this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2025

180 points (100.0% liked)

World News

46580 readers

2309 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]

Recommendations

How to spot Misinformation and Propaganda

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

180

Most Britons do not know scale of UK’s involvement in slavery, survey finds (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

19 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Britons are widely ignorant of the scale and legacy of Britain’s involvement in slavery and colonialism, a survey has found, with the vast majority unaware how many people were enslaved, how long the trade went on for, or for how long UK taxpayers were paying off a government loan to “compensate” enslavers after abolition.

The poll, released to coincide with Tuesday’s UN International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, was commissioned by the Repair Campaign, which is working with Caricom to secure reparatory justice for member states through health, education and infrastructure projects.

The sample of more than 2,000 people representative of the UK population found 85% did not know that more than 3 million people had been forcibly shipped from Africa to the Caribbean by British enslavers.

all 29 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[+] [email protected] 33 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (6 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago

Andrea Levy explores that in this essay.

The whole essay is great and I recommend it.

"But all this happened 3,000 miles away from Britain, and as a result it has been possible for it to quietly disappear from British mainstream history. This is the absence, the gap in knowledge, the amnesia of the British that made the black man on the bus such an alien. It is unthinkable that a book on American history could leave out plantation slavery in the southern states. But in British history books the equivalent is the case, or at least the importance of those centuries of British slavery in the Caribbean is underplayed. That British plantation slavery has no lasting legacy for this country is absurd, but it is a claim that is made implicitly by this silence. It was so very long ago, it seems to say, we don’t need to dredge it up.

I remember what I was taught at school about Britain in the Caribbean. I had one lesson on the transatlantic slave trade. We looked at illustrations of slaves in ships. But that was all. I learned much more about William Wilberforce and the campaign for the abolition of slavery than anything about the life of a slave. We know more about slavery in the American South than in the British Caribbean. We are familiar with the struggles of African Americans from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement. But American slavery was different from Caribbean slavery. In the Caribbean, slaves far outnumbered the white owners, and that mix of isolation, fear and dependency produced very different societies from those of the American South. America’s story will not do for us. Our legacy of slavery is unique, and we need to understand what it is."

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It was covered a bit when I was in school. Although the main focus was "yeah we did some bad slavery stuff. But we got rid of slavery much sooner than America and some other countries did!"

So it wasn't exactly done in the best of ways. Although at the risk of repeating that same approach, as someone else here mentioned I think that's the case with pretty much every country that enslaved or abused people.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The slave trade is a mandatory part of the curriculum at ks3. You've just forgotten. And it's pretty worts and all as far as Britain's involvement goes.

I agree with your sentiments though, everyone likes to mythologise their history.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I had same experience as you and finished school in 99. Not a thing about slavery.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

We had the Gandhi tapes on VHS for one day.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I think most nations have similar lapses. I attended university in my late 40's and none of my younger classmates had ever heard of the October crisis that led to "Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (to invoke) the War Measures Act for the first time in Canadian history during peacetime."

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I learned quite a bit when i was in secondary school around 2010ish

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Most Britons probably don't know about how the British navy patrolled the African coast for 50 years trying to stop slavery. Its a recent TIL for me, anyway.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_Africa

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Yes sure. But that doesn't play along with the current narrative. So history shouldn't be brought up like that. This is about revisionism. We all should feel guilty for something we have no power over so we can discuss non issues instead of actual problems.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

I feel like most of Europe isn't, because Europeans get real uppity when slavery in America comes up, but like...y'all started it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Good to know I'll have to teach my kid this stuff myself. Anyone got a friendly educational series they like, or are we just gonna be doing Behind the Bastards and frowning hella hard together as a family

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (3 children)

And I thought we (the US) were the only ones this dumb.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

People are more similar than they are dissimilar regardless of where you look, I’ve found.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

~~dumb~~ uneducated.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Wait until everyone realizes that everyone has been a slave since ancient civilization on every continent in the world.

They might be surprised.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yes, the more notable thing is that, for some reason, the British decided the practice should end.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

When it was no longer profitable.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

The Portuguese did much worse, I wonder how aware they are.
There was a point in time where 90% of Brazil's population was enslaved black peoples.