BBC News – William Gladstone’s family to apologise for slavery links https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-66558156
I don’t get it, I really don’t understand the need for apologies.
What good does it do ?
Apologising will not undo the inhumanity, the indignities, and the stress endured in the past. The same is also true of the tearing down of statues.
Slavery, by any measure, is wrong. It was wrong then, and it is wrong now. However, it was a different time then. People were educated differently, living by different standards.
Apologies by those that were not involved, made to those who were also not involved.
All we can hope to do is learn from our past. Make sure that such things never happen again.
Just as a footnote, you don’t hear much of an outcry about the Barbary Pirates that used to raid many countries, including the British Isles and as far north as Iceland. Many folks were taken along the Cornish, Devonish and Dorset coastlines, taking people to be sold in the Barbary slave markets. Are their ancestors going to apologise ?
WrAnTz 
Oh yeah I so agree what is the point, when the Australian government said sorry to the stolen generation of aboriginal children , what did it change nothing did all our indigenous people feel better I doubt it. Did the British government apologise to the descendants of the convicts, NO, do we expect it NO would it change anything NO so why bother, they are just empty words.
I couldn’t agree more Jo. Just today I read that they are talking about our government making financial reparations along with the apologies. In my view any monies paid alongside an apology just devalues any meaning that apology carries.