Sentamu calls for Aplogy.....

Senior cleric calls for formal slavery apology
LONDON (Reuters)

The second most senior cleric in the Church of England called on the government to make a formal apology for the slave trade as celebrations take place to mark the anniversary of its abolition in the British Empire.


Earlier this month Prime Minister Tony Blair said he was "sorry" for Britain's role in the trade and expressed "deep sorrow" for slavery which was abolished by parliament exactly 200 years ago on March 25, 1807.

However Archbishop of York John Sentamu said Blair needed to go further.
"A nation of this quality should have the sense of saying we are very sorry and we have to put the record straight," he told the BBC.
"This community was involved in a very terrible trade, Africans were involved in a very terrible trade, the Church was involved in a very terrible trade ... it's important that we all own up to what was collectively done."

Blair will send a recorded message of regret for Britain's role to celebrations on Sunday in Ghana -- a source of many of the slaves -- marking the bicentenary of the abolition.
Britain's first black female cabinet minister Baroness Amos, herself a descendent of slaves who was born in Guyana, will be among those attending the event.

Sentamu joined about 3,600 others in marches through central London on Saturday as part of a series of events in Britain to mark the anniversary of the abolition of the brutal trade.
"The easiest thing in the world is to look back 200 years and say we wouldn't have made those mistakes," the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said.
A campaign by politician and philanthropist William Wilberforce persuaded first the church and then the public and finally parliament that the lucrative trade was abhorrent and should be banned.

Between 10 million and 28 million Africans were shipped in appalling conditions to the Americas and sold into slavery between 1450 and the early 19th century.
When Britain abolished the trade it was the first major slave-trafficking nation to do so.
Although the practice was outlawed, the lucrative trade continued for many years with ship captains, facing heavy fines, not hesitating to dump their human cargoes overboard if they were caught.

Perhaps the Bishop could spend some time in Uganda sorting out his country's problems including the use of children in the free armies roaming the countryside?