The PM is right to kick this matter firmly into that useful vegetation, the long grass. Quite apart from the question of whether we are liable for the sins of our fathers there is the palpable injustice of focusing exclusively on the trade in slaves on the Atlantic passage. There was a huge traffic in African slaves in East Africa, focused on Zanzibar, which continued long after abolition of the trade by Britain, except that instead of West Indian plantation owners benefiting, it was slave owners in Arab countries and the Ottoman Empire, where there has been no soul searching on the subject whatever, let alone discussion of reparations. That trade was in great part brought to an end by the remarkable Scotsman, Sir John Kirk. The East African trade has gone largely unremarked by the reparations industry – and in the case of Caribbean states, that’s fair enough. And then there is the question of the slave traders in both east and west African slaves, many of whom were Muslim Arabs. What reparation, what repentance there?