All people equal?

On the 200th anniversary of laws abolishing the British slave trade the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, has called on Britain to make a formal apology for the slave trade. In those days the Church largely supported slavery and chuch bells rang out in celebration after an earlier Parliamentary attempt to abolish the trade had been unsuccessful.

A driving force behind abolition was William Wilberforce, a Christian man who believed all people were born equal. Yet when the Archbishop of York spoke last Wednesday in the House of Lords debate it was to support the right to discriminate. At the start of a speech filled with sophistry, skewed logic and special pleading the Archbishop invoked Wilberforce's name to support his position.

It was left to the next speaker, Baroness Howarth of Breckland, to more appropriately associate William Wilberforce's name with equality.