I’ve left further thoughts and an extended reply to you on my blog.

you didn’t really engage with my arguments… anyway, i don’t need to tell you that the difference with iraq is that this government does not think it was wrong to bomb basra, while it does think it was wrong to practice the slave trade

But seriously, I would not want to see Tony Blair going through the relatively undemanding exercise of confessing other people’s sins. I would prefer that he did not apologise for the slave trade, but rather apologise for the bombing of Belgrade and Basra — or would it be better to wait 200 years for some representative of the Biritsh government then (if there is still a British government then) to apologise for the actions of the belligerent Mr Blair?

P.S. i wouldn’t mind hearing what your wife thinks of the matter.

There are two interesting aspects to your question: the first is whether the fact that she is descendent from a slave is sufficient to deserve an apology; the second is who should do or say what to her.

On the first point, i think that there are two conditions that are sufficient: if she is materially worse off because of the fact that she is descendent from a slave, then, irrespectively of whether she wants an apology or not, she deserves one. Otherwise, even if she is not materially affected by it, if she feels the burden of it, as in, if she wants an apology, i think, again, that she deserves one.

On the point of who should issue such an apology, that is difficult. As I say in the post, if there are, alive, any representatives of people that either were involved in the slave trade, or profited from the slave trade, then those people owe her an apology. One such category is people that are profiting today from the wealth their family has accumulated through slave trade. If such people exist, they owe your wife an apology.

Then the question is what counts as representing people involved with the slave trade. I don’t think that ancestry is sufficient: you should not necessarily apologise for something that your ancestors did; you ought to do it, only if by your condition or your behaviour, you show that you either profited from their actions, or that you don’t disapprove of your actions. So family won’t do. But,as i argue in the post, the government of today has a relationship to previous government that goes far beyond family relationship. It represents previous government: that is, it is the closest thing we have today to previous governments. Closer, say, than discendants of members of previous cabinets.

There is an interesting philosophical question with all this, which i only touch upon in the post: that there might be a middle ground between being sorry, and saying “i’m sorry”, and apologising. so that, if you are responsible for x, and x harmed someone, you ought to apologise to them. while, if you are responsible for x, i don’t have to apologise to the person harmed, but i still ought to feel sorry for them. this is the straightforward case. but it might be that slavery, or cases in which you are the accidental cause of some harm, call for something more than saying “i’m sorry”, but less than an apology. what might that be?

Should someone apologise to her?

If so, who?