It’s time Europeans demanded reparations for slavery: Over a million people from across the continent were taken by Moorish pirates — when will their descendents receive justice?

As this debate has reignited, fed by activists and unopposed by enfeebled institutions, so others have — quite reasonably — begun to point out that slaving was not by any means only a British or American practice. In the 18th century – the period in which “Rule, Britannia!” was written — Barbary pirates from North Africa made frequent raids on British territory and British ships. Until the Royal Navy put the pirates out of business, historians have estimated that between one and one and a half million Europeans were seized by Moors and taken or sold into slavery.

Why is there no cause for reparations from the states that engaged in these practices? Why has there been no call for reparations from the descendants and families of those who were taken? And why has there been no sustained campaign to denigrate the history and cultural practises of the people now living in the countries of North Africa? If there is going to be an ongoing attack on societies which led the way in abolishing the slave trade ought there not to be an attack — surely of far greater ferocity — against those countries who gave up slave-trading most unwillingly?