Re apologising for slavery we need to remember that it was not often seen as an absolute evil by any past culture, including the Western, and not by the Bible. It only began to be widely seen as such in the late early mod period by some Catholics, Protestants and Deists.

In terms of the abolition of slavery Christian civilisation was decisive. Effectively it was gone from Europe by the end of the Middle Ages thanks to a new sense that peasants and artisans constitute ever since Adam a sacral caste or guild, as French historians have newly shown.

Regrettably this did not issue in a formal condemnation of slavery which Biblical texts made hard. The copying of Arabic and African slave practices and trading then led to its horrendous Western revival. But later it was again the Christian or post Xn West that abolished it.

In view of all this the obsession with trying to undo ancestral guilt over slavery seems misplaced. Instead of the unChristian ‘repentance without forgiveness’ woke culture, let’s have a new Christian or post Xn focus on ending current slavery and abuse of working people.