Quarcoo - fair point. I read in one of today's papers that several African leaders are expressing their anger over slavery. Ok, so a good deal of the 'West's' wealth WAS built on slavery, but it seems to be overlooked how Africans themselves helped in the trade by kidnapping their neighbours and more unfortuante fellow Africans (well, you didn't think the Portuguese and Spanish were actually going to go into the jungle themselves, running around with all that armour on?). African royals were happy to trade their fellow humans for muskets, beads, etc., It doesn't excuse the avaricious Europeans, but I think it shows almost any group of victims will also have its dark side. People from my own country (Ireland) were shipped as slaves to Jamaica etc., in the 1650s by Cromwell and Lord Broughill. They were preferred in many instances as their christianity prevented them from comitting suicide (for example). Now you'd think that a country with so many victims would be more sensitive to those less fortunate, but brutality brutalises us all and the truth is that many Irish scum went off to the southern USA to be plantation foremen and gangsters as often as make an honest contribution to their adopted society.

I hope the current clarion call to remember historic slavery will remind people that it hasn't disappeared, but is alive and well: sweatshops, child labour, sex trafficking....

The 'YESMEN' have done an excellent account of how modern-day slavery by new names and methods can flourish, all under the guise of the free market and globalisation (see