The history of British slave ownership has been buried: now its scale can be revealed

[Joe Chi Minh]

7. Corsair pirates used to raid British and continental coastal villages.

an interesting quote from the article linked below it:

"Thousands of Dutch, Germans and British 'languished for years in the chains of Barbary,' without the aid of organised clergy or state funds for their release. England set aside its 'Algerian Duty' from customs income to finance redemptions, but much of this was diverted to other uses. Large-scale ransomings - like the one headed by Edmund Casson that freed 244 men, women, and children in 1646 - were rare, with the result that Protestant Britons were often more demoralised and likely to die in captivity than European Catholics. As one ex-slave noted:

'All of the nations made some shift to live, save only the English, who it seems are not so shiftful as others, and... have no great kindness one for another. The winter I was in [captivity], I observ'd there died above twenty of them out of pure want.'"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/white_slaves_01.shtml

The more things change, the more they stay the same. If our British Tories could change the wage-slaves they've turned much of the population into, into slaves, period, they surely would. This is what they must be working towards, simply because they don't know how to stop, and what Pope Francis is inveighing against.

One of my ancestors owned a slave ship, a man called Blathwayte, who was a co-worker and colleague of Pepys at the Admiralty's offices, and I imagine would have had slaves, but there's nothing I can do about that. A vast number of African Americans are descended from William the Conqueror, so their ancestors pretty much enslaved most of the English poor under their rule. Not that any of this could possibly justify slavery. Then or now.