Keith Massey’s letter on Rowntree’s past associations with slavery is disappointing.

On the one hand he decries slavery as vile and says we have learned from our mistakes. On the other hand he decries the Rowntree Society for seeking to learn from its history.

In 1948 Winston Churchill paraphrased George Santayana when he said that ‘those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it’.

While Britain finally abolished slavery in 1833 the reality was that for decades after that British chocolate manufacturers were purchasing cocoa from colonial plantations in the West Indies that used indentured labour. Indentured labour means workers who work for no money in expectation of earning their freedom. Slavery under another name.

I applaud the Rowntree Society for seeking to learn from its past.

Slavery is still with us. In 2002 a British TV documentary revealed that hundreds of thousands of children were being sold as slaves to cocoa farmers in Côte D’Ivoire, for example. Our appetite for cheap chocolate still benefits from the poverty and servitude of others.

Trying to brush it all under the carpet while berating the ‘woke’ is complacent and does nothing to advance justice or equality.

Christian Vassie, Blake Court, Wheldrake, York