Sir: I normally enjoy Sir Peregrine Worsthorne's articles, but he
leaves me with a grey area and perhaps he would kindly comment. Was his beautiful Geor- gian manor house in fact built from the blood and sweat of the forebears of Mr Darcus Howe? Perhaps it was the profits from white children or orphans who worked in darkness in the coal or tin mines, or who died of suffocation while cleaning chimneys, or loot from the Battle of Cullo- den. My folk came from Inverness, but were I a guest in the Worsthome manor it would be quite rude of me to suggest that my host's ancestors chopped up a Paterson or two.
Is Sir Peregrine joining the now popular frenzy of cringing apologies? The slave traders bought their slaves on the African shoreline from powerful African groups who were selling their fellow-Africans, sometimes their own tribespeople. Now, what are the Africans to do about their own share of 'the terrible guilt of slavery'? Do they apologise to each other?
You British seem to forget that your very own, like William Wilberforce and Charles Dickens, were in the forefront of causes such as the fight against slavery and child labour, and in the development of the tech- nology which has helped to make a better world. Keep your heads up. But I still want Perry's apology for Culloden.
W.G. Paterson 58A Rossal Road, Greendale, Harare
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