Our dreadful duopoly political class seem bent on a "slave-like" existence for Australians: Covid and climate change restrictions of rights, control by racial division, and the threat of official censorship, non-elected 'experts' deciding what we can and can't do; rule of law and innocence until guilt is proven ignored, attacks on property rights, and diminishing opportunities to own property.

We need to spend more time fighting this new slavery - in which we are becoming the slaves - than we do dwelling on history, most of which some of us use to self-denigrate and attack an Empire we were damn lucky to stem from.

We will all finish up being slaves to the "First Nation" if some of our woke premiers have their way.

David

Correct, Graham. As heir we stand almost alone as a country that not only does not have an irrevocable bill of human rights, but successive national parliaments have resisted it to a generic man. Perhaps the voice will change that?

As for slavery, all unpaid endeavour is slavery as is underpaid work. I believe a man is worthy of his craft and in a fair days pay for a fair days work!

I brought home an unopened pay packet which I handed over to my then wife. Which she used as she saw fit. Did that make me a slave to wife and family? Given the way it all ended, maybe.
Alan B.

A competing and perhaps more accurate title would have been "Britain did more to supercharge trans-Atlantic slavery than any other nation".

Before the War of Independence the decadal growth rate in slave numbers in the British colonies was between 50 to 100% leaving the area holding 50% of the slaves in the Western hemisphere. After the war this dropped to 25 to 30%.

It kind of reminds me of the author of Amazing Grace. A slave ship captain who continued his nefarious work transporting slaves for years after his Damascus moment.

Having a change of heart from a principal instigator Britain was welcome but it was more about a self correction than being a leading light.

"When it abolished slavery a new era in human rights had arrived which within another century leads to the United Nations declaration of the Universal Rights of the Human Being".

And now the United Nations are trying to enslave all the western world, & idiots like SR cheer from the side lines, or become involved as useful idiots.

WTF?

There is more to this story than the British Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.

The British government borrowed £20 million to compensate slave owners, which amounted to a massive 40% of the Treasury’s annual income or about 5 percent of British GDP. The loan was one of the largest in history.

It was only in 2015 that, according to the Treasury, British taxpayers finished ‘paying off’ the debt which the British government incurred in order to compensate British slave owners in 1835 because of the abolition of slavery.

So for 180 years British taxpayers were paying off that loan so that save owning families and as a result their descendants could be rewarded by financial compensation.

Just another form of slavery.

British actor Benedict Cumberbatch (a descendant of a Barbados slave owning family) said in 2015 that his mother had urged him not to use his last name professionally. She feared it would make him a target of the campaign by the Caribbean to get compensation for the descendants of those who were enslaved

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there,” wrote L.P. Hartley.

So true, nowadays as well!

Anti-slavery is very nearly a uniquely western European (primarily British) idea.

Although there were times when Britain was a major player in the Atlantic Slave Trade, they were rarely THE major player with the vast majority of slaves being carried by the Iberians to their (largely) South America empire. By the time it was bought to a close, two-thirds of all slaves had gone to South America (mainly Brazil) and less than 5% to mainland North America, the rest going to the various Caribbean islands.

Meanwhile, as the trade across the Atlantic ebbed and flowed, captured white Europeans were being traded in North Africa and the Ottoman empire at similar scales.

The idea to abolish slavery came solely from western Europe and without their efforts, slavery would have continued as it had for millennia. Equally, the notion of human rights is a western European idea and exists in the world today solely due to the efforts of western Europeans.

Consequently these things (human rights and anti-slavery) exist only so long as western European ideas remain paramount. As the west declines in prestige and enforceability, so their influence of world thought will decline.

Already we've seen, in those parts of the world where the west has less influence, slavery rear its head. We've seen in the recent past and entire peoples (the Yazidi) enslaved and slavery reappearing in northern Africa. Equally, human rights hold no influence in the western provinces of the Han Empire (China) or most of Africa.

It is a very normal thing to think of the defeat of slavery as a permanent victory. But there will come a time when historians will look at the few centuries when western Liberalism held sway as a strange though wonderful interlude. The world will revert to its more normal processes where peoples and nations are enslaved and human rights are things that have no place outside the philosophy texts.

.

Forced labour, indentured labour, child labour, human trafficking, sexual exploitation, forced marriage, forced domestic work …, whatever form it may take, according to the UN agency, ILO (International Labour Organisation), more people are submitted to some form of slavery today than at any other time in history (50 million in 2021) :

http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_norm/---ipec/documents/publication/wcms_854733.pdf

Modern slavery is mostly in the Asia-Pacific region (55%), followed by Europe and Central Asia (15%), Africa (14%) and the Americas (13%) – all of which count for a total of 97% of world slavery.

Australia is noted as the least vulnerable country to slavery in the Asia-Pacific region and the country most active in combatting it.

According to The Global Slavery Index 2023 :

1. « On any given day in 2021, there were 41,000 individuals living in modern slavery in Australia. This equates to a prevalence of 1.6 people in modern slavery for every thousand people in the country » :

2. « The Australian Modern Slavery Act (2018) defines and recognises orphanage trafficking as a form of modern slavery under the Act’s definition »

http://cdn.walkfree.org/content/uploads/2023/05/17114737/Global-Slavery-Index-2023.pdf
.

The US Department of State’s 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report indicates for Australia :

« As reported over the past five years, human traffickers exploit domestic and foreign victims in Australia, and traffickers exploit victims from Australia abroad. Traffickers exploit women and men in forced labor and women and girls in sex trafficking. Traffickers exploit a small number of children, primarily teenage Australian and foreign girls, in sex trafficking within the country. Some women from Asia and, to a lesser extent, Eastern Europe and Africa migrate to Australia to work legally or illegally in a number of sectors, including commercial sex. After their arrival, traffickers compel some of these women to enter or remain in commercial sex in both legal and illegal commercial sex establishments, as well as massage parlors, motels, and private apartments » :

http://www.state.gov/reports/2023-trafficking-in-persons-report/australia/#:~:text=Traffickers%20exploit%20a%20small%20number,of%20sectors%2C%20including%20commercial%20sex.

It seems we are doing pretty well so far as slavery is concerned – at least compared to the rest of the world.

.

I should note that Graham's main point was that the western victory over slavery throughout the world ought to be celebrated, and I fully endorse that. Indeed, it would do us all good to celebrate all the successes and virtues of western civilisation in order to preserve it for as long as possible.

There is an estimated 50 million people living in slavery in the world today. In Australia there is an estimated 1.6 per 1000 people in slavery. Some are refugees caught in an economic trap and being exploited by unscrupulous employers. There is also sex slaves imported under false pretences, and then placed in a slave environment, exploited by a criminal element.

What Aspley says!
Alan B.

God fearing Christians used the Bible to justify slavery. the Bible is full of quotes condoning slavery;

Ephesians 6:5–8 Paul states, "Servants, be obedient to your human masters with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ" which is Paul instructing slaves to obey their master. Similar statements regarding obedient slaves can be found in Colossians 3:22–24, 1 Timothy 6:1–2, and Titus 2:9–10.

American slave owners, Christian to a man, would refer to their favourite biblical text to justify their slave owning. What is called “The Curse of Ham”, in their interpretation they had Ham son of Noah, a "black" man with his decedents being "African", strange as that sounds, cursed by Noah and placed into slavery. I suppose the Bible can be used with the "proper" interpretation, to justify anything you like.

Our system of government has made us slaves to the economy, instead the economy should be our slave!

The parliament is focused on things like the voice, when every household is feeling the economic pinch that will destroy families, the economy and national unity.

And in the process making the no campaign a virtual certainty!

And all because of the ever-souring cost of energy and all that is tied to it.

The labor party is diametrically opposed to nuclear energy for reasons that are surely about selfish self-interest and jumping when their political masters, the unions pull their strings.

Were this not so, surely, we would surrender to logics rites and transition ASAP to nuclear energy and make that our slave.

As MSR thorium and with-it, usher power prices as low or lower than 3 cents PKWH. And with that create a turbocharged economy on steroids!

And usher a period of unprecedented prosperity this country has never seen, as a manufacturing economy that will be the premier manufacturing economy in the Pacific.

And a completely self-reliant one at that. There are no downsides here, just win, win all round!
Alan B.

The title of the thread is "Britain did more to abolish slavery than any other nation". I notice no one is disputing that and for that reason, the efforts of the Anglosphere ought to be celebrated.

I watched Kamala Harris talking briefly about slavery.
Her lack of understanding was almost breath taking.
Does she not realise that we are all slaves?
In the sense that our lives are dictated by others.
We must follow just one narrow path through life.
In a democracy, we can also use the by-ways and side roads.
So we have more freedom, and a greater variety of experience.
But laws still ensure we stay within relatively narrow limits.

In a strict dictatorship, it is just the one road.
Leave the main trail and you will be made to suffer; abominably.
The 'slavery' Kamala talked about was something applied to just one section of a past community.
As it did not apply equally to all, it is now seen as grossly unfair and inequitable.
But there are no happenings which should be seen as all good or all bad.
Everything is just something which happens.
And there will be benefits and disadvantages when they do.
And these can change with time.
So what is beneficial right now might be distinctly not so down the track.

And what Kamala fails to appreciate is that there will always be advantages of some sort.
Following just one path can mean certainty and stability for example.
And I am quite sure that not all 'slaves' were treated badly.
I think Kamala over-reacts because she has been taught to do so.
Her lack of logicality leads one to question the choice of the Biden Camp.
Were they as wise as they should be?
Oh for some firm, decisive, and highly logical leaders.
Those who have a broad understanding of life and people, and a statesmanlike approach to the way they lead.
But we will be waiting a longish time methinks?

And I also think Albo has taken a detour through a murky swamp.
I wonder if he will make it out again?

What is there to celebrate when slavery is still rampant?

Some of my predecessors already described some forms of existing slavery, which I therefore need not repeat: indeed they are now illegal, but how does that technicality help the victims?

And while it is now illegal for individuals to hold slaves, the state can still do so legally in the forms of imprisonment and conscription. Different names do not different facts make.

---

«The societies we most admire from antiquity, the Romans and Greeks, were both slave societies»

May the author speak for himself - I never admired those societies but always looked at them with contempt.

«But my dog is a chattel, whereas the apprentice regains all of his rights after a defined term.»

So were Hebrew slaves, once in 7 years, but that does not mean that they were not slaves. As for dogs, let us wait and see how 23rd-century people will talk about us today keeping them on a leash!

There were many in Britain and America who opposed slavery, in the early days, including William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson in Britain and in America Harriet Tubman and John Brown being two of the best known. There were many black and white abolitionists, these people were strongly opposed and hated by those in favour of slavery, and those profiting from slavery. It took many years for slaves to gain their physical freedom, and many more years to obtain some degree of economic and social freedom, particularly in America, where black disadvantage is still prevalent today.

I wonder why only black people are called slaves & only white people were called slavers, considering that most Europeans were under the yoke (as in slavery) & most slave sellers in Africa were black ?

Indyvidual,

There were twice as many whites sold into slavery by the Barbary pirates as were sold into slavery in North America.

One of the causes of the collapse of Rome was the trepidation on the
Roman trading ships by Barbary Coast Arab slave traders.
This forced Rome to use much more expensive land transport.
It is thought that more than 1 million Europeans were taken by the slavers.
The Slav countries were the major source of slaves, hence the name.
Now they have come for Europe itself !
The Arab slavers actually raided Iceland looking for blondes.
Blondes got much higher prices !
I would bet they still do.