# The history of civil rights for minorities outside the US? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 18, 2018, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-history-of-civil-rights-for-minorities-outside-the-us/826322 "2018-12-18T14:52:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![yendis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ed8c4c/32.png) [@yendis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yendis)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 9:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-history-of-civil-rights-for-minorities-outside-the-us/826322/21 "2018-12-19T09:27:17Z")
> [@am77494](#): > > Pardon me Sir, are you asserting that the practice of indentured labor was not morally reprehensible like slavery ? Kindly elucidate. > > The distinction you pointed to is a merely a distinction without a difference. There were other distinctions. Indentured labourers were paid, and the terms of their labour were, in theory, laid out from the start. With limits on working hours, types of work to be done etc. They were both morally reprehensible but chattel slavery was worse in every possible way. ---
**Author:** ![am77494](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d2c977/32.png) [@am77494](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/am77494)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-history-of-civil-rights-for-minorities-outside-the-us/826322/22 "2018-12-19T11:27:39Z")
> [@yendis](#): > > There were other distinctions. Indentured labourers were paid, and the terms of their labour were, in theory, laid out from the start. With limits on working hours, types of work to be done etc. > > They were both morally reprehensible but chattel slavery was worse in every possible way. Agreed on your points. My post was in response to “\* …1772 (Somerset v Stewart) which declared that slavery was incompatible with English Common Law.\*”. Here’s the full post : > [@SanVito](#): > > Big Subject! > > For the UK. > > Slavery had never been a major practice in the island that is the present UK, at least not since the Dark Ages (we have our own peasants for toiling the soil), and as such, there wasn’t any specific laws governing it, until a court case in 1772 (Somerset v Stewart) which declared that slavery was incompatible with English Common Law. > > The trading of slaves in the wider British Empire was abolished in 1807, and slavery entirely in 1833. > > No one has ever been denied the vote in the UK because of the colour of their skin. Suffrage tended to be tied to property ownership (a small number of people), being extended through various acts throughout the 19th century. It’s a bit messy, but we have universal suffrage by 1918 (for men over 21, and women over 30). The post gave the impression that the British people were against the practices of slavery since the 1700s whereas in reality they repealed slavery and replaced it with indentured servitude without losing a breath. There is no moral high ground here. ---
**Author:** ![yendis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ed8c4c/32.png) [@yendis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yendis)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-history-of-civil-rights-for-minorities-outside-the-us/826322/23 "2018-12-19T12:37:38Z")
> [@am77494](#): > > Agreed on your points. My post was in response to “\* …1772 (Somerset v Stewart) which declared that slavery was incompatible with English Common Law.\*”. Here’s the full post : > > The post gave the impression that the British people were against the practices of slavery since the 1700s whereas in reality they repealed slavery and replaced it with indentured servitude without losing a breath. There is no moral high ground here. Agreed. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-history-of-civil-rights-for-minorities-outside-the-us/826322/24 "2018-12-19T15:01:37Z")
> [@am77494](#): > > The post gave the impression that the British people were against the practices of slavery since the 1700s whereas in reality they repealed slavery and replaced it with indentured servitude without losing a breath. There is no moral high ground here. **Moderator Note** This not being Great Debates, I don’t think we need to get into degrees of moral high ground. Colibri General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-history-of-civil-rights-for-minorities-outside-the-us/826322/25 "2018-12-19T15:33:14Z")
The Norwegian constitution of 1814 restricted voting to a. former and current public officials b. rural proprietors of land in the land registry, or those who had rented land in said registry for five years or more c. citizens (i.e. those with the rights of the citizen class of inhabitants of towns and cities) or those who dwell in a city or town and own property worth at least 300 rigsdaler (the rigsdaler was silver and about 10% larger than a silver dollar). That excluded a lot of people, was especially unrepresentative in the north, where, for historic reasons, very little land was in the land registry, and entirely excluded the Sami minority, who even when affluent were nomadic and didn’t own land and fixed real estate. When the first round of constitutional reform was done in 1821 a point was added to give inhabitants in the north who were paying a certain type of tax the right to vote. That roughly meant voting rights were given to the same class over people the whole country over, including the Sami. That of course didn’t prevent majority abuse and a policy of cultural oppression through most of the 20th century, a lot of it in the name of “improving the conditions for the nomadic savages”. ---
**Author:** ![SanVito](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sanvito/32/2805_2.png) [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-history-of-civil-rights-for-minorities-outside-the-us/826322/26 "2018-12-19T16:32:29Z")
> [@am77494](#): > > Agreed on your points. My post was in response to “\* …1772 (Somerset v Stewart) which declared that slavery was incompatible with English Common Law.\*”. Here’s the full post : > > The post gave the impression that the British people were against the practices of slavery since the 1700s whereas in reality they repealed slavery and replaced it with indentured servitude without losing a breath. There is no moral high ground here. None was stated. I laid out the facts - there were clear differences with how slavery was legislated as it applied to England & Wales, and to the wider British Empire. ---
**Author:** ![blindboyard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blindboyard/32/2833_2.png) [@blindboyard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blindboyard)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-history-of-civil-rights-for-minorities-outside-the-us/826322/27 "2018-12-19T19:45:14Z")
In Britain there were struggles for the poor, and also the Welsh. The Welsh were persecuted, their language was banned and so forth, which has now ended. There was slavery in the Anglo-Saxon period, which was banned on several later occasions and largely replaced by serfdom, wherein peasants are tied to the land rather than owned by someone. This practice had completely died out by the end of the sixteenth century, as for some reason the courts decided one could only be counted as a serf, a villein, if one admitted oneself to be such. There was nearly another rise of slavery, this time from the Atlantic slave trade, but the Somersett case declared that slavery was unjust and could therefore only exist if supported by legislation, which did not exist. This actually applied in all common law realms, including the American colonies, but some of those had local statutes already in place, and others quickly introduced them, hence heading off the abolition of slavery in the Americas. It then became the doctrine that anyone setting foot in England became free. There were no, contrary to what is said in a post further up, any restrictions on immigration into England until the turn of the twentieth century, none that were enforceable in any meaningful way until the Great War, and it took until the sixties for restrictions on commonwealth citizens to be introduced. Voting in parliamentary elections was strictly by property ownership or tenancy above a certain value. Originally the vote was for two representatives of each county regardless of population, and one from each of a list of towns. This produced a set of seats with a tiny number of voters who could easily be bought, known as rotten boroughs. This all lasted until the Great Reform Act of 1832, which was accompanied by tremendous riots and near revolution across the country, the burning of various buildings, cavalry charges against protestors in Bristol and so forth, and saw a slight redrawing of election boundaries and an increase in the number of people eligible to vote from something like 2% to something like 3%. There was further bloodshed during the agitation for the Peoples’ Charter in 1848, the blood of the Chartists being spilled by the Yeomanry. A series of Reform Acts gradually extended the vote until the mass enfranchisement of the Representation of the People Act of 1918, which effectively extended the vote to almost everyone, with a further Act in 1928 to equalise voting ages between men and women and then some decades later the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18. During the 1960s various laws were introduced to ensure equal pay without discrimination on the basis of sex, race and so on. > [@am77494](#): > > Not so fast. > > The Brits introduced the practice of indentured labor right after abolishing slavery. Maybe not to the letter, but in spirit it was the same practice under a different name. > > [Indian indenture system - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_indenture_system) If you read your own site you’ll see than indentured labour was voluntary, waged, and subject to regulation to ensure fair treatment and transportation of the workers, and the right of the workers to be returned to their own point of origin. Slaves weren’t voluntary, weren’t for a fixed term, weren’t paid wages and had no effective rights or protections. It’s a normal employment contract. Of course they didn’t bring workers into Britain itself, so didn’t really apply to minorities as the OP was talking about. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2018, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-history-of-civil-rights-for-minorities-outside-the-us/826322/28 "2018-12-20T01:16:24Z")
> [@am77494](#): > > Pardon me Sir, are you asserting that the practice of indentured labor was not morally reprehensible like slavery ? Kindly elucidate. > > The distinction you pointed to is a merely a distinction without a difference. Not if you were the child of an indentured labourer, it wasn’t. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2018, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-history-of-civil-rights-for-minorities-outside-the-us/826322/29 "2018-12-20T01:27:14Z")
> [@blindboyard](#): > > . . . .During the 1960s various laws were introduced to ensure equal pay without discrimination on the basis of sex, race and so on. Nitpick: the 1970s. The _Equal Pay Act 1970_ prohibited less favourable conditions on the grounds of sex as regards pay and terms of employment. The _Sex Discrimination Act 1975_ extended this to matters like training, promotion opportunities, etc, and also applied a non-discrimination on grounds of sex rule to non-employment related areas like the provision of goods and services, the sale or rental of property. The _Race Relations Act 1976_ prohibited discrimination on the grounds of race, ethnicity, etc. Disability discrimination was addressed in 1995. Discrimiation on the grounds of sexual orientation, religious belief and age had to wait for the 21st century. ---
**Author:** ![filmstar-en](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/50afbb/32.png) [@filmstar-en](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmstar-en)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2018, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-history-of-civil-rights-for-minorities-outside-the-us/826322/30 "2018-12-21T12:37:59Z")
The form of slavery found in the US was a feature of the plantation economy that profited from cash crops and their refined products like sugar, tobacco, cotton, etc. That were highly valued in other regions and countries. These required large amounts of manpower and grew on in locations where the climate was suitable. These crops simply don’t grow in northern latitudes, they require a semi tropical climate and a workforce that has resistance to the diseases prevalent in those areas. Racial policies were developed to favour the economic interests of the landowners who owned the plantations and were descended from European colonists and immigrants. They discriminated between the owners and those who worked the land. The latter being slaves and regarded as a form of property. In Europe, especially in the northern Europe, there were no plantations. So that form of slavery did not emerge locally. But it was common in the colonies controlled by the European powers. However, that is not to say that there were not disenfranchised groups and religious laws played a big role preserving the privileges on an elite and marginalised sections of the population. There are still echoes of the religious wars of the Reformation between Catholics and Protestants. The Protestant UK has had a difficult and perplexing relationship with Catholic Ireland for centuries. Where most anti-Catholic laws were dismantled in the rest of the UK in the 19th century, religious discrimination persisted into the 20th. The Civil Rights protests in the US inspired and informed similar movements in Northern Ireland in 1968 which led to what became a low level civil war known as ‘The Troubles’ that lasted until the Good Friday settlement in 1998. This history is still very relevant today. While the constitution issues have been addressed and the legal system has been made fair, the Protestant and Catholic communities in Northern Ireland are still segregated, though it is improving. > **[Segregation in Northern Ireland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segregation_in_Northern_Ireland)** > > Segregation in Northern Ireland is a long-running issue in the political and social history of Northern Ireland. The segregation involves Northern Ireland's two main voting blocs—Irish nationalist/republicans (mainly Roman Catholic) and British unionist/loyalist (mainly Protestant). It is often seen as both a cause and effect of the "Troubles". > A combination of political, religious and social differences plus the threat of intercommunal tensions and violence has led to widespread self-segrega... While the racial politics of the plantation system relied up a persons appearance to discriminate, religious discrimination does not have such self evident clues as to status. Nonetheless there are lots of subtle clues that the locals are very good at picking up to tell Catholic from Protestant. Politicians do not need a whole lot to divide up a population into Us and Them to suit their purposes. Most countries have some sort of Civil Rights issue. No constitution of a nation state is without flaws. They all have baggage that flares up from time to time. As economies develop, new tensions emerge. We saw a lot of it during the industrial economy and now tension is rising again now the we find ourselves trying to make sense of this curious ‘service’ economy. There are a lot of folks in many developed economies who feel they are not well represented by the political system and are registering protests in one form or another. ☹ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-history-of-civil-rights-for-minorities-outside-the-us/826322.md?page=1)