The white population has got to be on its knees!

On 18 August 2008, Lady Kate Davson, the great-great-great granddaughter of William Wilberforce, was quoted thus by 24Dash.com.

"THE WHITE POPULATION OF GREAT BRITAIN HAS GOT TO BE ON ITS KNEES TO MAKE THINGS RIGHT. The apology should be visible to show WE accept that WE effected the most awful wounds on a huge number of people."
The good Lady said this at the unveiling of a planned slavery memorial in London. 24Dash.com added:

"All the social unrest in the British African population can be attributed to 200 years of slavery, a direct descendent of William Wilberforce claimed today. Lady Kate Davson, the great-great-great granddaughter of the anti-slavery campaigner, made the comments at the unveiling by London Mayor Boris Johnson of a maquette of a planned slavery memorial in the capital... As HER HUSBAND'S ANCESTORS OWNDED SUGAR ESTATES IN GUYANA, she said that they 'REALLY HAVE TO GROVEL'...

Mr Johnson... said... 'It's vital that our children have a reminder of man's inhumanity to man.' He is supporting the campaign by voluntary group Memorial 2007... which wants to establish the first permanent national memorial in Britain to remember enslaved Africans and their descendants...

A permanent site in the park, of about 1,080 square metres, has been negotiated with Government support.

Oku Ekpenyon, a Memorial 2007 organiser, said: 'There is a lack of knowledge and understanding about the history of Africa, the repercussion of slavery and what it meant for Britain. This memorial will be an educational resource as the focus of curriculum-based and life-long learning.

It will also serve within a broader context to highlight in a national and public setting the centrality of the experience of enslaved Africans and their descendants in the history of Britain.' She said the statue would be the first permanent memorial in any capital city in the world that was involved in the slave trade."

Yep. Sock it to the working-class Brits, why don't you? Despite the fact that, at this time, British men, women and children were slaving, day in, day out, down the mines and in the mills and foundries, let's do our New World Order best to make them feel responsible for things they never did.

'WE accept that WE effected the most awful wounds on a huge number of people,' says a treacherous, upper-crust do-gooder. Well, no, actually, Lady Kate, THEY did that, not WE.

THEY being, you know, your husband's slave and plantation-owning ancestors? Together with the British top brass AND the African powers-that-were, who sold, not only their enemies into slavery, but also their own tribal kinfolk. WE had nothing to do with it. WE were dying like flies 'down the mines and in the mills and foundries' at the time. Foundries, mills and mines that were owned, as often as not, by the exactly the same sort as your husband's ancestors.

I wonder, Lady Kate, will you be making an apologetic speech at a memorial to the poor, working-class Brits who died young in these terrible times? I mean, you are aware that many of them were also cruelly exploited by the bad guys, aren't you?

In 1830 the wage of an agricultural labourer was nine shillings.

In the following years the wage was reduced to eight shillings, and then to seven. In 1834, the workers were faced with the prospect that their wages might be reduced to six shillings. It was against this background that George Loveless started up a Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers.

In March, 1834, the six men who came to be known as The Tolpuddle martyrs were arrested and George and his companions were sentenced to seven years transportation 'not for anything they had done, but as an example to others.'

However, in March, 1836, after much popular pressure, Lord John Russell told Parliament that free pardons had been granted to all six men.

George Loveless did not get back to England until 13 June 1837. A little while after his return from Australia in 1837, he said this to a gathering of fellow labourers:

"England has for many years been lifting her voice against the abominable practice of negro slavery. Numbers of great men have talked, have laboured and have struggled until at length emancipation has been granted to the black slaves in the West Indies. When will they dream of advocating the cause of England's white slaves?"

Richard Oastler was the leader of the Ten Hours Movement, which aimed to reduce the working day of factory children to 10 hours. Here is a letter this gentlemen wrote to The Leeds Mercury in 1830:

"Thousands of our fellow creatures are existing in a state of slavery more horrid than are the victims of that hellish system, colonial slavery... The very streets which receive the droppings of the Anti-Slavery Society are every morning wet by the tears of innocent victims at the accursed shrine of avarice, who are compelled, not by the cart whip of the negro slave driver, but by the equally appalling thong or strap of the overlooker, to hasten, half-dressed, but NOT half-fed, to those magazines of British infantile slavery - the worsted mills in the town of Bradford."

William Cobbett was an English journalist and political reformer. He fought relentlessly for the working-class and was not averse to a launching broadside or two against the political and financial elite, indeed, he was sent to prison for doing just this. In 1823, he sent a letter to Lady Kate Davson's great-great-great grandfather, in which he said:

"You seem to have great affection for the negroes... I feel for the hard-pinched, the ill-treated, the beaten down labouring classes of England, Scotland and Ireland, to whom you do all the mischief that it is in your power to do; because you describe their situation as good, and because you do, in some degree, at any rate, draw the public attention away from their sufferings."

When Richard Oastler's Ten Hours Movement argued for a reduction in the working day for children, the government opposed the move, saying that it would be detrimental to trade. Cobbett commented thus upon the establishment position:

"A most surprising discovery has been made, namely, that all our greatness and prosperity, that our superiority over other nations, is owing to 30,000 little girls in Lancashire. If these little girls work two hours less in a day than they do now, it would occasion the ruin of the country."

For the little girls of Lancashire, for the bent and crippled children of England's mills and mines, there was never a Wilberforce, and no anti-slavery pamphlets were ever circulated.

So, what do you think, Lady Kate? Are you prepared to raise a statue to '30,000 little girls in Lancashire?' Or the 'hard-pinched, the ill-treated, the beaten down labouring classes of England, Scotland and Ireland' and the victims of 'those magazines of British infantile slavery - the worsted mills in the town of Bradford?'

Are you prepared to pontificate sagely alongside a statue of 'England's white slaves,' Lady Kate? And most of all, Lady Kate, in future, when you say that WE accept that WE effected the most awful wounds on a huge number of people, will you make it clear that you are only talking about your own? Will you make it clear that WE means a bestial elite to which you belong but the majority do not?

And will you make it clear that many of the present day majority will be descendants of the 'hard-pinched, the ill-treated, the beaten down labouring classes of England, Scotland and Ireland,' who were, themselves, treated so abominably by the same bestial elite that enslaved the African?

No? You won't do any of these things? Why are we not surprised?

So Oku Ekpenyon says, 'there is a lack of knowledge and understanding about the history of Africa, the repercussion of slavery and what it meant for Britain.'

I'll tell you what, Oku, there is a hell of a lot more 'knowledge and understanding' of African slavery than the slavery that the native, Britsh peoples had to endure. Will you be organising a memorial for them any time soon?

Yeah. That's what I thought.

Check out Louise Ellman and the Slave Trade.