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When we have finished "censuring" the actions of our ancestors ( well, a very few of them, actually) over something that happened many years ago ...in a totally different time... a time with different moral values and mores , perhaps we might remind ourselves that slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1833 and that an anti-slavery movement had been established in this country as far back as 1772. Indeed, the Governor General of Upper Canada ( Simcoe) abolished slavery there in 1783....fifty years before the "Mother" country...and as a nation we were amongst the first so to do! Living in an age of burgeoining capitalism slaves were considered as a "business asset" and compensation paid to their owners, by the UK Government, when freed in the Colonies..... that the money they received was then re-invested in other business ventures is hardly surprising considering they were capitalist entrepreneurs....so why are they now being held to account centuries after the event??? Sheffield's trades produced such items as.machetes and sugar cane knives all of which were exported to the Colonies for use by slaves. Should we feel guilty? Should the whole of Lancashire now lie prostrate on the ground for its part in the cotton trade....a crop intensively cultivated by slaves ( some white convicts as well before the American rebellion) or should we remember the near slave-like conditions under which mill workers and their children eaked out a living .??

I went for a picture stroll around the quays five years ago.

Whether right or wrong we can’t change history, what’s past is past, people seem to forget about the African and Arab slave traders who took part in the terrible trade.