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What has the British Empire ever done for us?
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Dear ,
Please put August 1 in your diary for a very important breakfast. This is the date we have chosen to honour 190 years since the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 in the British parliament which came into force the following year on August 1.
This is Emancipation Day, and it signals the end of slavery as a defensible notion anywhere on the globe. As a result it also dates the beginning of the modern era of universal human rights.
Some details still need to be finalised so I don't have a final price yet, but please put 7:00 for 7:30 am that morning in your diary. Venue will probably be Tattersall's.
We have been fortunate to attract an international speaker on the subject - Emeritus Professor Nigel Biggar, whose 2023 book Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning lays out the good and the bad about the British Empire and colonialism in general. Professor Biggar will be beamed in from his home in Oxford.
Why are we celebrating this day?
For a classical liberal think tank nothing could be more important than the equal dignity of all humans. The international recognition and acceptance of this right is not even 200 years old, and people from our philosophical and political tradition were responsible for promulgating it, and patrolling the globe and enforcing it.
How could we not celebrate it?
We live in a time of cancellation. It needs to be fought, and how better to do that than celebrate the good that comes from the past.
This is particularly important during the debate on The Voice where convenient stereotypes of the past are being used to try to escape responsibility for failure in the present.
We should also celebrate that under the influence of the abolitionists it was determined that right from the beginning there should be no slavery in Australia, making us unique amongst the Anglophone colonies.
This is planned to be an annual event, and to join the McIlwraith Lecture as a way of bringing history and philosophy to life as an inspiration to those of us continuing those traditions today.
Please mark your diary, and I look forward to seeing you there.
Regards, GRAHAM YOUNG EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
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