Quote Of The Day.

What we must do, I suggest, is introduce a new concept of universal compulsory volunteering.

Melanie Reid in the Times putting the moron in oxymoron.

{Via here and here.}

Diane Abbott.

So did anyone else know that Diane Abbott MP has been writing articles for various Caribbean newspapers informing their readers that "an apology is the least that the British Government owes the descendants of slaves". Her interpretation of the whole thing is familiar to anyone who has read the distorted interpretations of slaver and abolition by professional race baiters, but it still seems extraordinary for British MPs to sneak off to incite resentment against their country abroad.

Modern Slavery

This Chinese story about the authorities uncovering hundreds of slaves being used in brick making kilns is interesting on several levels. Firstly the scale of the abuse is shocking. Secondly the fact that the Chinese media is reporting the discovery rather than brushing it under the carpet suggests that either China is relaxing its controls on the media a little or they haven't been able to suppress the internet as yet. Thirdly that behind the economic success of the last 20 years China lies an enormous problem with corruption, everyone was of course aware that corruption was a problem but if the police can be bribed to turn a blind eye to the disappearance of over 500 young people, the abductions only appear to have come to light because the parents of the victims posted a petition on the internet, then the brazenness of corruption is breathtaking.

Is the rise of China overblown when away from the metropolises the country has barely made any political progress for centuries?

Wilberforce- Abolitionist Or Double Agent?

At first glance this might seem a stupid question, and indeed on 2nd, 3rd and 4th glances it remains so. However in an illustration of why you should smoke crack whilst you write this bloke has figured out William Wilberforces cunning plot to protect slavery.

The recruitment of Wilberforce by the Prime Minister is an important clue suggesting that he may have been appointed to perform a subversive role designed to hold up the abolition process....
...Some readers might find it strange to think in terms of Wilberforce having operated as an under cover government spy working to subvert the abolitionist movement. However, we know that Pitt was really against the abolition of slavery because of his response to the Haitian revolution. When the world saw the Afrikan people in Haiti rise up and abolish slavery, Pitt failed to offer them either his government's support

This is the kind of fantasising that is inevitable when marxists try to reconcile their concept of an irredeemably corrupt West with reality.

Slave Trade & Abolitionism.

With the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade last month there has been a flurry of interest in the struggle for abolition. There is a tendancy by some commentators with an axe to grind to portray the end of the slave trade as something cynical which was done because the practice was no longer profitable. This is untrue slave traders were making record profits at the time of the ban and besides how can it be unprofitable to steal someone else's labour and provide nothing in return? If it was unprofitable it would have been pretty pointless for Britain to employ the Royal Navy to prevent other countries trading in human cargo.

Another form of diminishing the abolitionists is to imply that they just get the credit for it because they are white* and in actual fact slavery was really undermined by slave rebellions such as in Haiti. This is was not what happened, slave revolts were damaging to the cause of anti slavery because the brutality that frequently ensued terrified the opinion formers of they day as to the consequences of letting slaves run free. Anyway slave revolts had been a recurrent problem for over 2000 years, Spartucus most famously, and slavery showed few signs of abating in that time.

It may be a result of my political predjudices but I have always associated the sneering faction with left, so I am pleasantly surprised to come across this superb article on the British Abolitionist movement in the left wing American publication Mother Jones that does justice to the almost unprecendented selflessness and altruisn that drove the campaign.

Uprisings of the oppressed have erupted throughout history, but the anti-slavery movement in England was the first sustained mass campaign anywhere on behalf of someone else's rights. Sometimes Britons even seemed to be organizing against their own self-interest. From Sheffield, famous for making scissors, scythes, knives, razors, and the like, 769 metalworkers petitioned Parliament in 1789. Because their wares were sold to ship captains for use as currency to buy slaves, the Sheffield cutlers wrote, they might be expected to favor the slave trade. But they vigorously opposed it: "Your petitioners...consider the case of the nations of Africa as their own."

The essay is a couple of years old but has been put back up in time for the anniversary.

* There were several important black abolitionists, but the idea that their contribution has been unfairly overlooked in favour of less deserving white abolitionists is not the case.