Transatlantic Slave Trade

As part of a school project in 2019 my 14 year old daughter asked for my views on the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and whether the UK should apologise for its part in it.

For a white middle class man, this is a difficult subject as I am a beneficiary of white (male) privilege which in turn can be directly connected back to the slave trade. However, my personal view is that even if you are part of a problem rather than the victim of a problem, you should engage in the debate, listen to understand, express your own view (for right or for wrong) so that a common understanding can be reached, as I believe that this is the route to positive change and solving problems.

So this was my reply to my daughters question (although I think she just wanted a yes or no!)

No, I don't think that the UK should apologise for its part in the transatlantic slave trade, and this is why I think that.

There are lots of historical things that are wrong. The apologies would be endless. Should the Egyptians apologise for their use of slaves? Should the Romans apologise for theirs? Should the Mongolians for theirs? The Japanese for their use of British and Commonwealth soldiers of all colours in WW2? It all gets to be a bit of a distraction.

I also think that when we judge historical figures and events using our modern perceptions it is unfair to the time and circumstances that preceded us. It becomes generational chauvinism. So what that Churchill used racist language in 1910 or that Gandhi campaigned for apartheid in South Africa, they were creatures of the time and their good deeds should not be cancelled out just because they spoke and acted like everyone else at that time. Today is a different time.

In days gone by, if you lived in a village in a clearing in a wood and you got attacked by a neighbouring village and you lost, then you would expect one of two things. One would be that you’re killed for being on the losing side. The other is that you’re put to work as a prisoner for the benefit of the victorious village. This would have happened all throughout history. Slavery (and cruelty) was part and parcel of life.

There are three things however that sets the transatlantic slave trade apart from the slavery mentioned above, in my view:

One aspect is the industrialisation of the practice. The scale and efficiency combined with the cruelty that was always there on an individual level makes it significantly worse and more relevant as a lesson of inhumanity against others which should never be forgot.

The second aspect is the dehumanisation of another group of people based on skin colour. If you won a battle you didn’t much care about the ethnicity of the losers, they were the enemy, they had chosen to fight you (or even been slaves forced to fight), and that was your reason for being willing to kill them. With the slave trade, it was skin colour and being African which made you the 'product' and worthy of sale or death.

The final aspect is how this inequality is still being played out today.

The first and second aspects seem to me to be similar to Jewish persecution. Throughout history Jewish people have been subject to persecution whether by King Herod, Arabs or the concentration camps set up by the British and Germans, and this persecution is wrong. However, the Holocaust industrialised that inhumanity to such a level based on nothing more than being a Jew. This weaponised bigotry so that more Jews died in Auschwitz than all British and German soldiers combined in the actual war!

For these reasons, I think the Slave Trade ranks up there with historical events like the Holocaust where the industrialised horror based on race, means it is something we should never forget.

Also, when we say the UK should apologise, who is the UK? Do we mean the current UK Government? If it is not the Government that apologises, should it be me? After all, I paid for things like the Colston Hall to be built. This is because, when the slave trade was abolished, the compensation paid to slave owners was so great that the Government sold bonds (debts) which had to be paid back by British taxpayers. These debts were finally paid off around 2015 and it was obviously paid off with Income Tax taken from my salary. I therefore helped wealthy slavers retain their wealth which they used to do things like build the Colston Hall. So who needs to apologise when we say should the UK apologise? Me, you? The Government, if not them, who?

Instead, what I think is more important is that we learn from the past. We should acknowledge the history, and we should acknowledge the impact it has on things today. By this, I mean that we should learn about the horror of the transatlantic slave trade so that we don't repeat past mistakes and dehumanise people like that ever again. And we should acknowledge that whilst there are many 'great' white men held up as makers of the modern age, there were equally many Africans who were literally being tortured to death whilst white people got wealthy, and the African persons part in getting us to where we are today should be acknowledged. That wealth is something we benefit from today but it wasn’t just the wealthy white man who generated that wealth, it was more down to the people who paid with their lives.

Re-naming the Colston Hall is fine in my view. Bristol is short on things that publicly remind people of its part in the slave trade so its a good gesture to re-name it to something more relevant today. I think things like Pero's bridge is a nice way to also acknowledge slaves and their contribution to Bristolian and British society today.

I also think that someone who demands an apology from the UK Government today is slightly hypocritical. If you live in Britain today YOU benefit from the slave trade. YOU benefit from the wealth created by that trade. Even if you live in poverty in the UK today, you are in the wealthiest 1% of the worlds population. Are you, along with everyone else going to give all our wealth to Africans today so that they and us could all live in real poverty earning $1 a day from picking over rubbish tips to sell plastic, or starving to death from famine? No, we are not going to return the wealth stolen from Africa. In fact, we’re not even going to share it or allow them to come and live here (freedom of movement only really applies to the wealthy white people in the EU, the EU rules keeps non-whites out). So an apology, whilst that might be perceived to be a nice thing to do, is hypocritical and all people in the U.K. today of all ethnicity would share that hypocrisy and do little more than make us feel better about ourselves in our usual self serving manner.

Instead, I believe that there is more value in remembering that there are many negative things that can be connected back to the slave trade. Modern day racism connects back to it. The fact that the colour of a persons skin makes them less worthy and of less value than a white person is at the heart of racism. This view underpinned the slave trade and is an essential ingredient of racism in the UK today.

There is also an element of institutional and systemic racism which links back to the slave trade. The war on drugs was born in America when social divisions between black and white people were still fresh from slavery abolition and the North/South divide in that country following its civil war..

Prohibition (banning of alcohol) was coming to an end and the Government Agency tasked with enforcing it had little to do. Black people (recent ex-slaves) were perceived to be smoking illegal substances which, combined with ingrained racist views about them as slaves, plus the need at the time for Government Agency to be acting, meant that they had a new war to fight, as Governments (and oppression) thrive better when people live in fear.

The war on drugs began essentially a war on black people. The fact that many well do to wealthy white people took drugs (Queen Victoria was an opium (heroin) user) was not the issue here. The war on drugs is itself inherently racist, and to this day targets young black men (in particular) over white people and criminalises you largely based on your skin colour.

Like Queen Victoria and the wealthy whites in generations gone by, the white banker, solicitor and accountant today, who in this country goes to a good school, buys their own cocaine and weed which they take at fancy parties and clubs are largely ignored by the police, and we laugh at wealthy white people taking drugs in films like the Wolf of Wall Street, whilst a young black man can go to a school in a sink estate, do everything he can to avoid trouble, but is far more likely to get stopped and searched by police, be unable to get a job, face limitations on what people will believe he can do and earn less money on average than a white boy, and is far more likely to end up in prison than a white boy.

Thats what this video on race, class and gender inequality is about.

And should that black boy get stabbed to death at a bus stop when doing nothing, by a gang of racist white men, the police will be unable to convict a single person despite knowing exactly who did it. Thats institutional racism (make sure you read about Stephen Lawrence which is a harrowingly tragic part of the story of systemic racism). That traces back to the slave trade and if the UK Government today needed to apologise for anything, it should be its failure with these present day problem, NOT the slave trade, but instead for allowing echoes of the slave trade to negatively affect people today because of the colour of their skin.

It sounds awful to say, but there are also some positive things today which are undoubtedly connected to the slave trade. Bristol and Liverpool are beautiful city’s. They’re beautiful because they’re built on the back of the wealth of the slave trade. But I love living in the city. That’s a positive today from a negative of the past. I think we can look at this positive this way. Instead of thanking Mr Colston (with statues and buildings named after him), we can look at the blood on his hands and instead we can thank the slaves who really created our beautiful city with their blood, suffering and their lives, not the spoilt life of Mr Colston, and by remembering, we can each individually say sorry in our thoughts for their suffering and resolve to make a difference today to right whatever wrongs we see today. I’m not saying that the slave trade was good in the slightest, I'm just saying that we live with some things today which can be directly traced back to the slave trade and for which make today’s existence brighter. As we each apologise in our thoughts, we can think about what lessons we should learn from the slave trade and what wrongs today still exist because of it. Those wrongs might be where the weak are made to suffer, where those worse off are not helped, where people are trafficked, where greed is concentrated in a privileged few, where institutionalised racism exists, where wealth inequality is too great or where large corporates say that less regulation is good and battle with Governments to allow them to continue making money, just as the slave traders once did. Let’s learn that lesson and accept than in some cases, regulation of business is needed just as we once had to regulate to stop slavery! That is stronger than an apology by the current UK Government for the slave trade.

Finally, the other thing I think is how we will be judged in years to come. I don't think we live a bad life today. Not deliberately. I don't think we are nasty to people. But what if you grew up and did good deeds like building a hospital and named it after yourself, but in years to come people say.... the precious minerals in those iPhones were dug out of the ground by slaves who were mistreated and killed for $1 a month whilst other people got wealthy. How could any iPhone owner, or Primark shopper, or person who lived off fossil fuel, or Nike wearer have lived with themselves and stood by doing nothing whilst all this injustice took place, and that hospital should be re-named because she was an iPhone user or because her car destroyed the planet! I don't think Colston really thought he was an awful person. In fact I bet he thought he was a good person and a successful business man and that his good deeds, building alms houses for the poor and concert halls for the people of Bristol are in fact good. Its just that the horror has been called out, perception changed over time and he has become to be judged negatively (and so he should!) So all I’m saying is, be careful when judging him as you may not currently be able to see the things you do wrong for which future generations will condemn you, or as the bible puts it in Matthew 7:1:

“Judge not that ye be judged“

After this was written in 2019 the BLM protests took place. I will do a separate post on this subject later in the year.