Breaking The Chains

Blair says "Sorry" - LONDON (Reuters)

Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Wednesday he was "sorry" for his country's role in the slave trade.

Blair has previously expressed "deep sorrow" for slavery, abolished within the British empire 200 years ago, but has been criticised by black rights organisations for not going further.

"Well actually I have said it: We are sorry. And I say it again now," Blair told a news conference, when asked why he had previously stopped short of saying "sorry".

"For us, the most important thing though is obviously to remember what happened in the past and to condemn it and say why it was so entirely unacceptable," he said during a news conference with Ghana's President John Kufuor.

Between 10 million and 28 million Africans were shipped in appalling conditions to the Americas and sold into slavery between 1450 and the early 19th century.
When Britain abolished the trade in 1807 it was the first major slave-trafficking nation to do so.

Blair has previously acknowledged Britain's rise to global pre-eminence was partially dependent on colonial slave labour and cabinet minister Peter Hain has said "sorry" for the role played by Northern Ireland and Wales in the trade.
Earlier on Wednesday, Kufuor said people should be careful when spreading accusations about slavery as some African countries, including Ghana, were not free from blame.

"If you study the slave trade, you will find that it was incidental to the history of those times," he told the Chatham House think-tank in London.
"Yes, among the trading partners perhaps some were worse than others. But I assure you if you come to Africa, if you come to Ghana, you will see that there were some very local participants in the trade," he said.

Kufuor said Britain, Spain, Portugal and other nations that came to Africa to promote the slave trade were guilty, but they were not alone.
"Some local indigenous groups were also guilty. So we have to be careful," Kufuor said.

European nations shipped slaves to the Americas from West African countries such as Ghana. However, some local tribal chiefs in Ghana were responsible for selling fellow Africans to the European slavers.
Blair said the focus now should be on stamping out modern-day slavery.

"We shouldn't forget that although that act of parliament was passed 200 years ago, there are still modern examples of slavery and people trafficking that we need to act against.

By LONDON (Reuters).

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