There is talk of reparations, for peoples of times gone by and their descendants to ‘get justice’ for the past. And in principle, I can see how that might occur, with our tendency as a species to live in the past sometimes, and having emotional triggers for it placed so carefully within society. And before I go into the interesting point I want to mention, I want to say that encouragement of this type of thing by the authorities, very neatly takes you away from thinking about justices that should be occurring now. Like, it’s ok, ignore what’s happening now, we’ll just say sorry and chuck some money your way in a few hundred years, if you catch my meaning.

But upon seeing a post about someone being quite miffed at the suggestion of reparations from the UK, because Britain had used 40% of its wealth to abolish slavery in 1833, not even fully paying back what was borrowed for it until 2014. So, I looked further, thinking that it seemed an awful lot of money to borrow and wondered who might have lent it and who in fact may have benefitted from it. Not far to look before you see the name Rothschild pop up, but upon reading the details of the arrangement, I can’t help but think it was all for show, as is much these days so why would it be any different back then? The terms initially of ‘abolishing’ slavery were only applicable to people up to the age of 6, yes, 6. Any over that age was transferred to what they were calling ‘apprenticeships’ – which then morphed into something else. Probably leading in neatly to ’employment contracts’ and paying taxes, making the slaves think they were free, but by constructing society in such a way as to make sure they were tied to be workers for their ‘master’ for the long term, or as we know them today, employers. Yet they were already there hundreds of years before, from 1351 with the Statute of Labourers – part of the moves covered in A Working Strategy. So, people on this island have been tied into certain working conditions for quite some time, with the rules of the slavery being less brutal than other regimes and methods.

And those employers along the way have become slaves to the bigger picture now, being used as middle men, muscle and mercenaries against their own. Divide and conquer as the saying goes. And with those taxes they pimp from us, they then use them to further the enslavement. Also, by publicly calling off slavery by way of payments to compensate all those slave owners, you tie in that country to debt, 200 years of it in fact. Then can conveniently be used as propaganda now, to sow further division and greed amongst the people. As well as making some very wealthy people through that reimbursement, using that borrowed money and taxes. A shift of wealth and a new regime, sound familiar?

Moves in certain countries currently to make a big thing of offering indigenous people and minorities loans has not gone unnoticed. But to me it serves two purposes, and neither of them are to help the ‘people’. Firstly, it ties them into debt they had previously been denied for, loans, mortgages etc, potentially clamouring for them as it had been out of your reach for so long. Secondly, it then causes tension between the people being offered what appear to be better rates and deals. But that’s just how it appears, and the recent inflation rises should be a lesson. That it’s a scale of debt they like to start you on, so it builds up gradually and you are in it for life as they say.

There is an anonymous saying which seems apt here –

‘I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves’

So, rather than play their little game of jealously, anger, debt and slavery, we should be working together to undo the ideas that created it all in the first place.

(c) K Wicks