Say you’re sorry — but never apologise for anything you’ve actually done

John Bowman

Sorry. I think I agree. Sorry. Sorry.

Yam Yam

I know I'm not Ghanaian; but can I formally apologise, Rod, for all the suffering the Asante inflicted on the slaves they rounded up and flogged to we Brits.

I'm sorry. I'm very, very sorry. Yi hak'uri!

thelastsay

Hey Ron

Gordon Brown and previous Prime Ministers inherited the errors and good fortunes of the past British Governments.

It seems Ron you have your head so far up in the clouds you have not read anything of history yet no doubt you will wallow in it's glory.

I find it rather extraordinary of you to carry on in regard to the apology by the British Prime Minister for what previous Governments had did to their countries children.

What you are saying is ludicrous, an example would be you have inherited $1 million dollars from your grandfather lets say; you never earned it, matter of fact you have done absolutely nothing to deserve it.

From what you write, am I right to say, you would not accept this as you did not earn but rather you inherited it.

Gordon Brown had inherited from the previous British government all its errors, as had previous Governments, your point is neither valid and rather makes you sound like you are just irresponsible person.

This and previous British Governments are responsible for the abuse that had happened to their countrymen in a strange land.

thelastsay

http://www.forgottenaustralians.com.au

Dave Grayson

I just hope that the "Apology" that Britain gave has a bit more intent and relevence to the word "Sorry" than Rudd did with his "Apology" to the Stolen Generation and Forgotten Australians

Dave Grayson

The Governments of Australia and Britian are "Apologising" with the word "Sorry" I hope that Britian has more intent and relevence to the meaning of the word "Sorry" than the Australian Government
I have had myself been removed from my Attachment and Bonding figure, my Mother, when only 61.2 years of age, the life that this caused with attention seeking and stupidity throughout my younger years created an adult life that was/is finding it extremely hard to over come
My own son then is removed in 1997 and DoCS in NSW have done nothing but destroy an innocent child's life once again
They removed my son from both parents and gave him to my wife and now ex-partner's mother whom my wife was under Memtal Health for "Childhood Trauma at the hands of her Mother"
My son and I have been totally alienated from each other while the people connected to the Illegal removal and placement went about destroying the parents.
My wife's mother from the start was always after us to divorce and spread as much harm as she could between us while DoCS allowed it to go on and keeping my son at the start from both parents so we had no way of becoming a family and for me to have my wife live for a family.
They continued to let it be clearly understood that my wife was never going to have our son while ever we remained together
Over the last 12 years there has been 4 different stories put through a Court of Law as to my son's removal
I am wondering when the abuse of children and the forced removal of children is actually going to stop , as the harm that this causes to a child, refer to John Bowlby, Attachment and Loss, The Trilogy, hence the harm to future society is enormous, when multiplied by the depression it has already caused by the Stolen Generation, The Forgotten Australians etc and the self medicating of people through Alcohol and Drugs (both legal and illegal) and the Violence, in and out of the home this has heaped upon society

Sincere thanks
Dave Grayson

Atheistno1

As much as Kevin Rudd & Gordon Brown like to make everyone believe they are wonderful caring people, it is an hypocrisy to apologize to the stolen generation's, sexually abused & forgotten Australians for the benefit of the world stage, when the apology is not given under the circumstances of responsibility. One only apologizes in order to take responsibility for their actions & I don't see compensation for the torture that has been dealt.

Dave Grayson

A correction where it says
"when only 61.2years of age"
It should read
when only 61/2 ie 6 & half years of age
Thanks
From Dave

daniel.waweru

The article is surprisingly poor: it gets basic facts badly wrong, and the reasoning is self-refuting.

Blair didn't apologise for (the British role in) the slave trade: he merely expressed regret. This fell short, quite deliberately, of an apology. The Ashanti didn't control the slave trade: the King of Dahomey's the only plausible candidate is; there's no reasonable sense of the word 'control' in which even he controlled the slave trade.

There's good empirical evidence of slavery's impact on African economic development.

Britain wasn't the first nation to declare slavery ethically and morally repulsive. It's been known since whenever that slavery is repulsive: defenders of slavery concede its ugliness, and look for reasons why it should continue anyway. Aristotle concedes that slavery is unpleasant; the master is entitled to treat the slave as a living tool, because the slave is not really human. If you meant to say Britain was the first country to put an end to slavery or the slave trade, that's false: the first major defender of outright abolition was Jean Bodin, a medieval French lawyer; France, Denmark and Portugal abolished the slave trade and slavery before Britain; the Netherlands, unlike the British, paid reparations on emancipation; even the Act abolishing slavery in the British Empire deliberately exempted territories then owned by the British East India Company.

Educationists, you say, now teach that slavery was an invention of the British, and that it began and ended with British involvement with the trade. That's false and irrelevant. It's also misleading: you're equivocating on the meaning of 'slavery'. It's certainly true that there's involuntary servitude in the countries you mention; indeed, there's still involuntary servitude in the UK when people are jailed for crimes. But that has nothing to do with the racial chattel slavery that was prevalent in the New World. For the first time in recorded history, one race was declared the perpetual property of another race. There's a nice line in David Eltis The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas which illustrates the point: during negotiations between the French and British military commands in 1747, they agreed and committed to paper the claim that any and every black person, anywhere, was a slave, and was to be treated as merchandise if captured. Racial chattel slavery more or less began and ended with New World slavery. (It's interesting that Eltis thinks even Nazi and Soviet slavery were distinct from New world slavery in this respect.)

Suppose that Britain had been the first nation to declare that slavery was ethically and morally repulsive. That makes no odds for the apology. Worse, it threatens your other argument: if Brits should now feel proud of their nation's past deeds, with which they had nothing to do, there's no reason why they shouldn't also feel shame at the less-nice bits of their past -- and no reason why they shouldn't apologise. The only reason you supply for not apologising is that one can apologise only for what one has done (as an individual) -- so, presumably, only slave-holders and slave-drivers can apologise for the slave trade. But that's inconsistent: if one can apologise only for what one has done, slave-holders can apologize only for those they enslaved, not for the trade itself. And in any case, your view is just false. Individual people can and do represent groups: the Queen represents the nation; the Prime Minister the state (and sometimes the nation); the MP his constituents. When the PM acts in his capacity as PM, those acts are the acts of the nation: when he commits troops to war, it's the nation at war, not the PM. The nation isn't limited to those people alive at the time of the act: this is the same nation that abolished slavery, as you concede. This is also the nation that fought in the second world war, which is why repayment of the American war loan continued into 2006, when almost all those alive when the loan was granted were dead, and when most of those whose taxes paid for the latter installments were born long after the loan was taken out. Nations, through their representatives, can and do act freely, seeing as they choose between alternatives. They can act freely; they can be held responsible when they act wrongly; they can also begin to discharge that responsibility by recognizing their wrong doing. In apologising, Gordon Brown is speaking for the nation (and the state) which did these terrible things; he's acknowedging the harm they did; as the properly-empowered representative of the nation, he has the power to do so.