RESTITUTION, HOPE AND PRESUMPTION? by Donal Kennedy

I’m no theologian but remember a Christian Brother explaining the clear difference between the virtue of Hope and the folly of Presumption.   The idea of London making restitution for one millionth part of the damage its governments have visited on Ireland these past nine centuries is perhaps the greatest example of Presumption ever made public. Snowballs would have a more patient hearing in Hell than that idea would have in a British Cabinet or any conceivable Britannic Majesty’s Privy Council.
In 2007 Britain’s Royal Mint issued a coin commemorating an Act of Parliament passed in 1807  abolishing the Slave Trade, a trade where Britain was by far the greatest Trader, but the trade continued in her Caribbean territories until 1811. The British with their usual bent for Great British Modesty made a great hullabaloo on the Bicentenary of that Act of Parliament.

Perhaps one in a thousand white Britons realised that slavery flourished under the Union Jack for a further twenty six years and in territories ruled by the British East India Company until the 1840s.                                                                                                     The The Act abolishing slavery  was passed in 1833 following the Great Reform Act of 1832 which slightly widened the Parliamentary Franchise. You may recall that on seeing the reformed House of Commons the Duke of Wellington reported that he’d  never seen such bad hats in his life.

Amongst the bad hats was the freshman MP William Gladstone, whose father already had a seat in the Commons. William Gladstone who, as a Liberal was to be four times Prime Minister, sat first as a Tory and held ministerial offices with that Party. He spoke on the slavery issue, rejecting allegations concerning his father’s treatment of his own slaves in the Caribbean. He accepted the abolition of slavery but insisted that the slaveowners be compensated for the loss of their sweated property. No compensation whatever was ever contemplated or given to the victims of that inhuman bondage.     Within the past few years details of the compensation paid the slaveholders and the names of the slaveholders were made public, but with no fanfare. The compensation was a huge proportion of the British Government’s Budget.