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Danny retweeted
Kemi, congratulations on leading a major British party as a Black Woman. It takes real talent to rise to where you are and deceit is what it takes to rise as a Black leader in a western Conservative Party.
It is a pity the climb did not leave room for a history book and since you chose to argue in the language of history, let us do the history. Let’s dissect your verbal diarrhea point by point.
Everyone participated." Slavery existed on every continent. So did war, and nobody calls a village feud the World War. The transatlantic trade ran for 366 years (1501 to 1866) and put about 12.5 million Africans on ships, of whom about 1.8 million died before they saw the Americas, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. It ran through joint-stock companies, chartered monopolies, Lloyd's underwriters and acts of Parliament. It was hereditary, because the law made the child of an enslaved mother property from birth. It was racial, because a whole continent was defined as chattel. No other system in history combined those features at that scale. Dissolving all of it into "people from every continent" is far worse than intellectual dishonesty.
Britain was a market leader, not a participant. British ships carried about 3.2 million Africans, second only to Portugal and Brazil. The Treaty of Utrecht (1713) gave Britain the asiento, a thirty-year monopoly to supply 4,800 enslaved Africans a year to Spanish America. The Royal African Company, chartered in 1672 and headed by the Duke of York, later James II, branded its captives "DY". During Edward Colston's years in its leadership it shipped about 84,000 people, and roughly 19,000 died on the way.
You say British taxpayers should not answer for what happened before they were born. They did. In 1833 Britain borrowed £20 million to compensate slaveholders, and taxpayers serviced that loan until 2015, including the descendants of the enslaved. So the principle you invoke was not applied when the cheque went to slaveholders. It only appears when the cheque changes direction.
"Navel-gazing" is a curious charge from someone whose party spends more energy on the past (Empire nostalgia, culture war crusades) than most of those you accuse. Defend Britain if you must. But do not use your Nigerian name as the permission slip for arguments Nigerians know better than anyone.
Slavery was an evil in which people from every continent and region participated. We should be honest about the whole history, not select the parts that are politically convenient today, especially given Britain's leading role in ending the transatlantic slave trade.
If Caribbean countries are asking Britain for a formal apology for Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, will they also be asking the same of the descendants of African kingdoms, rulers and merchants who captured, sold and profited from the trade?
On demands for reparations, whether through cash or debt relief, we have been down this track before. Twenty-five years ago, Jubilee 2000, Drop the Debt and Make Poverty History argued that cancelling the debts of poorer countries would give them a fresh start. More than $100 billion of debt was eventually written off, but many of those countries have since built up even bigger debts. Labour are already spending too much on Britain's welfare state, now is not the time for Andy Burnham to be providing global welfare.
There is no reason British taxpayers today should be held financially responsible for things that happened generations before any of us were born. And I have even less patience for political elites in commonwealth countries who don’t know how to make their own citizens prosperous now looking for another opportunity to blame Britain.
As Prime Minister, Andy Burnham should be Britain’s greatest defender. Instead, he is writing articles saying we need to confront our history (as if we haven't done enough of that) and considering another formal historical apology. Tony Blair already expressed Britain’s deep sorrow and regret for our role in the slave trade nearly twenty years ago. There is no need to do so again.
This is all another navel-gazing distraction. The Commonwealth should be looking forward, not endlessly backwards. That means economic partnerships to make us all richer and deeper military and security cooperation against common threats. If every Commonwealth summit becomes an exercise in presenting Britain with demands for cash then we need to start asking if it is worth the effort.
What a stupid comparison
Africans fully participated in the slave trade at Elmina, Ghana.
Trade records from the Dutch West India Company, Royal African Company, and Danish ledgers from Elmina, Cape Coast show African rulers and merchants negotiating prices, quantities, and terms with European factors.
African brokers and rulers controlled who could trade and where.
African-authored testimony, for example, Ottobah Cugoano, a Fante man enslaved around 1770, wrote that he was kidnapped by fellow Africans and sold into slavery.
In fact the Asante expansion in modern-day Ghana involved conquering neighbours like Denkyira, Akyem, and Gonja. The prisoners taken in those wars- by Africans- supplied both the coastal trade and domestic labour.
The fort archaeology from excavations at Elmina, Cape Coast, and inland Asante sites back all of this up.
On your logic, the government of Ghana should be apologising for their involvement in slavery.
Danny retweeted
I’m sure your words would have been of great comfort to the women imprisoned for months in those stinking, cramped dungeons, taken out at the governor’s pleasure or left in the blistering sun without food or water if they resisted his advances, before being marched through the Door of No Return.
Sister
Africans fully participated in the slave trade at Elmina, Ghana.
Trade records from the Dutch West India Company, Royal African Company, and Danish ledgers from Elmina, Cape Coast show African rulers and merchants negotiating prices, quantities, and terms with European factors.
African brokers and rulers controlled who could trade and where.
African-authored testimony, for example, Ottobah Cugoano, a Fante man enslaved around 1770, wrote that he was kidnapped by fellow Africans and sold into slavery.
In fact the Asante expansion in modern-day Ghana involved conquering neighbours like Denkyira, Akyem, and Gonja. The prisoners taken in those wars- by Africans- supplied both the coastal trade and domestic labour.
The fort archaeology from excavations at Elmina, Cape Coast, and inland Asante sites back all of this up.
On your logic, the government of Ghana should be apologising for their involvement in slavery.
Danny retweeted
The murder of a child is a pain no parent should have to endure, let alone from thousands of miles away.
Javits Frimpong’s mother deserves to say goodbye to her son in person. I just got off the phone with President Trump and he has agreed to grant her visa immediately.
All of New York City is mourning this tragedy.
Danny retweeted
more doctors, engineers, lawyers etc need to flex (esp on socials) so black boys can realize that school is still the easiest & most effective way to elevate your socioeconomic status. they’re getting absolutely lapped by black girls & it’s ridiculous. it’s not everyday streamers
Danny retweeted
I had seen the coverage of this controversy but hadn't actually watched the speech until today...this is completely unobjectionable! Punishing him for these words is crazy and just pure censorship and everyone defending it was probably whining about cancel culture two years ago.
Danny retweeted
One minute Matt and his friends are telling us immigrants are all violent criminals, benefit scroungers and "Third Worlders", now he's wetting the bed because it turns out many are smart and highly aspirational for their children's future
Danny retweeted
Are we blaming migrants for taking benefits today, or are we mad that their kids are actually studying and passing the 11-plus?
Keep the script consistent, please.
Danny retweeted
"As a Black diaspora we ha e so much in common even when we grow up thousands of miles apart."
Afro-Peruvian man talks about Black identity in Peru.
📽: drjaneesteele
Danny retweeted
Here’s a question worth asking.
Why did Jason Arday become the focus of extraordinary national and online scrutiny while William O’Reilly, against whom Cambridge upheld a plagiarism complaint, remains a name most people have probably never heard?
What explains that difference?
Danny retweeted
The idea that before DEI everyone got into Oxbridge and then went on to be a judge, a journalist, a FTSE CEO or a banker entirely on merit is wild.
Right up there with vaccine denialism and flat earthism.
Danny retweeted
So she championed for a tax whose purpose was to raise money that could be used to improve state education, despite knowing it would personally cost her more money and not directly benefit her own children.
Someone help me understand why altruism is now a bad thing?
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