Paying reparations for the slave trade is nonsense - Britain should be proud of its role in banning it - Ben Habib

First, to undermine our confidence in who we are. The extreme left in the UK loathe our country. They wish to do away with it. Their political aim is to discredit our past, so we lose faith in ourselves.

They correctly assess that if we are ashamed of our history, our belief in the legitimacy of the UK itself would be removed. If that could be achieved, they would be well on their way to destroying the country. Anyone giving credence to the false demand for reparations is indulging this attack on the country.

Second, to chance their arm at successfully laying claim to money to which they have no entitlement.

Their demand for reparations is promoted by Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the regulatory framework of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).CRT, the notion that all white people are privileged and inherently racist if they do not acknowledge this privilege, is now widely accepted in the UK.

The privilege is apparently hundreds of years old, born out of our empire and the exploitation of poor people across the World. This lie provides the foundation for the prejudice required to be evidenced in our forefathers to justify the demand for reparations.

DEI, being the practice of progressive discrimination in favour of minorities, is now a regulatory requirement. Every public body, educational establishment, law enforcement agency, armed force, employer and business in the UK is obliged progressively to discriminate in favour of minorities.

DEI is the embedding of identity politics in the fabric of the country and an assault on meritocracy.

We do not just have two-tiered policing. DEI has turned us into a two-tiered country.

The established notion of white privilege and the requirement to discriminate in favour of minorities makes a claim for reparations the natural next step.CRT and DEI discriminate based on the colour and ethnicity of people. They are inherently racist. By accepting CRT and practicing DEI we have become a racist nation.

The victims of that prejudice is the white majority population. Anyone giving succour to claims for reparations is falling into a trap, the natural end of which is the end of the nation state that is the United Kingdom.

How could our culture and our country continue if it is inherently illegitimate? People who should know much better are falling into this trap. Top of the list is (the idiot) Justin Welby. He has committed £1billion of the Church’s £8billion wealth, to reparations. How this is paid out and to whom it is paid is work in progress.

But by accepting the demand for this payment he has labelled the Church as a wrongdoer. He is the one that is wrong - at every level. How dare he be judge, jury and sentencer of the history of our Church? We should not have to defend our history, let alone pay reparations for it.

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The truth is the Church of England, like the country itself, should be proud of its role in the banning of the slave trade and subsequent efforts for its eradication. For goodness’s sake, it was an evangelical Christian, William Wilberforce, who was the driving force behind its end. And many missionaries then died travelling to the extremities of the World to advocate against it.

The UK did not just ban the trade, it made it illegal to own slaves and then policed the World – at vast human and monetary cost – to shut it down. We should be very proud of our history.

The truth is the Commonwealth countries demanding reparations are trying it on because they see a UK weakened by the infection of anti-British ideologies. They think we might just pay up; and knowing Starmer, infected himself by anti-British sentiment, he is likely to do so.

The other truth is that many of the countries demanding reparations are guilty of past atrocities, including owning and trading slaves. Many still do. I fear greatly for the United Kingdom.

The direction of travel at so many levels, constitutional, democratic, economic and cultural, is self-harming and detrimental to our very existence.

Our preparedness to consider the outrageous demand for reparations evidences this existential threat. Our answer to it should be absolutely, bloody not!