We do not know on what day exactly the slave trade started, nor do we know on what day the last slave was freed, but the 25^th of March 1807 is what history gives to us as a day to remember the beginning of the end of the slave trade. On that day, the culmination of a long battle against slavers and other traders who benefited from the triangular Trans-Atlantic trade, William Wilberforce, James Smith and the rest of their band of Quaker and Evangelical brothers won a crucial victory for humanity and the conscience of man. An Act came into force in the British Parliament that made slave trading and trafficking a criminal offence.

In the ensuing years, the British Empire, wary of its colonial outposts being disadvantaged by the cost of paying for labour couched its economic vigilance in the raiment of morality. The Royal Navy took the seas by storm, raiding ships from other slaving nations and setting the slaves free. The result of this naval proselytism was that Sweden, the USA and the Dutch soon followed the British example and put an end to their trade in slaves.

A great deal of revisionism and controversy surrounds the matter of the slave trade and its abolition down to this day. The debate is waged on four main threads. The first is the contention by some scholars that Africans bear just as much blame as the Europeans for the slave trade. Such scholars point out that few slaves were captured directly by the slavers and that the majority were sold on to them by prominent African states like the Ashanti kingdom. These scholars also maintain that slavery was a social construct already existent in Africa and that European slavers merely took the slaves into new markets. The historical record proves that whereas this may be correct strictly speaking, traditionally African slaves were indentured labourers whose lives and station in society was much higher than was permitted in the New World. The phenomenon of European slaving and the horrors of the slave experience in the new world are unprecedented in documented human history.

The second contentious issue relates to the economic gains of slavery. The slave trade was the engine for the growth of the United States of America accounting for up to 50% of the slave owning South's national wealth at the time of the American Civil War. This colossal sum is said to be equal to the entire GDP of Spain or Italy a whole century later and built entirely on slave labour. This wealth gave the world 60% of all its cotton and supplied the old world with the products that were the basis of international trade like rum, coffee, sugar and tobacco. Other scholars counter that all in all, at its peak the Trans-Atlantic trade accounted for a mere 5% of British wealth and deny that it provided the funds and the basis for the Industrial revolution, that great corner in European history that resulted in Europe's economic advantage over the rest of the world.

While it is true that there were African states Dahomey, Kongo and Ashanti, that profited handsomely from this trade, history indicates that even the wealth that slave-raider chiefs accrued from the trade quickly reverted to the slavers as it was used to buy alcohol and firearms both of which only served to further fuel the trade. In the end the economic benefits of slavery flowed only one way, out of Africa.

The third issue is one of moral culpability. Whereas some states and organisations were opposed to the practice of slavery, in the main Western society as a whole embraced and justified slavery and the gains derived from it. This justification came not just from the slavers who stood to gain materially from the practice, but also from the very soul of the Western world of that time, its religious organisations. In all at least 20 million Africans are said to have perished in the trade. Bound and marched to the coasts, held in hellish forts and then shipped across in the most inhumane of conditions, the slaves represent perhaps the darkest days of the history of mankind, one whose legacy the modern world has inherited in both the poverty of Africa, and the deprived station of its descendants abroad.

Many eminent persons of the time, among them David Livingstone chronicled the extreme effect that the endless wars and drastic depopulation had on African society. The fact that the slavers chose the strongest and the most intelligent of society rendered whole swathes of Africa retarded for years on end, its effects trickling down even to this day. While the rest of the world's population grew Africa's population remained stagnant between 1500 and 1900. Further it has been shown that the relatively easy gains to be made from slave trading put many African states back from the pursuit of civilisation as they concentrated their effort in waging war to accumulate slaves and worst of all as chiefs turned on their own people.

Finally, there is the idea taught widely across the world that slavery as a global institution was brought to an end by Western moralism. While it is true that the abolitionists played an important part, the truth is that black slaves were aggressively fighting slavery every inch of the way; at capture, as they were pressed to the coast, in forts like El Mina and Goree, as they were taken up the gangplanks, on the ships, at auctions and in the plantations and homes of their masters. Every day of their existence, this most fundamental human desire for liberty animated their spirits finding its most glorious expression in the Haitian revolution. From that day henceforth the whole cost of slavery, and the terror that T'Oussaint and his legions struck in the Western world sounded the death knell for slavery. More than anything, the descendants of slaves must be taught that their ancestors did not serve with pleasure.

Whilst many organisations and some states have sought in various ways to come to terms with the evil and cruelty of the slave trade, others have shrugged it off either as being too long ago to have a bearing on our lives today, or have chosen to show the true remorse that official apologies would provide. The Virginian State Legislature , the Church of England synod and the Cities of Liverpool and London which all benefited from their connection to slavery have gone on to issue full apologies for their association with and benefiting from slavery.

Diaspora African societies, as has been the case with aggrieved peoples of the past century, like Europe's Jewish population for example, have sought to gain not just expressions of regret but actual apologies and reparations that they believe would set right the egregious wrongs of centuries ago. These historical wrongs are not just ancient, especially as their ramifications trickle down to our present times in the power of racism and the massive gap in the social welfare of the descendants of slaves.

It is shameful then that in the very chambers where Wilberforce and his impassioned crusaders waged a war for morality Tony Blair and his opposite number in David Cameron stoutly refuse to give apologies and make amends with the legacy of the British Empire's past. The British Prime Minister has seen fit to apologise for the British Empire's sanctioning of the monstrous conduct that led to the Irish Potato Famine, he is also constantly moralising about the power of Western values and the importance of a culture that embraces people extracted from all the corners of the world. The German nation, the French nation among several others have been outspoken in their apologies for their involvement in the Holocaust. The Japanese have issued extensive apologies for their crimes against the Chinese people and across South Asia during World War II.

These apologies serve to heal the wounds that are caused when one group of people so cruelly acts against another, and benefits from such action. In the case of the Atlantic slave trade and especially considering the continued presence of descendants of slaves in the lands of their enslavement, this apology will serve to heal the legacy of racism and disenfranchisement handed down over the years.

It is strange and offensive then that the British Government should hold the descendants of the slave victims of this the greatest crime against humanity in such contempt as not to issue a symbolic apology for the crimes committed against them. The arguments they advance against such an apology are truly specious and offensive. Firstly they claim that these events were committed such a long time ago that apologies are now irrelevant. The Catholic Church's apology for its crimes against Galileo certainly dismisses this idea. The second is the silly notion that an apology would be an act of national self-hatred. The Germans, the Japanese and the French could have taken this childish route, but were more assured of their place in history. Neither does this explain why Tony Blair apologised to the Irish, or how religious organisations like the Vatican and the Church of England have managed to survive their apologies.

In the end, the people of the United Kingdom and their government along with them must face their historical error against the slaves and their descendants. It is only the right thing to do.