by David Bourne

Created on: May 01, 2008

Congratulations to Mrs.Bonhomme on a very interesting article. I am rather glad that she is a Live Musician as the dead ones are very difficult to hear!
Slavery in all its forms is uncivilised and abhorrent. However it has been around as long, I suspect, as the humans have been on the earth. The Transatlantic slave trade is but a small part of a trade that still exists. By that I do not mean to denigrate its importance in the history of slavery. What is important is that the 200th Anniversary of its abolition by an Act of our Parliament serves to highlight the evil of slavery today.

In remembering the Transatlantic trade we should not forget that at the end of the Second World War in 1945 there were four million slave labourers in Germany, a notionally civilised country at that time, according to Albert Speer who was Germany's Minister for Production. The slave labour camps and the concentration camps housed many of these slaves but they were also dispersed among the civil population and therefore that population were very aware what the National Socialist German Workers Party (NAZIonalist Socialisten Deutsche Arbeits Partei), for whom they had voted and brought Hitler to power, were about. Many of the industries who are extant today amassed profits from this trade. The Deutsche Bank financed Auschwitz.

We should also remember the millions who have been incarcerated in the slave labour camps of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics otherwise known today as Russia, Communist China and the other Socialist countries. It would seem that those nations that espouse the socialist ethic and vow to care for all their people are the most prone to offend against the freedoms and liberties that are the birthright of all people.

However nothing should deter us from seeking the destruction of those organisations and countries who exploit our fellow men. We should remember the words ascribed to Edmund Burke that "It is necessary only for the good men to do nothing for evil to triumph". Mrs Bonhomme is well named. However we should also remember another of Burke's sayings and that is "Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil.".

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