the egregious UN motion declaring the transatlantic slave trade to be the worst crime in history - which will be news to the few remaining survivors of the Holocaust - and demanding that the colonial powers pay reparations.


The Transatlantic slave trade was indeed a vile crime. But why no mention of the East African slave trade run by various arab nations, which over thirteen centuries trafficked nearly as many many African slaves as in the Transatlantic slaves - at a far higher cost in human life.

Ironically, the East African slave trade attracts less attention and debate not because it was a less serious crime, but because in some ways it was an even worse crime. Specifically:

 - vile as the transatlantic slave trade was, it left millions of living descendants who can and do (with complete justice) complain about the way their ancestors were treated.

- the East African slave trade left far fewer few descendants, and almost no identifiable ones, because the boys and men were often castrated and both they and the female slaves had an even worse survival rate.

The estimated number of fatalities in transit among victims of the Transatlantic slave trade while being transported was a horrifying 2 million deaths, out of about 12 million enslaved people carried by the trade, representing nearly 20% of the enslaved people affecting. That is awful.

The estimated number of fatalities in transit among victims of the East Africa slave trade while being transported was an even more horrifying 4.5 million deaths, out of about 9 million enslaved people carried by the trade: yes, scholars estimate that 50% of the enslaved people involved died in transit. I don't see how any reasonable person can dispute that this is even worse. But the UN General assembly does not seem to be made up of reasonable people.

If like many people you have never heard of the East Africa slave trade, you can learn more about it at

Forgotten slavery: The Arab-Muslim slave trade | FairPlanet


Slavery existed on every continent and in almost every country before 1807. People of every race were both perpetrators and victims. The barbary pirates from North Africa enslaved millions of their fellow Africans and more than a million white Europeans. The Vikings, Romans, Greeks, Babylonians and Ancient Egyptians were all slavers - you didn't think the pyramids were built by volunteers, did you?


The British were not the first to practice slavery or the nation who trafficked most slaves (that would probably be the Portuguese.) 

But we were the first people to try to stop the slave trade. 

   

Ironically, the UN vote almost exactly coincided with the anniversary of the passage into law of the act of parliament making the slave trade illegal throughout the British Empire.

As I write yesterday in a post about that anniversary,  The Royal Navy's West African squadron was tasked with exterminating this evil trade and freeing the slaves. 

Over six decades units of the Royal Navy, mostly from that squadron, captured over 1600 slave trader ships, freeing over 150,000 slaves.

The Royal Navy lost about 1,587 sailors who died on slavery suppression operations between 1830 and 1865. The total financial cost of slavery suppression operations over the sixty-year period from 1808 to 1867 was approximately £40 million in contemporary money, which is estimated to be around £2 billion in today's money.

At its peak in the 1840s and 1850s, the West Africa Squadron's squadron's operations consumed as much as half of the entire Royal Navy's annual budget. This peak expenditure reached an estimated two per cent of Great Britain's entire GDP at its height, a figure described as equivalent to today's entire UK defence budget.

The nations who lobbied for the UN motion were still practicing slavery themselves while Britain was trying to stop it.

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