It might have been legal - in that it was not illegal because Parliament had not thought to make it so but neither was it compulsory - but the traders must, by the fundamental definition, have been racist in the first place to think that the Africans could be treated like that.
I see there are calls for statues of Sir Francis Drake and his contemporaries to also be removed - better remove all reference to Queen Elizabeth I then.
I'm amazed at how crass, stupid and utterly pointless the UK government is.
"MPs and peers held a minute's silence in memory of George Floyd, the black man whose death in US police custody has sparked a global wave of protests." https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-52980596
That'll fix it.
George Floyd is a symbol of racism, of oppression, of structural inequality.
It's good if the government hold this minutes silence, for all the victims of police brutality, if they go on to do more.
But this alone is a crass, stupid and utterly pointless action.
Which section of society wants to celebrate slavers?
Slavery has been illegal since the 1800s, why it has taken nearly 200 years, and criminal damage, for slavers statues to be taken down is mind boggling.
There is no evidence that the Swiss banks destroyed their records.
The problem was that those claiming ownership of the accounts hadn't any proof to support their claim.