Giving Something Back

Researchers have discovered that rich people who profited by the transatlantic slave trade also contributed to the hardships inflicted on poor people in Britain. As believers in the virtues of working hard and playing by the rules, slave traders invested time and money in the workhouse system, whose inmates earned moral redemption by producing textiles and caulking for slave ships and their merchandise. One researcher noted that profitable incarceration in the workhouse system might be linked to profitable incarceration in modern prisons and wog warehousing emporia, although more work will be required to certify the legitimacy of the comparison. Doubtless with his funding in mind, the same researcher proclaimed that "we can't tell the story of British welfare (sic) without acknowledging its deep entanglement with empire and slavery" while wagging a circumspect finger at those who would suggest that some varied and slightly divergent schemes of forced labour for the profit of a wealthy few might have anything significant in common.