Hain hits out over Ulster's slave past

By Sean O'Driscoll
Thursday, 15 February 2007

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Northern Ireland traders made huge profits from slavery before Ireland eventually closed its ports to "one of the most shameful enterprises in the history of humankind", Secretary of State Peter Hain has told an audience in New York. Mr Hain was speaking at a reception at New York's British consulate to honour the late African-American singer and human rights activist, Paul Robeson, who had a long association with Mr Hain's native Wales.

Mr Hain said that he was proud to learn that Ireland closed its ports to the slave trade and noted that when Britain banned the trade, it gave compensation for the lost earnings of slavers without compensating the slaves.

He said that because Britain and Ireland profited from the slave trade, they needed to speak out against modern day bonded labour and human trafficking.

The UN body, the International Labour Organisation, estimates that 27m people are still held as slaves, a figure which would rise to 100m if human trafficking was included, he added.

Mr Hain said he was proud to commemorate the life of Paul Robeson, who had campaigned for striking Welsh miners in the 30s and who was banned by the US government from travelling to Wales in 1957 because of his communist sympathies.

The Secretary of State - a former anti-apartheid activist - drew laughter from the audience when he mistakenly said that Nelson Mandela had been jailed for 10,000 days in Northern Ireland.

He corrected his mistake, before adding: "I got that wrong, didn't I? I should, of course, have said South Africa."

Mr Robeson's son, Paul Robeson Jnr, told the reception that he did not want compensation from countries once involved in the slave trade.

"You can not pay us for that," he said.

Instead of apologies, it would be far better if countries signed the UN Declaration of Human Rights, he said.