“My ancestors gained nothing from slavery,” writes John Cookson (Letters, 15 March). Sadly, he is wrong. Everyone in Britain and the rest of the developed world has benefited from at least 200 years of cheap tobacco, coffee, chocolate and, above all, tea and sugar, produced by slaves or indentured labourers (or, today, low-paid workers) in conditions even worse than those his forebears experienced in Manchester and Salford in the 1840s. In addition, they were probably paid to make clothes out of raw cotton grown by slaves in the southern United States.
The direct responsibility for slavery certainly lies with the slavers and plantation owners, including the British royal family and most of the aristocracy and merchant classes who invested in the hateful trade. But the moral responsibility has to be borne much more widely and should be in our minds whenever we buy “cheap” goods today.
Prof Sir Roderick Floud
Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire
• Only a minority of British people participated directly in slavery, but we have all benefited to a greater or lesser extent from Britain’s prosperity generated by the Industrial Revolution. That would not have happened without the triangular trade, in which slavery was a key component. Nowhere is that seen more than in Manchester, where magnificent civic buildings were built with the profits of cotton grown on slave plantations. Conditions in many mills and factories were appalling, but they bore no comparison to slavery.
How to make reparations is a complex subject, but this is a debate we must have.
Nic Madge
St Albans, Hertfordshire
• I agree with John Cookson. Northern cotton mill workers went on strike in sympathy with the slaves in the southern plantations of the US, as the cotton used was from that area. The descendants of slaves were asked to help in the war effort, but were hardly ever mentioned. After the war they had to return to countries that were left with nothing, then asked to come and help rebuild the “mother country”, with all the hatred and racism that went with it. And we are told – it’s in the past, get over it.
Morris Gyles
Luton, Bedfordshire
• I have no objection to taxing the rich in any good cause, but I don’t think the argument that the rest of us do not have some responsibility for slavery reparations holds water. As the excellent University College London website on the legacies of British slavery shows, people of quite modest means were compensated for loss of the slaves they had invested in; direct involvement in slavery was not just for wealthy plantation owners. Moreover, Great Britain would not be the country it is today without the contribution that slavery made to its economy. If we believe that reparations are due, I’m afraid it’s not just a matter for the Trevelyans and the Drax family.
Rex Knight
Nailsworth, Gloucestershire
• I understand John Cookson’s plea that only the descendants of slave owners should pay for any future reparations, but is he aware he and his family have been paying back the debt for the millions paid to the slave owners since 1833? So even if slave owners do pay the reparations, it will only be with that money received from tax, not from their actual profit.
Kit Jackson
Herne Hill, London
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