Can a terrible historical in-justice ever be recompensed? The answer should be yes. But any attempt to redress past wrongs has to pass certain commonsense tests to do with the length of time that has passed since the outrage and the ease with which victims and victimisers can be identified. Those criteria can never be objective: atonement is not statistically measurable. But the struggle being taken up on behalf of the victims of slavery surely fails any such test. Lawyers claiming to represent some 30m descendants of American slaves have launched a series of lawsuits against companies that profited from slavery before it was abolished in 1863. The legal side of their case is complicated, not to say tendentious (see page 47). But the plaintiffs seem to hope that political pressure will make up the deficit. There is talk of consumer boycotts; the Rev Jesse Jackson, obviously, is on board. The plan is to force companies such as Aetna (which 150 years ago insured the lives of slaves for their owners) together with the federal government (which, after all, sanctioned the practice) to set up a compensation fund for the victims and their lawyers. Given the companies' keenness to avoid embarrassment, the guilt most Americans feel about slavery and the relative poverty of many black Americans, the chances are that the plaintiffs will get something.
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