October 23, 2024 - 5:00pm
Former prime minister Tony Blair has questioned the benefits of the British monarchy apologising for its historic role in the transatlantic slave trade.
In an interview with Newsweek today promoting his new book On Leadership, Blair said that it was “absurd” to judge history by today’s moral standards. When asked by Newsweek‘s Global Editor-in-Chief Nancy Cooper whether he thought King Charles should apologise for slavery, Blair said: “I think [with] all of these arguments, you can go back over history and you end up in a completely absurd position.”
“I have no idea what Winston Churchill’s views are on transgender. I don’t suppose he was ever asked and he probably never thought about it,” Blair said. “But who knows? But supposing it was found that he had, let’s say, not entirely modern views on this — which is quite possible — does that mean he was a bad guy?” He added: “Slavery was a horrible thing. It should never have happened. Of course we [the British Empire] were wrong”.
The New Labour grandee’s comments come as the King and Queen have recently arrived in Samoa for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting after spending time in Australia. King Charles’s visit to Parliament House in Canberra was marred by heckling from Senator Lidia Thorpe, who shouted: “This is not your land. You destroyed our land. Give us a treaty. You are not my King.” Prime Minister Keir Starmer is also attending the Commonwealth summit, but Number 10 has confirmed that reparations payments to former colonies of the British empire are “not on the agenda”.
Pressed further on whether the King should apologise for Britain’s imperial past, the 71-year-old questioned the notion. “It’s up to him to say that, but what are people trying to prove here?”
Blair went on: “Of course [King Charles] thinks it’s wrong and when you look back in history, you say, ‘Well, those things were terrible.’ To be fair you had people at the time saying it was terrible and you had [abolitionist William] Wilberforce and others who brought about change. But what does it really profit anyone to go back over these things?”
Instead, the former PM insisted that it was far more beneficial to help poor countries now rather than relitigate the moral complexities of the past. “The most important thing we can do for countries that have been marked by colonialism is to help them now,” he said, “which we do and we should do more of.”
Blair added: “The most beneficial thing to do is not to go over what happened in the 19th century but to help them reap the benefits of the technology revolution of the 21st century.”
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SubscribeAs one historian once said, the past is a foreign country, and we can only dimly know those who occupied it. It is of course folly to interpret and then judge the past by present-day moral standards. In any case, who says our views are any more ‘correct’ than those of the past. They only appear so, but this is an illusion. Who knows what people will think of our views 200 years hence, if people still walk the earth. Who actually cares? The folly of those today who promote all this ‘social justice’ absolutism is that they genuinely believe there is such a thing as moral progress and that they, amazingly enough (surprise, surprise!), occupy the end point, in the here and now. Just stepping back and considering the un-self-aware historical ignorance of this assertion immediately reveals how ludicrous it actually is.
Great comment. In similar vein, there is no “right side of history” and anyone who deploys that term simply doesn’t understand history.
For a while I’ve see ‘right-side-of-history-ers’ as a particular modern type of character. Hubristic, condemnatory of ppl who lived or live in much harsher conditions than themselves, cynically taking political positions rather than being primarily concerned with truth, deeply unimaginative in their inability to envisage how everyone in the past and nearly everyone (except ppl like themselves) in the present interprets the world.
“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” L.P. Hartley, The Go Between (1953)
“What does it really profit anyone to go over these things?” is a remarkably naive question from a man I never thought of as anyone’s fool.
More generally, I find myself in the uncomfortable position of being completely in agreement with Tony Blair.
It should be noted that Keith says we’re not paying. So we’re definitely paying.
We won’t be paying because the amount claimed is unpayable (alongside no one alive today being responsible for what happened in the past). Some institution came up with a figure of £17 trillion a few years ago – several years GDP.
I admire your faith in common sense.
But Labour don’t do maths like you and I … you think these guys know what “unpayable” means or can get the calculation right ? Some of them even believe in MMT. Which means that nothing’s unpayable.
The per capita GDP of the Caribbean countries is significantly higher than that of West Africa. So, whatever the hardships endured by their distant ancestors, today’s Caribbeans should be paying us.
If anyone should be paying reparations it should be the African countries who were happy and willing to capture, enslave, and sell their fellow countrymen, women and children since pre roman times. Whole kingdoms were financed almost completely by the trade in slaves.
They’re still doing it.
https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-studies/nigeria/
Absolutely!
And there’s the small matter of of the countless trillions and trillions of dollars that have been poured into Africa in foreign aid since the 1950s. Much of this has ended up in Swiss bank accounts of Singapore property or Scottish estates. To ask for reparations on top of this gigantic generosity by western nations is typical of the ‘give-it-to-me” culture that prevails in Africa.
The point of an apology would be to prevent the rise of the destructive emotion resentment. Then all parties can get on with their lives or if countries get on with improving their economies.
However, for bad actors the apology is an opportunity to dig in their crowbar of increasing resentment, it is because of them that the apology is pointless.
No mention of the fact that the British Empire actually stopped the maritime slave trade then? Not only the trans Atlantic slave trade which we had (shamefully) been part of previously, but also the East Africa slave trade with which there was no former connection. At a great cost to the country. You could say we’ve paid our dues.
Very true. Although, as some historians have pointed out, abolishing the slave trade once Britain had left it was partly motivated by economics, it’s also true to say that it was driven by humanitarian cocerns. It’s a complex picture, but Britain certainly spent the equivalent of 100s of millions abolishing and policing it, not to mention saving countless lives. And we need to remember, African warlords supplied the bodies in the first place. So for the reparations grifters to say that Britain is uniquely responsible for this is fundamentally erroneous. What about France, Sweden, the US, Portugal, Oman, Saudi Arabia, etc., etc.? I hear that Saudi Arabia has a few trillions stashed away.
Reparations are completely idiotic and, as you say, take no account of the positive side of the historic balance sheet. In any case none of us including those of us of Africa ancestry either sold or bought slaves. Most of the descendants of those captured, sold and enslaved are better off than the descendants of those who remained behind in Africa. If we pay reparations then we are surely entitled to recover the payments we made for the slaves from present day Africans. The whole idea of reparations is a farago of absurdity.
Not good enough Tony.
You’ll notice he still blames Britain and – by implication/omission -Britain alone over slavery. And fails to note that it was Britain that abolished slavery.
Still, I suppose it’s a start.
He’s right of course, and not impressed at the Grifting that goes on in some States seeking money from us. Quite who would receive the largesse never quite defined either is it.
All for our understanding of history being through multiple prisms though. That’s important even if sometimes uncomfortable. Not unreasonable some uncomfortable questions put back on inquisitors either, but clearly at an international Statesman/woman position one is going to be diplomatic.
The other interesting point is two days running an Unherd Article conveying a fairly positive story on Blair. Good grief this will send some into comical spasms of rage.
Descendants of African slaves already have ample reparations: they live in Western countries and not in Africa.
It could be argued that the British people have been paying reparations for years -and still are. The money that has been sent out by charities to support developing countries and also the money sent home by folk living here to support their families must run into trillions of pounds. And have all these do-gooders realised that the last people to benefit from any reparations would be the poor and disadvantaged? Most of these places are so selfishly corrupt that any reparations would disappear into hidden bank accounts.
Yes, for once Tony Blair is right…..
It’s fun to see Blair and Clinton inadvertently speaking truth these days.
If there are to be reparations paid surely the people who sold the slaves to the British should be asked to stump up?
Our legal obligations to these countries ceased when they became independent unless their is a legal agreement that says we have certain obligations. Unless reparations are covered by such a agreement, there would be no legal basis for our government to pay reparations.
…we could go with the Australian Senator’s plan…where every person of Europen descent leaves the “Settler” Colonies…and every expatriate worker leaves the developing world…after completely obliterating everything we built there…
…immediately after every individual NOT of Europen descent now living in Europe LEAVES – NOW. With nothing at all that they acquired here…agrees that they will never come back…and that if they attempt to do so, they will be shot on sight…
This would increase the population of Europe by about 60%, giving an opportunity to re-populate abandoned villages all over Southern Europe, and possibly resolve our demographic crisis…
It would also make the European Population about as big as that of China and India…which means that if we keep out of the inevitable efforts of those two countries to take over the resources of the places we have now left…a Third-World War we could observe from the sidelines, whilst we re-armed and trained…so that we could go back once they had fought themselves to a standstill…
…killing immeasurably vast numbers of Chinese and Indian people…and even bigger numbers of innocent Africans (most of them…our borders are shut, remember!)…and quite possibly every Australian and Pacific “First Nation” individual on earth. Including Lidia…
…and then, whichever of India and China survives can take on the Jihadis of the Ummah…and we can just watch…
…the more I think about it, the more I view the prospect with genuine enthusiasm…
1. The trillions they want paid could only be paid with extreme austerity on the UK’s budget. Those labour MPs advocating it can’t be anti-austerity.
2. The UK workforce whose tax would go to pay for it is 20% foreign born. Why should they pay if they never lived britain at the time? Much of UK property is foreign owned. Should they pay?
3. The only other example of reparations was on germany after WW1. That didn’t end well. Some contributions were made by germany to holocaust survivors & Israel after ww2 but ever after 80 years it is still under $100 billion, essentially around $1 billion a year since WW2. Slavery advocates are quoting figures like $15 trillion (100x holocaust reparations), theres no precedent for trillions.
How about the idea that decades long effort Britain made to rid the world of slavery in much of thec19th century. How about the modern day slaving nations in Africa, how about the slavery practiced in China. A great definition of justice is when someone not injured is awarded money by a person who did no harm.
I believe that shoukd have read, “a great example of injustice is when someone not injured us able to take money from a person who committed bo wrong.
I wonder which side of the debate on transgender Blair regards as “modern” if he thinks Churchill’s views may not have been entirely modern.