Please don't apologize

The slave trade was a truly terrible institution. But I fail to see the point of Tony Blair apologizing for it – or sort of apologizing for it (there is some debate about whether expressing your “sorrow” is quite the same thing).

Apologies (or, more usually, sort of apologies) for historic crimes have become increasingly fashionable. The Church of England Synod has already expressed its regrets for the slave trade. The Queen apologized to the Maori for the nineteenth-century devastation of their lands, though she has apparently drawn the line at the doing the same for the Boer War. Bill Clinton and the US congress apologized for the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1893 (United States Public Law 103-150, for anyone interested in reading the exact terms). Pope John Paul II apologized for the sacking of Constantinople in 1204. The last vice-chancellor of my own university (sort of) apologized to the generations of women students who were denied formal Cambridge degrees, despite passing their exams, until 1948.

My problem is not simply a sense that these gestures do precious little good. But the smugness they tend to reveal on the part of the penitent apologizer adds insult to injury – and deflects attention from the wrongs we should currently be putting right.

Take the slave trade. What actually does this loudly heralded penitence on the part of western liberals do – apart from re-state the obvious. The government believes that slavery was a bad thing, as a spokesman repeated on the news last night. Well, thank heavens for that, I thought. But I didn’t really need their expression of regret to correct any misapprehension I might have had that they in fact approved of the institution. Besides I would rather they devoted their efforts to doing something about the modern slave trade than getting moral brownie points from apologizing for the past.

The Cambridge (sort of ) apology in 1998 was another case in point. All the pre 1948 female (non-)graduates were invited back to a lavish party and honestly, as I can attest, enjoyed themselves hugely. But it turned into a rather self-congratulatory celebration of the same university that had deprived them of their rightful degrees – a university which even now fewer women in academic jobs than any other in the country (a little problem that got lost in the day’s jamboree).

But there is also a problem about history itself. The idea of an apology conscripts the past into our own world and implies that we can treat it as if it obeyed our own comfortable conventions of morality and etiquette. On this model, the villains in history are those who don’t follow our own contemporary idea of moral rectitude. But, almost worse, history’s heroes are assumed to have acted as if they were driven by the same liberal conscience as our own. One thing for sure is that, effective campaigner as he was, William Wilberforce was not driven by the moral agenda of equality and multi-racialism that we now espouse.

I hope we can plug this tide. Otherwise within a few years we’ll have the Italians apologizing for the Roman invasion of Britain and its resulting depredation – or alternatively the inhabitants of East Anglia will be apologizing for Boudicca’s destruction of Colchester. Cui bono?

Comments

[david]

I suppose I come into the debate well after it is finished the last post was in 2006, however I am struck by the underlying assumptions of many of the posts.

The argument that apologies are often no more than grandstanding may be true, but it is hardly adds anything to the debate about whether apologies for past events should be made. Who should make the apology and how it should be made is a different issue.

As a South African I am acutely aware that apologies can not undo the atrocities of the past. This is a point that some of the posts make, but can the undoing of history ever be the aim and purpose of an apology? Of course not saying that apologies can not affect the past is to misunderstand the function of apologies.

Other posts claim that wanting an apology is blaming children for the acts of their parents? This too is to misunderstand how apologies function.

To argue that these types of apologies would then have to extend back to some bizarre historical events is essentially denying the humanity of those wanting apologies. No one is asking for the Italians to apologise for the invasion of the UK. It makes no sense to say that the request of actual people (like Afrikaners, or Irish) is ludicrous because it would validate ludicrous non existent requests. In other words the fact that you may find it ludicrous for Romanised Britons to request an apology from the Angles and Saxons does not mean that Africans wanting apologies for slavery is also ridiculous. Surely it is a false analogy?

It seems that some of the posts feel that not apologising is in someway remaining neutral. This probably only rings true for those who identify themselves (or can be identified) on the ‘offending’ side of these historical events. To those on the other side (offended) the failure to apologise is a refusal of something. What that something is, is hard to determine for the offended because they often have little insight into why offenders are not apologising. Is it because they reject the historical events occurred (eg holocaust denials)? Is it because they accept the historical accuracy of the events but feel that the offender’s part in these events was justified? Or is there some other reason?

It is necessary to try and see the matter from the perspective of the offended. Why is it that they want an apology (sometimes even when they personally had no experience of the events)? The main answer is basically psychological, oppressed peoples often have a psychology that is associated with their experience. Hearing an apology often lets the offended understand their sense of victim hood, and ultimately helps them moving beyond it. It lets them move beyond the stage of blaming others to a stage of dealing with their circumstances. Hearing a representative of offenders acknowledge the injustice of the past can aid the offended. It also gives them an opportunity to reconcile or not reconcile themselves with the apology – in other words to forgive. It is hard for many people to forgive when there has been no apology.

Apologies also do not change past events but they can impact on the future, when leaders in “offending” communities acknowledge past events through apologies they also send signals to their communities about what is acceptable in the present and the future. It also publicly affirms an ethic or moral.

As for the notion that we judge history by different (perhaps liberal democratic) values today can also hardly be a reason not to apologise. That may be true if we are using an apology to try and give some ‘total, complete and true’ reflection of history. It is highly doubtful that history can ever be described in a ‘total, complete and true’ way, even less so in an apology. It may be true that we judge the past by our standards and not the standards of the past, I think that is the point of an apology. To mark and highlight the differences of the understandings between how people treated each other in the past, and how they expect to treat each other now.

So many of the comments in the posts reminded me of when I was a child and I really did not want to say sorry for something I did, but when I became an adult I realised that an apology is more than admitting defeat. I realised an apology could not change what I had done. I knew it did not take away the understanding that my behaviour was motivated by factors that others did not know about or understand. I realised that sometimes I had to apologise for things that others had done, or that I was not a part of. I realised that I apologise not only as recognition of my own humanity but also as recognition of the person who so desperately wants me to recognise that they have been hurt.

[Anna]

An apology isn't much use and glib at best. It's just another chance for Tony Blair to grandstand. Why not put more resources into ensuring our children get a decent education so they can learn about slavery in history and discuss the subject from an informed point of view as well as be more aware of human rights abuses going on in the contemporary world.

[Mame du Bois]

What is the point of an apology without remorse?

I fear many of the apologies we hear of today are ways for governments to tie a nice bow around prickly historical issues so they can be stored 'comfortably' in the back of the historical cupboard, out of sight from the viewing public. It is the ultimate form of cultural denial - anything less gory, less embarrassing, less obscure, less damaging would have a monument built in honour of it.

To me an apology is a sacred rite of passage that belongs to perpetrator and victim, whether we are talking about a murderer and murder victims family or a government and an oppressed people, the rite of apologising belongs to those people in the contemporary and not to ensuing generations. The responsibility of following generations is in awareness and education. We need to know what happened, why it happened and how to stop it happening again.

An apology for something so distant and remote from our consciousness, does little if anything to 'right past wrongs'. An exhibit/book/documentary/statue would be far more productive - it would explain more and make us far more aware about our own history. As the good book says, the truth will set you free....

[Leyla Kent]

I agree. It is ridiculous to expect anyone in the modern era to apologise for the actions of their ancestors over a hundred years ago. It would be almost as ridiculous for a grandson to apologise for the actions of his grandfather. Exactly how much influence would he have on his forebears actions, at a time he was not even born?

As the Prime Minister, Mr. Blair speaks for all the British people. By expressing his "regret" he has attempted to express my regret. I cannot and will not "regret" the actions of people whom I could not influence. The whole point of history is that it cannot be rewritten and it cannot be undone. Britain made amends for its participation in the slave trade not only by abolishing it but also by actively fighting against it, at a time when it was still an ongoing issue. It is now part of history. Fatuous words of apology will hardly make our efforts at making amends any greater.

An apology is a way of undoing harm caused. In the modern era we cannot further undo the harm caused by the slave trade, except perhaps by shipping all the people descended from those forcibly brought here, back to wherever their ancestors came from. That would hardly be right, or fair. Any calls for further amends are simply a way of asserting victimhood in a group who are no longer victims for that reason, though they may very well be for other reasons not related to slavery.

It is no longer a current evil. We should be focusing on the problems of our modern world, not least racism and discrimination. Slavery has been abolished in this country for longer than living memory. There is no one currently alive who has suffered from it at the behest of our government, nor with the approval of our society. The same cannot be said for other evils which are so evident in Britain and elsewhere. We should address them and stop apologising for the mistakes made by our ancestors.

[Michael Bown]

The slave trade was not invented by nineteenth century colonialists as its modern day critics seem to think but has existed throughout history, and in the arab world and much of East Asia still exists. So far as "compensation" to its suppose victims is concerned, precious few of these people - practically all of mixed African and European blood anyway - would even exist if their forebears had not been transported from Africa generations earlier. Would they now like single tickets to the heady delights of Liberia, Sierra Leone or even Nigeria?

[betty]

Here in Australia our government, for whom I hold no respect at all, is widely reviled for its refusal to apologize to the indigenous people for all the sins and evils they were subjected to over many years. While the argument over this refusal goes on the aboriginal people continue to live in appalling conditions and to have infant mortality, premature death, child abuse and domestic violence rates that are truly disgraceful.

I doubt that they would care about the motives of anyone who succeeded in removing them from their lives of poverty and despair, and I reckon this would have applied equally to ther slaves. And I think they'd rather have clean water, work and decent medical care than an apology.

Apologize for the past by all means, and get it over with. Then do something practical in the present, for the future.

[Ed Manser]

If the energy and funds Tony Blair has put into the
Middle East exercise were to be put into Barfor then that would right wrongs. Problem is that there is no oil.

[P Bailie]

I think that it would be fair to say that Wilberforce was acting in the light of his evangelical faith and what he understood to be biblical imperatives. Perhaps we easily forget that the modern agenda of racial equality and multiculturalism has antecedents in the Christian tradition?

[Daniel Prestridge]

I think it would be a better thing for the leaders to apoligize for what they are doing today instead of what was done 100-200 1000 years ago. Don't you?

[Fred]

It would be a darned sight more appropriate for the British Foreign office to apologise for allowing that murderous bastard Mugabe obtain power thru divious means , when the British govt. washed their hands of Rhodesia in March 1980.
Blair has consistently ignored this festering sore, now there are more than three million refugees from this continuing disaster state.

[Fred O'Hanlon]

Dear Mary,

I enjoy being provoked by you but this article does more than provoke.

Your final ‘cui bono’ is punctuated with a question mark rather than an exclamation mark, which suggests that you intend it as more than a merely rhetorical flourish to the patent absurdities in your final paragraph. I would like to suggest an answer to the question of who benefits from Tony’s gesture.

Your main point appears to be that ‘gestures do precious little good’. The subsequent attribution of ‘smugness’ to Tony is a cheap, even if merited, jibe. The attribute ‘empty’ is almost certainly implied. I would like to place the topic of empty political ‘gestures’ within the context of East Asia. I am writing to you from China. I spent last year in Korea. Koizumi’s visits to the Japanese equivalent of Arlington cemetery to honour Japan’s war dead were not symbolic gestures as far as the Chinese and Koreans are concerned. For them he was honouring war criminals. If the new Japanese prime minister were to apologise for the Nanjing massacre and the abduction of Chinese and Korean women to work as ‘comforters’ in Japanese military brothels, that would be no empty gesture. It would benefit everyone in Japan, China and Korea today.

The Irish famine is a topic which is still a live issue as far as I personally am concerned. Tony also made a gesture a few years back on that topic on the occasion of the 150th anniversary ‘celebrations’ of the ‘great hunger’ in Ireland. It was not empty let alone smug. I for one appreciated it.

The abolition of slavery dates back to about the same time. It is still a live issue. No statement in connection with it in our lifetimes by an effective head of state can ever be empty.

You mention Cambridge. I would like to mention Newnham. The pre-1948 non-graduates of Newnham did indeed have good reason to celebrate the decision in 1871 to set up a female centre of academic excellence in Cambridge at a time when women did not even enjoy the franchise and the teaching staff in Cambridge were required to be celibate ministers of the Church of England. The 1948 dinner was the somewhat belated – by Oxford standards - culmination of that forward-thinking 19th century movement. Doubtless the women present were celebrating the benefits they received rather than those that were denied them. But what case can be made for the exclusion of males to this female enclave of academic excellence today?

Finally, as the proud son of bog Irish Catholic immigrants and former holder of a British diplomatic passport, I resent your slighting dismissal of William Wilberforce.
As you doubtless remember, Aristotle describes ‘same’ as a syncategorematic term; one which cuts across distinctions, for example, of time and place. But the passage of time is change.1 I do not doubt that Wilberforce’s ‘liberal conscience’ differed from ours any more than I doubt that his pioneered ours. You for one should have given him credit for that and I suspect you actually do.

Yours truly,

Fred O’Hanlon

1. You know this. You have written about the menopause.

[Stuart Macwatt]

While Malcolm Turner is about it, (his suggestion that we might see an apology for William the Bastard's subjugation of his Saxon forbears), perhaps he would add an apology for what his own Saxon forbears did before that to my forbears the Celts!

Mr Blair's so called apology clouds the important role Britain and its navy had in eradicating the transatlantic slave trade. I wonder on whose behalf he was apologising? Was he speaking on behalf of the Sovereign, whose First Minister he is?

[Simon Wakely]

In general I agree with Mary Beard's comments but what an extraordinary remark to make about William Wilberforce. If he and his co-abolitionists were not driven by a moral agenda of compassion and equal rights, what on earth were they driven by?

[Malcolm Turner]

I think that Tony's apology says more about him than us. I do not remember seeing this contrition raised in the Labour Party manifesto. Call me a cynic, but this pronouncement is codswallop isn't it? As a man of the law (if only unto himself) is he not just making a precedent out of a meaningless social issue, perhaps leaving the British Government open to legal action for pain and injury caused to ancestors of the wronged? Looking at Ruanda and Nigeria, looking at any African state really, one might suggest that what ever perceived wrongs were acted out by the British and their hand in that historic and awful trade that many of the antecedents of the woeful are doing mightily better than their unfortunate cousins; even if one can only say that prospects for the relatives of those transported are infinitely more desirable and that when the amelioration of hardship is a definite possibility rather than a fact of life then this accident of history is a two sided coin. But I am inclined to believe that Blair made this statement for personal aggrandisement as Straw ingratiated himself with the left by attempting to prosecute Pinochet as his first priority when coming to power. The Labour Party is dizzy with spin, so much so that they do not now know when they are or not participating in it. At best the statement is personal and at worst manipulative. Needless to say I am awaiting Sigolene’s apology for ‘William the Bastard’s’ invasion of my country and the subjugation, murder and cultural destruction he wrought on my Saxon forebears.

[george bridge]

An excellent, sensible, logical opinion. A number of years ago I was doing a consultancy for South-West Thames Regional Health and they gave me a guy from Nigeria who had a degree in philosophy to do some of the research. He started by being very antagonistic towards me. When I asked him his reason for this he brought up the slave trade. I pointed out that I was not alive so could not be responsible. I also pointed out that before the war my father was a coal miner. He worked in a narrow seam, he was lying on his back in water chipping at a seam over his head. He lived with a family of 8 brother and sisters in a 2 up and 2 down dwelling with a toilet out back and worked for a pittance. Was that slavery.
He was much more friendly after that.

[Roy Roebuck]

Should we not be congratulating ourselves on abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire and then patrolling the seas to stop other slave traders? And are those Africians who traded their own folk going to apologise? Let's get real!

[Anthony Kirvell]

Blair is stupid doing this apology. That was history and right for the time,its the same as every Empire that took over others and enslaved them. Are we expecting Norway to apologise for the Viking or the Italians for what the Romans did.Go back through history and see all the wrong doings. Its in the past it happened forget it and get on with it.If we hadnt taken people as slaves then they would not be in the Americas or their decendants living a nice life in Great Britain. Come on Blair live for now not the past these apologies wont get you any further votes you are just stirring up the hatred that lies beneath get off your soapbox.You should be apologising Iraq for invading it so you and "sheriff" Bush can get your hands on their oil.

[Carol A]

I suppose the next thing would be to apologise for sending those convicted of very minor offences to Australia as punishment - but just as well we can't right that wrong or I wouldn't be sending this email! (One of my ancestors was sent out here for a small shoplifting offence).
Yes, let's get rid of the modern slave trade and unjust laws rather than dwelling on the past. Making sure that the slaves' great-great grandchildren now have access to good jobs and higher education is the best "apology".

[Brian Lewis]

It is about time we, the English, apologised for coming to the island of Britain and taking it away from the Romanised Britons, whom we called in our own language 'Welsh'. I think it was about 430AD, but my friends Hengist and Horsa have lost the records. Now that we are giving back Scotland and Wales, the only remedy I can think of is for Tony Blair to request the German government to give us back our lands in northern Germany so we can go home. Of course, the rest of the world must think us stark staring mad! When then will Tony Blair begin to apologise for Iraq?

[alex drace-francis]

I was intrigued by the way this is reported in your parent newspaper: "Tony Blair has issued a statement of regret at Britain's role in the slave trade today". In the online edition, the tense of the main verb appears to have been altered from future to past since I consulted it this morning; but I suppose 'today' is in the correct place?
In Communist Romania these syntactical ambiguities were called 'soparle' (= 'lizards') & much prized as a mode of indirect commentary.