Latest / Thinking Class / #98 - Lord Nigel Biggar - The Case Against Britain Paying Reparations For Its Role In The Transatlantic Slave Trade

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#98 - Lord Nigel Biggar - The Case Against Britain Paying Reparations For Its Role In The Transatlantic Slave Trade · Thinking Class

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm John Gillam and today I'm speaking to Lord Nigel Bigger.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Nigel is Emeritus Regis Professor of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford and distinguished scholar in residence at Pussy House, Oxford.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: He holds a BA in modern history from Oxford and a PhD in Christian Theology and Ethics from the University of Chicago.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: He was appointed the Commander of the British Empire, CBE, for services to higher education in the 2021 Queen's Birthday honours list.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Nigel's most recent books are Reparations, Slavery and the Tyranny of Imaginary Guilt, Colonialism, A Moral Reckoning, What's Wrong with Rights, In Defence of War, and Between Kim and Cosmopolis, An Ethic of the Nation.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: In the press, he has written articles for The Financial Times, The London Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, The Glasgow Herald, The Irish Times Standpoint, The Critic, the Article Unheard, and Quillette.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, Nigel and I think out loud about rethinking the problem of historical injustices and why Britain does not owe reparations to descendants of the transatlantic slave trade, how much of a contribution slavery made to Britain's industrial prosperity, the scale of slave trade across the world at various times in history, the responsibility of Africans in the slave trades, the history of the enslavement of British and European slaves, whether Britain's recent immigration history will permanently impact its justice system and models of governance, the topic of deportations, and much, much more.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure to like, subscribe, and follow this show on YouTube, your podcast platform of choice and Substack.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let's grow Thinking Class together.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the show, classmates.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: The pleasure is all mine.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Last time out, we were speaking about the themes of your previous book, Colonialism, A Moral Reckoning.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And now you've written one about reparations, which is proving that you have somewhat of a penchant for handling those moral charges against Britain and its imperial history that have been deemed as settled in the eyes of our political and cultural elites, usually against Britain.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: And let's get into reparations.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: So typically when reparations are called for, for which they are increasingly so amongst even our political class, but also our established church, as uh you've you've written in your book, the focus is often on, in fact, almost exclusively, on the African descendants of the transatlantic slave trade.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: So leaving aside the question of whether reparations are the right thing to do, you suggest that focusing on the descendants of black slaves is short-sighted.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Let me just uh back to a little bit just to make clear to your listeners, uh, I mean, you're quite right that uh reparations is becoming uh is moving to center political stage.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh I mean, a a community of 15 Caribbean nations, uh, CARICOM, the Caribbean community, uh, presented a bill to Britain of 18 trillion pounds for uh uh uh reparations for the enslavement of Africans brought to the Caribbean.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: The African Union uh two weeks ago cheekily decided to um uh present its own bill.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we haven't seen the figure yet, but I imagine uh uh the the bill will be higher than for uh uh than CORICOMs.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then, yes, the Church of England uh two years ago, in my view, uh with good intentions but unwisely uh committed itself to pay£100 million, initial hundred million pounds out of church assets in reparations for the church's involvement in slavery, which was alleged, I think, is actually uh um a mistake.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, so that that's the reason why this issue is salient.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um the focus on the descendants of African slaves uh is um myopic and it's unfair because the the story told to to uh back the claim against Britain for reparations is that white Britons um uh oppressed uh exploited black Africans in bringing them to the Caribbean and the American colonies in the uh mainly the 18th century.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: And what's wrong about that is that um uh it makes the British involvement in slavery seem something extraordinary.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: It also presents the situation literally in black and white, white and black terms, white and black terms, in racially uh prejudicial terms.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: And what's prejudicial about it is it omits to say that black Africans were in the business of enslaving other black Africans and selling them to the Romans and then to the Arabs long before Europeans arrived on their coasts in about 1450.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: The British didn't get there until 1650, or maybe 1550, but mainly after 1650.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: So so um what's happening here, that the the the the uh the story told about the past to support the case for reparations abstracts British involvement from its context and makes it seem as if this was something extraordinary, and also makes it seem as if it was something that white people did to black people, so they the terms are racialized.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and that's historically uh distorted.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's what that's one of my main complaints against the case, uh against the historical case.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I suppose the point you were making about Africans enslaving Africans selling to other Africans, but also Romans, Arabs, all the rest of it.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Is that what you meant when you said that the African Union has rather cheekily come up with a reparations claim of its own?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: Because they've Yes.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: So the African Union decided that you know we owe we owe reparations for colonial crimes in general and uh slavery in particular.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I mean we can talk about colonial crimes.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Of course there were colonial crimes, but there were plenty of other uh uh non-colonial crimes by African people too.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but let's focus on slavery.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I mean, um uh not only were Africans involved in enslavement long before Europeans arrived, uh, the British were among the first peoples in the history of the world to decide to abolish slave trading and slavery within their own territories, and then uh um spent 150 years suppressing slavery from Brazil to New Zealand.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and during that period, in 1850 thereabouts, um Fulani, uh the Fulani people in what's now northern Nigeria ran uh vast slave plantations.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: And um they, according to one uh African historian, these plantations exploited as many Africans as there were slaves in the United States at that time, namely four million.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: And this is 1850, after which, uh about um uh 40 years after the British had uh ended the slave trade within their own territories, and about 20 years after they'd abolished slavery altogether.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: So um to have African nations uh led by leaders, perhaps, whose own ancestors were involved in slave raiding and slave trading, to come to Britain and present the bill is is um well it involves a lot of chutzpah.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think it's fair to say that the thrust of your book, as ever, is to actually look at things in the round and stealing the subtitle of your your book on colonialism, it's a moral reckoning.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And what you argue very eloquently is that reparations is a very slippery slope that we ought not to pay them.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And you uh to to quote uh a sentence from your book, you said you write that yesterday's oppressors were the day before yesterday's victims, and that this is what makes it so murky to get into the topic of reparations.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: So perhaps you can give some examples of yesterday's oppressors being the day before yesterday's victims.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I mean you're just just taking take well, first of all, to take take the British.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, yes, so some British people um uh uh a minority, um merchants, wealthy people, not working class Brits, and certainly not not Asian and African Brits who emigrated here after the Second World War.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: Some Brit Brit Britons uh 200, 300 years ago were involved in um slave trading and slave replantations and profiting from them.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um so at that point they were the oppressors.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: But if you roll back um um uh a few hundred years, uh four, five, six hundred years, uh you will find that um um Anglo-Saxons were being uh captured by Vikings and traded uh um um in Bristol, shipped to Dublin, where the Vikings then ruled, and then taken up to Scandinavia down the Volga and sold to Arabs.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: So at that point, the Brits were the victims.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um and also um before the British got involved in the transatlantic uh slave trade, um about uh about 1.25, it's it's difficult to estimate the figure exactly, but one over one million uh white people, some from the British Isles, were enslaved um and and uh sometimes directly by Arabs.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there were there were Saracen raids from North Africa on the coast of the southwest coast of Ireland and the southwest of Britain, uh in one case, I believe, carrying off the best part of a Cornish village into slavery in the 1600s.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um so there again, uh it was the Arabs, it was the non-whites who were the oppressors and the whites who were the victims.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: So um uh I mean one of my main complaints, just to make it absolutely clear, John, against the the background narrative told about the past in favor of reparations, is I think it's racist, because it wants to make white people guilty, black people innocent.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Now, uh sometimes that was the case, sometimes it was the reverse.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um but once you once you admit that it wasn't just white Britons who were responsible, also black Africans, then the picture of how to rectify the past becomes altogether more complicated.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: And and uh notice that no one at this point, no one, is calling for African states to make reparations.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um where if we if we had a fair world, that would be the case.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: But uh the the the focus on on the British, it it is political expediency that the Caribbean nations and the African nations have noticed how our mainly white elites uh are prone to signal their virtue and declare their colonial guilt hitherto because it's been costless.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, now uh uh virtue signalling is going to get pretty costly if our white elites are serious about it.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's uh uh uh my perception is that uh uh there's a tendency among um um many universally educated people in charge of our institutions to to buy the line that we in Britain are systemically racist and that um uh therefore we are guilty.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and this is and paying reparations is is one way to expunge our guilt and uh to make it to to show that we're not racist.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: I do think that's partly what's going on with the Church of England.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um whereas um my view is that I mean like according to um social scientific data, whether we're talking about the 2018 European Union for fundamental rights report being black in the EU, which reckoned that Britain was um, in terms of the harassment of people of African descent, Britain was one of the least racist countries in Europe, or whether it's the 2023 World Value Survey, um, according to which uh uh uh compared to places like Japan and Russia and China and Iran and North Korea, uh Britain and indeed um the other parts of the former British Empire, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, are all among the least racist countries on earth.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: And you you know you may have noticed we had uh recently had a uh an ethnically Indian Hindu Prime Minister.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: You may have noticed we currently have a first-generation black Nigerian British woman as head of the Tory party.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh white supremacist countries don't do that, do they?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm not saying I'm not saying that Britain is clean of racism.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: My view is that that group prejudice, whether it's religious or political or to do with with uh uh sexual orientation, group prejudice is uh a widespread universal human phenomenon, and we will never abolish it.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we ought to try and discourage it and suppress it.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: So uh is there racial prejudice amongst us?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: But but by the way, it's it's not all white on black, it's sometimes black on white.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh but all things considered, we're among the racist countries on earth.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and therefore this this tendency to assume that we are we white people are guilty of being racist, I think is misplaced.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um But I think that that's one of the background reasons for why the particularly the white people in charge or institutions are susceptible to being made to feel guilty about what happened 200 years ago.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um because it I mean my my view is as as I've made clear is in terms of the history, um, and we can talk more about the the the the ethics of it, in terms of the history, the the claim, the claim is is unfair and it's distorted and it's actually racist.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: So one doesn't have to feel responsible for paying reparations, but but I observe that our elites are inclined to, and some of them actually want to.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: So when I come along and say you don't need to, the action is not, oh, oh great.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, or just even skeptical skeptical curiosity, the the reaction is often hostility and aggression.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: And one has to ask, well, what's fueling that?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh because people seem to have an investment in this story that is is unwarranted.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: So why why do they why are they attached to it?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: I could go on.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you you certainly could, and I I suppose drawing more examples from your book, you you grapple with the frequent challenge to Britain's imperial past, where the nation is is frequently accused of having treated and seen its colonial possessions as solely a source of cheap materials, a market to sell its goods.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: What's your challenge against that view?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so um I suppose the case the case of chattel slavery in the West Indies as they were then is perhaps the clearest case of colonies that were primarily about economic exploitation.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, uh uh, you know, hands up, uh guilty there then.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um one point to make is that economic exploitation is is not confined to white people.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because, as I said, black Africans were exploiting millions of other black Africans in in what's now northern Nigeria in the 1850s.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: So uh it's a bad thing, uh, but it wasn't just white Brits who were doing it.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh secondly, um, yes, if if if uh colonialism was sometimes about economic exploitation, uh at other times it was about liberation.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, as I said, uh the British were first were among the first peoples in the history of the world to abolish slave trading and slavery in the early 1800s.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: They then spent uh considerable money and and and lives suppressing slavery from Brazil to New Zealand.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: So for the second half of the British Empire's existence, it was committed to suppressing the enslavement of peoples.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: In this case, the peoples being enslaved were all non-white, whether they were African or whether they were um Indian or Malaysian or um uh Maori.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and this this campaign against slavery, which um someone has described as being the first um uh major state-sponsored human rights campaign in history, uh this was this was premised on the assumption that all people, all human beings, are equal under God, because the inspiration was primarily Christian.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: Equal under God regardless of s of of skin colour.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, moments of economic exploitation, but also um a long-term commitment to uh human liberation regardless of skin colour.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: And and okay, uh just sticking with economics, um um to set against uh the exploitation of human beings in the sugar plantations of the West Indies um from about eighteen forty six till nineteen twenty, for eighty years, the British Empire was committed to free trade.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: And uh this meant, among other things, that um um Indian businessmen could send their kids to Cambridge University, and their their sons um then uh went to observe industrial processes in, let's say, Manchester, and they took back with them to India um uh um technical knowledge, expertise, and they built textile mills and steel mills in India in the 1890s, so that I think by 1930 India was the third or fourth largest steel producer in the world, and the steel mills were I I don't know to what extent they were uh owned by native Indians, but some of them were.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: And and one of the most successful companies now employs 60,000 people in Britain today and owns most of what's left of the British steel industry, namely the Tata conglomeration.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: That began in British India in the 1890s.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: So um, yes, exact sometimes economic exploitation, other times economic opportunities that native peoples uh uh saw and seized and exploited to this day.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: You you draw out some really interesting examples of any book, one of them being uh Barbados, uh, and you do you actually run it in comparison with Jamaica as another Caribbean nation.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Effectively, the evidence you draw out shows that there was investment in education so that uh the peoples of Barbados could become a full part of Christian civilization, I think, were the words that were used.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: And over time this created a very um proud culture, insofar as they were they were glad to have links to Britain, and they also had a very effective government focused on local issues run by a local elite, and effectively what you said is where there are disparities between former colonial possessions and either the metropole or between each other, it's not necessarily because the Brits went in there all rapaciously.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually more to do with the culture of the island and how it was run and the governance, and there were differences in that, and that ended up leading to difference in outcomes.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you said something like Barbados has the average income for people in the world, it's about three times that of Jamaica, and um still does well today, and that's the long tail effect of culture.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And when you go and compare it to somewhere like Nigeria or Jamaica, it's uh a totally different picture.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: One one question I do have for you.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Do you do you think on the I'm jumping around a bit here, but Nigeria is a pretty interesting case?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's got the fastest growing population, one of the fastest growing populations on the planet, some seriously bad social issues, infrastructure um is crumbling, they've had to create a new capital city, there's all sorts going on there, and um there's lots of ethnic strife and religious conflict and all the rest of it.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that part of why somewhere like Barbados can effectively get its ducks in a row is because of size.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: So Switzerland's a very well-run country, for example, but there aren't that many people.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um do you think there's a crisis of bigness?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: So if you have a a bigger, big, bigger geography, bigger population, you just always go to struggle to actually govern it effectively.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, good.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, uh let me come to that question secondly, but I'll go back to your first point.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um just to make clear that um the argument in favor of reparations depends crucially on the claim that uh what um the the the the what what black Africans suffered 200, 300 years ago um has determined the fates of their descendants now.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: Therefore their descendants deserve reparations because they are being harmed through intergenerational trauma by what happened to their ancestors.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why the Brits owe the people of the Caribbean nations reparations.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Now, um you've you've touched on on one of my responses to that, I'll come to that in a second, but so one response is to say, well, in principle, yes, it could be that people are suffering from what happened to their ancestors 200 years ago, uh, but it needs demonstration and proof because um I reckon uh that that most of us uh can point to ancestors 200 years ago who were in a pretty bad place.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I, for example, um I can count among my ancestors in Scotland uh covenanters, these were people who uh were um Calvinist Christians and they bitterly resented attempts by the government to impose Anglican bishops and the Book of Common Prayer on them in the 1600s, and they refused, and they had to worship uh in the hills of southern Scotland because their worship was banned by the government.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: They fought battles in the late 1600s that uh my ancestors lost, and they were hunted down in the hills of southern Scotland by government troops, right?
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: So uh 300 years ago, my people were at the sharp end of a lot of persecution and suffering.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: Do I feel their pain?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: Am I suffering intergenerational trauma?
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um, all I can say is, as far as I can tell, no, I'm not.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because a lot's happened in two or three hundred years to change my fate.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: So that that brings us to the current fate of people in the Caribbean.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yes, you're quite right.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: One point I make is to say, well, if the descendants of slaves if their fates have been significantly determined by uh what happened to their ancestors, their enslaved ancestors two, three hundred years ago, then presumably they would all suffer more or less equally.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas, as you pointed out, I say, well, they don't, because uh uh Jamaicans are in a far worse condition than Barbadians.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Why is that?
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, from what I've read, there are there are two reasons.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: One is um the colonial legacy in Barbados was was happier than that in Jamaica for a variety of reasons.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um so to some extent it has to do with colonial legacy.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: But but note here, uh the colonial legacy was not uniformly bad.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: In Barbados it was quite good because upon independence, Barbadians, uh literacy among Barbadians was extremely high.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they'd also become accustomed to wage earning.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh so there were some features of the colonial legacy that were positive and advantaged Barbadians.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um and also um post-colonial government in Barbados was economically good, financially good.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um the post-colonial government of Jamaica was uh economically disastrous.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um again, uh the the fates of these peoples are determined partly by the colonial legacy.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: In some cases, the colonial legacy was relatively good, and then also by the way in which after independence uh uh uh black Caribbean peoples governed themselves, and some sometimes they're misgoverned.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then, yes, your point about bringing us to Nigeria um Barbados, in terms of literacy, life expectancy, and gross international income per capita, um, is way ahead of Nigeria.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: Barbadians are largely the descendants of slaves.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh some people in Nigeria are the descendants of slave raiders and slave traders and slave owners.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so that that's the argument against this notion, this assumption of interdegenerational trauma, which is asserted but never to my knowledge demonstrated.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so on the issue of the question of size, um yes, maybe maybe size doesn't make a difference.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um although Jamaica's pretty small too.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think the problem with Nigeria, and this is this is a criticism of colonial the colonial legacy in parts of Africa.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the criticism is that you know the Brits drew lines in the sand, and this threw together hundreds of different peoples with nothing in common.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think in Nigeria there are 200 languages.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: And and some sometimes colonial borders divided the same people.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: So you have people a minority stranded in one country, uh, which is dominated by another people, and this is um this is um this is this is blamed on on colonial authorities creating artificial states.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: To which my response is, well name me a state that isn't artificial.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, all states were were built.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um and all states, I mean, e even in Europe, um you know, where where where borders are drawn has been contentious until after the Second World War.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: And uh borders often leave people, you know, uh a given language group on either side of a border with with minorities.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it's not a uniquely colonial problem.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then also, um, I thought we in this country thought that multiculturalism was a good thing.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: No?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um because the implication of the critics of of the colonial legacy in Africa is that actually real states ought to be monoethnic, one people, one culture, one language.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um well that's certainly that certainly is easier because it it avoids the tensions that sometimes arise among many peoples.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but I've observed that whereas multiculturalism is supposed to be uh the ideal in in Western Europe, apparently in Africa, it's not the ideal.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: Now to be fair, I mean I think the problem in Africa is if you if you're gonna have a multicultural state, you need a strong state to help to manage the tensions between different peoples and cultures.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the problem in Nigeria is the state uh uh uh it has been relatively weak.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that probably has something to do with the colonial legacy, because colonial states in Africa were generally weak states, partly because the Brits were only in Africa for 70 years, in West Africa, East Africa, 1890, 1960, one lifetime.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so there wasn't time as there was in India to build a stronger state.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um so so yes, uh colonialism, colonial legacy bequeathed to Nigeria all sorts of problems, but then you know um Nigerians, their responsibility.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we all have to manage our differences, and we also have to restrain ourselves.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um and Nigeria's also suffered, I believe, a lot of corruption in government.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not all the Brits' fault here.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um but uh as to size, I'm not sure whether it's size so much as a strong state and and a coherent state.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think in the case of Barbados, the colonial legacy plus good post-colonial government colonial man uh uh post-colonial management uh has made a huge, a huge difference.
• 32:26
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• 32:31
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• 32:39
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• 32:43
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• 32:55
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• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening, thanks for sharing, thanks for showing your support.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the rest of the show, classmate.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, lingering one more question within your book, so I don't want to give it all away.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: I want people to go and buy it, but I suppose a common charge exactly a common charge against Britain is that its wealth was effectively, its modern-day wealth effectively came about because of the slave trade.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and furthermore, that the Industrial Revolution would never have happened without the profits made in the slave trade.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: Dee made some pretty interesting arguments about the wealth angle, which is, well, hang on, the Portuguese traded more slaves than everyone else, and they're the poorest country in the European Union right now.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that's not true.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: But sticking with the Industrial Revolution, because I think there's a really interesting point and discussion to be had about the conditions that might have created the Industrial Revolution, but what do you make of the suggestion that it could never have happened without slaves' money?
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: So so the the question of the contribution of the profits of slave trading and slavery to British industrial prosperity in the late 1700s, early 1800s, and therefore contemporary Brit Britain's wealth is a controversial one.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so first point to make is people who are lobbying for reparations they they they make the unqualified claim, and and this is in Church of England documents too, that slavery was was central to Britain's industrial prosperity.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that's dishonest.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's dishonest because it it it presents as a fact, as an agreed fact, what is highly controversial.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: So the fact is that uh if you are a Marxist, if you follow the thesis of Eric Williams, the Trinidadian historian and then uh Prime Minister of Trinidad, and his 1940 book, Capitalism and Slavery, then uh you will suppose that slavery made, quote, an enormous contribution to Britain's industrial prosperity.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: But, and this is what the reparations advocates will not tell you, um Williams has only one voice, and his is a minority voice.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now, most historians, most economic historians, reckon that the contribution of slavery to Britain's economy was somewhere between small and modest.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um the the person who is reckoned to be the most eminent living historian of transatlantic slavery, David Eltis.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, when I spoke to him in in March, he used the word small.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: In his latest book, when he discusses the contribution made to the wider economy of Liverpool, the city of Liverpool, which was Britain's major, main slave trading port.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: The contribution made by the slave trade to the wider economy of Liverpool, David Elsus describes using the word trivial.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: Trivial.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, um anyone who is who's who states boldly it was central is not being honest, because the first thing they have to say is, well, this is controversial.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: There is a view, a Marxist view, that says it was central, but there are other views, actually, held by most economic historians, and held by the most eminent living historian of transatlantic slavery that says something quite different.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: That would be an honest statement.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um and Eltus makes the point that the Portuguese and the Spanish were involved in slave trading and slavery much for a much longer period than the British.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: They transported many more slaves, and yet the Industrial Revolution did not take off in Spain or Portugal.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um so, in sum, John, yes, slave trading, slavery did make a contribution directly or indirectly to British prosperity, but it was small, and all sorts of other factors uh uh uh were involved in the takeoff of industrial, the industrial revolution in in Britain.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um a point that's been made uh by one historian, Lawrence Goldman, is that um a lot of the industrial inventiveness took place in in non-conformist Christian circles in the English Midlands.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh right?
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: English non-conformists were among the foremost campaigners for the abolition of slavery.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: They were not they they they weren't they weren't they weren't um because because they were non-conformists, they were somewhat marginalized from English society, they they weren't the merchant class, they weren't the aristocrats, they weren't the investors, they were the inventors.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: And they were amongst the leading uh campaigners to abolish slavery.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: So no, the the the the the case that says that that uh slavery was a central or essential or made an enormous contribution to Britain's industrial prosperity, I think uh is is a weak case.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: Riffing off your point about the nonconformist Christians in the Midlands, um I got a little bit obsessed with the work of the Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Cambridge, Alan McFarlane, and um he wrote a book called The Origins of English Individualism, another called The Culture of Capitalism.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: And effectively what he outlines within those books are is that through the legal system that was created to recognize individual property rights, but also because of how independently the English in particular had always lived, uh they were tinkerers by nature.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: They were always finding ways in which to uh make more from less.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: And whilst he doesn't end up citing these points, is you can find all sorts of interesting stories like the monks at the now um uh um ruined Revo Abbey in North Yorkshire, who I think might have been the first to come up with smelting furnaces, and that was way back in the 12th century.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: So there's all these things and ideas and technologies floating around the country long before anything called the Industrial Revolution came along.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, no, sure.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's anyway, an interesting aside.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh let's switch things to modern Britain because you are, well, you're an ethicist, and you specifically come from the Christian tradition, and much of your book is about how ultimately humans humanity's drive or motivation to seek justice will always be there.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well uh and your argument is we need to be realistic about what's possible, and that's what you're arguing against, which is so many of the things being suggested aren't possible and they obscure the truth.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I suppose the question I've got is in modern Britain, which has seen a sharp departure, I think, from its Christian inheritance, we've got uh parliamentarians, for example, who, upon entering parliaments, we are on different books of faith.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: We have a home secretary, for example, whose Islamic faith is, in her words, central to her life above everything else.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: And we also have changing demographics, both in the direction of Islam but also multi-faith uh environment.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I suppose if we're thinking about how Britain's conception of justice may change over time, um, do you do you think it's reasonable to expect that we may end up in a position where we're judging ourselves as a nation differently because of the coming to the fore of different uh religions in our positions of power?
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um do you think see our governing structures changing?
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose I asked this question now.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: You're embedded in the belly of uh power, at least uh to it to a certain degree in the upper chamber in the Lords.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um Yes, I mean just j first of all, um just let me explain my Christian view of of justice.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I I I I do think the the the instinct for justice and fairness is is deeply human.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I am also um impressed by the fact that um history is full of an ocean of injustice an ocean of injustice that uh no one living uh probably no no one in the past could possibly rectify.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean that the uh I mean to to put the point in its starkest form, the murdered dead are dead.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: God in heaven may be able to to raise them, we can't.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: So the justice is done.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: And what we are doing in trying to do justice is often scratching the surface.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: We are we are doing fragments of justice, gestures of justice.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I think that's that's realistic.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and it it it it's born out of a sense of human limitations, we're creatures not gods, um and we're sinners and and we uh uh our powers are limited and our moral sensibilities are blunted.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um and the danger is that if we forget that and think we're gods and we try and do god's justice, um like Stalin or like Paul Pot, we end up perpetrating the the grossest inhumanity.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um the grossest inhumanity.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, let's be clear, the the communist mission was to create an equal world.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um and do it by force.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that involved the starving to death of millions involved mass murder.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: You can become so possessed of an id an ideal of justice that you're willing to to commit gross injustice to get there.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: And and you won't get there.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a danger that being possessed of a desire for justice without a sense of human limitation and mercy, and of the fact that that injustice lies in here, not just out there, that you become a perpetrator of grave injustice.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I I I've I I've observing the way in which um uh my woke critics behave uh I that I've been l moved to to reflect in these terms because on the one hand I see no the the the the woke critic is ostensibly concerned about the poor and the marginalized of the world uh uh Africans, non-white people in white societies, uh trans folk, what have you.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um so in one sense I I I recognise the concern for justice.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I also notice that when someone like me comes along and says, okay, fine about justice, but you've actually diagnosed the problem wrongly.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: But by all means, let's combat um racial prejudice among us now.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um and let's let's address unfair disadvantages suffered by different ethnic groups, although in this country, by the way, the ethnic group at the bottom of the pile is white poor is poor whites.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: But that's another story.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: But by all means, let's address these problems.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um but we need to get the diagnosis right.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: And to to slap the the label racist on any conceivable cause of ethnic disadvantage is just boneheaded because there are all sorts of reasons why people might be disadvantaged ethnically.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I've noticed I've noticed the the woke critics aren't interested in an accurate diagnosis, they're interested in the possibility they might have got it wrong, and they react with with with a fierce, angry intolerance.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um because they know the truth.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're God and they're doing God's business.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I'm not gonna overplay victim here, but as a consequence is they they they mistreat and abuse people all the time.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um so um anyway, so they're just reflections there on um conception of justice and and uh why a Christian view is committed to justice, but um because of our uh sensitivity to human limitations, um we also know that what we can do here on earth is limited, that's why we pray.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I I I I often tell the story of I came out of a cinema in London ten years ago having watched a film called Katin.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_01: This is about the the massacre of 20,000 Polish intellectuals and and soldiers and leaders by the Soviets in 1941.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I came out of that film saying to myself, there has to be a hell.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: There has to be a hell for all of Stalin's assembly line murderers who died in their beds, which they did.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um acutely aware of the there's nothing on earth I can do to rectify that.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: There has to be a God to to to rectify the gross injustices that are way beyond human rectification.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, there is no justice.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you when you lose that theological constraint, the danger is you become um not a god but a devil.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, uh so just getting back on to um Britain's multicultural character.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean that the yeah, there's a danger here, uh because the the conceptions of justice we now have have, I think, been been they are in fact more Christian than people understand.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um and Tom Holland has been making this point in his recent writing, his book Dominion.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um that the the the um the gradual outlawing of slavery in England um was in no small part an a Christian impulse.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I believe it was um um an Anglo-Saxon Archbishop Wolfstone, Archbishop of Canterbury, um who first got the Anglo-Saxons to outlaw slavery.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe it was in the round 100, I think.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: So slavery was was outlawed uh in England in the medieval period, um because of the pressure of of Christian bishops.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then and then um the the the popular movement for the abolition of slavery in the 1700s emerged uh among uh Quakers and then evangelical Anglicans and Methodists.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um so there has been a the the the the the Christian faith has led to a uh a a um it has led no doubt by crooked paths uh to an equalization of society.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: And as I said earlier, I mean the campaign to abolish slavery was made on the premise that all people are equal under God regardless of skin colour, that skin colour skin colour is literally skin deep.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's all it is.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um and even uh again by by indirect roots, the the the equal the equality between the sexes is to some extent a Christian inspiration.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, uh so so we we've got where we've got in terms of of uh um liberal ideals of of uh racial and sexual equality.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um we think that violence needs to be very constrained.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_01: And all I'm saying is these ideas, these are not part of the cosmic furniture, they're not the natural default position.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: Lots of people do not agree.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: Do not agree.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um and this is, you know, we've inherited a certain inheritance, and it is considerably Christian.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now, um, moving to other faiths, Islam, Hinduism, whatever, we need to realize that um other faiths, just like Christianity, take different forms.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: And we we don't want to essentialize Islam, for example.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: There are very peaceful, non-violent forms of Islam like mystical Sufism.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um but there are forms of Islam that are not at all peaceful and whose view of justice is to our Christianized liberal conception brutal.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, look at Afghanistan or look at Iran.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, this it's possible if we import people with those views here and they don't adapt to our culture, that we might find in a generation or two that uh um uh um the electorate votes to restore criminal penalties for homosexual behavior, for example, or uh restore hanging.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, lots of lots of for a long time the popular will has wanted a return of hanging, not just not just Muslims.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_01: But um yes, I mean I mean the the we need to be careful of our inheritance and not assume that everyone who comes here is simply going to to um to uh adjust to our values because some clearly haven't.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: And the the dreadful killing in Manchester of of Jews yesterday is a sign of that.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_00: What one one final question on modern Britain before I let you go, you've been very generous with your time, particularly with these technical issues that I've been experiencing with the storm.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: We've touched on some of these demographic points, which are uh certainly causing friction here in in Britain in many respects.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_00: And Britain today faces many issues, and I would say, and I think you may agree, given some of the terminology used within your book, that the issues are downstream of a political class that are uh in Orwell's terms, so you cite Europeanized, they tend to be unpatriotic, and when they do parade their virtue, it's usually cloaked in a global good sense rather than a national good or a common uh good sense.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you show convincingly within your book that there's a degenerate Christianity here that's beneath the surface.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose in response to many of the issues created by that political and cultural elite, which has been running things for so long, is that we we have this wave of let's call it populism that's rising.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we're seeing national flags being raised everywhere.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we see a desire, I suppose, for a healthy nationalism and a patriotism, people to stop doing the country down, however, people want to describe that.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: But there's even talk of uh the deportation of those uh who've arrived illegally, and uh there's even conversations about revoking previously granted permissions to remain in the country to illegal immigrant to legal immigrants.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there is probably a case you could make for all of that, but I suppose you as a man who's an ethicist and with the Christian conception of justice, and that has been England's history for all of its since its foundation, and and Britain's history for most of its time, that we would recognise it.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose myself, even as a Christian, I would quite like to know what's possible under Christian social ethics when it comes to topics of nationalism, when it comes to the idea of defending borders, because I think critics would say these notions are unchristian and they're unwelcoming.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say to that?
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, there was a letter in the Times by some Anglican clergyman uh to the effect that uh um all this patriotic stuff is nationalist and militarist, um, which is a predictable uh and tedious response.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um So I I I I I'm I'm a British patriot.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: I believe in Britain, and I have reasons for believing in Britain.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, uh I'm a Christian, Britain is not God, Britain is not divine.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Britain came into being uh in 1707 and it could go out of being in the way the Czechoslovakia did.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_01: I get that.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um but Britain uh um gives its people and the world good things, and therefore I'm committed to Britain, um, and I'm a patriot.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's very important, therefore, that we're careful to preserve what we've we've we've received from the past, and uh that means we we need to be careful about who we admit into the country and how many we admit of of them and how well they're integrated.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_01: So uh uh um let me a bit clear.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I've no objection to immigrants.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_01: My wife is one, she's American.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, she she's still on indefinite leave to remain.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I I I trust that uh uh Nigel Farage, if he gets into government, will be a bit more discriminate than returning my wife to the US.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I mean, my wife is intent on on applying for British citizenship for the second time.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um so the issue is not immigration, the issue is not immigrants.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_01: The issue has always been, and this is what the left too often appears not to understand.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_01: The issue is the rate of immigration, the rate of immigration and the impact on local communities.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm, you know, I'm middle class, I live in leafy, Oxford.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we have a we are we have an Albanian person who comes to help us help clean up our flat, and she's a friend.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh I I meet um immigrants in coffee shops.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, for for me, immigration is is fine.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but for people at the lower end of our society, uh uh white people, uh immigrants can be a threat and a disturbance because of their number.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh um now, what to do about that?
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I myself have no problem in principle with deporting illegal migrants.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_01: They're here illegally.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but uh and I've I've clashed with the bishops of my own church, the Anglican Church, over this, over the the Rwanda scheme, whom they which they deemed to be immoral, and I said, well, not really.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh my view is that, you know, uh in dealing with illegal migrants, we of course um are responsible for dealing with them humanely.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um that doesn't mean we have to admit them to the country.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean we have to process them here.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: We can send them to somewhere sufficiently safe, like Rwanda, where they can be processed, and if they are genuine asylum seekers, then they get to live in Rwanda.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_01: Now, uh Rwanda is not is not Switzerland, is not Britain, uh, but it's safer than where they come from.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_01: And my view is um, you know, we're responsible for making people sufficiently safe.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: We're not responsible for accepting people into one of the most prosperous countries on earth.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so my my view is is deportation um of illegal migrants to Rwanda for processing, where genuine asylum seekers would be given asylum, others would be returned, was was severe but fair.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um mass deportations, but it depends what what's meant by that.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh certainly uprooting people who have been here for a long time and built families, uh uh that seems draconian uh to me.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but if they're here illegally, um on principle they should they should go back whence they came.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh although I guess there's a case, if someone's been here for decades, one might be merciful and say, okay, you are effectively integrated, uh, and so you may stay.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_01: But um yeah, I I I I think the the control of the borders is important.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_01: And um, as I've said before, um compassion is a virtue, but compassion needs to look in more than one direction, folks.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, uh uh we should be compassionate toward migrants who spend a lot of money uh trying to get here by all means, and and presumably they wouldn't have spent the money in taking the risks if they hadn't been strongly impelled.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_01: But folks are coming not from Eritrea, they're coming from France, which is a pretty safe country.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: And if they hadn't had a lot of money, they wouldn't have been able to get here in the first place.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_01: So they're not that badly off.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_01: And many of them are economic migrants.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um meanwhile, we also need to turn our compassion upon uh upon uh people already in this country, citizens, uh, who feel threatened in terms of access to housing, threatened in terms of access to other services, threatened in terms of access to jobs, uh uh dismayed that hotels where they where they have memories of can of having marriages and other family ceremonies is now occupied by people from all other parts of the world who don't speak the language and look foreign and they feel displaced.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_01: We need to have compassion for those people too.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I'm all for compassion, but it needs to be equally distributed.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_01: And and by the way, compassion is not the only virtue.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_01: We need prudence as well, we need justice as well.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_01: And uh justice sometimes means being doing things to people that will distress them, but it's just um and and so compassion is not the only virtue.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as ever, thanks for a balanced answer.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_00: And before I let you go, we we've plugged the book already, we've we've raised it up on the screen, but I will include a link to reparations in the show notes.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_00: Nigel, you've been on a rich vein of form, and you've been popping up all over the place.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_00: I suspect people are becoming more and more attuned to your message, and I certainly know you get lots of compliments about just how balanced you seem to be with regards to the exploration of these tricky moral questions which all too easily get boiled down into slogans and 140 characters and all the rest of it.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_00: But where can people find you so they can get a whole bunch more of that content, as we call it, in this day and age?
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, John, thanks for asking that.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I I do actually run a substack now uh under the title The Bigger Picture.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I put stuff out there every week, I try to uh on a variety of topics.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_01: There are about uh 2,700 uh subscribers um so far.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_01: We've been doing this, I think, since February, and we're gradually increasing.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I'd like it a lot more if more than 110 people paid for it.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_01: But if you can't afford to pay for it, you're welcome to subscribe.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's where you'll get most of me, although I do publish widely in the press.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but uh yeah, that's that's the that's the best place to get me.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_01: And as you know, if you if you hunt the the uh the web, you'll find me on on a variety of uh podcasts.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_00: And can we expect another book project in the offing?
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_00: Anything else come to mind that you want to tackle next or too soon?
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, since you mention it, John, uh I have another book coming out in February.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um this is called The New Dark Age.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_01: And its subtitle is Why Liberals, meaning those of us who believe in free speech and the robust exchange of ideas and reasons why liberals must win the culture wars.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that'll come out in February, thanks to Polity Press.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then I'm about to sign a contract to co-write a book on telling a better story about Britain.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they're two books that are absolutely timely.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_01: Water the Space.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I look forward to future conversations on both those things and indeed reading them.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Lord Nigel Bigger, it has been my absolute pleasure.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_00: I wish you all the best with the the the book launch from now.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_00: I know it's already out, and I'm sure it should gain wide readership.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this is a topic that keeps on popping up in the dark corners of the internet, which then quickly spreads out everywhere else.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_00: So all power to you and keep fighting the good fight.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, thanks for this uh conversation, John.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's always uh a pleasure to talk.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Nigel.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_01: Take care.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_00: To keep up to date with all that I am doing, please subscribe to the Thinking Class YouTube channel at Thinking Class and follow me on X at Thinking Classes.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_00: Thinking Class seeks to understand the civilizational issues we face and why what our leaders do in response matters.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_00: Here I seek to explore the ideas, values, and culture that made our civilization, those that are unmaking it, and how leaders at our public and private institutions should respond.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_00: Engage with me on YouTube or X or write to me at thinkingclasspod at gmail.com to tell me who you want me to speak to and what topics are important to you.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_00: I look forward to seeing you there and for joining me on this journey.