by
Les May
WHATEVER
the courts finally decide, to many people the slow death of
George Floyd under the knee of a policeman was murder and we should
not lose sight of this as different groups compete with each other to
use his death to foster their own agenda.
A
few evenings ago a news programme carried an item in which the
interviewee complained that although Tony Blair had expressed
his regret about the transatlantic slave trade he had not
‘apologised’. Now it has never occurred to me to ask
Queen Elizabeth to apologise on behalf of her family for
presiding over a system which kept my people in serfdom for
some 400 years, nor that I should demand the stained glass windows
which depict these monarchs in Rochdale Town Hall should be
taken down, but I’ll let that pass. The interviewee blamed this on
Blair’s ‘white privilege’ seemingly blind to the fact
that he is enjoying the privilege of living in a First
World country with all the benefits that brings.
But
there was more to this than an exercise in gesture politics. What
the interviewee seemed to be trying to do was resolve the question of
what we should do with the statues of slave traders and the like, by
capturing the narrative and presenting what is in effect a sanitised
version of the transatlantic slave trade suited to modern prejudices.
This
was a business enterprise and the transport of 12 million Africans
across the Atlantic into slavery was just one part of it. As it came
to full development in the 18th century it worked like
this. Metal goods made in Birmingham and cloth made in Lancashire
were taken to Africa and traded for slaves. Slaves were transported
across the Atlantic and traded for sugar in the Caribbean. In turn
this was transported back across the Atlantic to ports like Bristol
and Liverpool which grew wealthy on the proceeds. Then of course the
cycle started up all over again.
So
where did the 12 million slaves come from? Europeans had only a tiny
foothold around the coasts of Africa and relied upon local rulers to
provide the slaves, which they were more than happy to do in exchange
for the manufactured goods they desired. There was also a trans
Saharan trade which supplied black slaves to North African countries.
The fact that African’s themselves were participants in enslaving
fellow Africans is one of the unpalatable things we need to
understand, and perhaps remind people of, when thinking about how we
should respond to the demands that statues should be removed from our
towns. It should certainly be a part of the narrative surrounding
the trans Atlantic slave trade in which Britain played a part.
What
is not part of the agenda for these competing groups who seem so
eager to rake over the coals of the past is the fact and the reality
of modern day slavery. The estimates of the number of people in some
form of slavery now are some two to three times higher
than the 12 million or so Africans transported across the Atlantic
over a period of about 120-150 years.
Anyone
looking at the maps of
modern day slavery
will immediately become aware of the fact that it
is not confined to countries inhabited by Europeans or by people of
European descent. The
top ten countries for slavery are,
China,
DRC,
India, Indonesia, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan,
Philippines
and Russia.
But
that does not mean it
is
absent
from First World countries.
It
has been suggested that more than 10,000 people are enslaved in the
UK
today.
Like
the trans Atlantic slave trade of the late 17th to mid
19th century modern slavery is a business. A Guardian
article suggests it generates more than £100 billion in profits each
year. What should disturb us all is that in many cases the products
produced by modern slaves are bought by us. The supply
chains which produce our clothes and our high tech goods are unlikely
to be free of the taint of slavery. Which of course means that many
of the people tipping statues into the nearest dock will, like you
and I, be beneficiaries of modern day slavery.
The
unpalatable truths are that fellow Africans were quite happy to
supply captives to European slave traders during the period of the
trans Atlantic slave trade and that slavery has not gone away, it is
still with us. But we have a choice; we can obsess about the past or
we can work to eliminate it in the present. The first of these will
give us a warm glow of self satisfaction; the second will be a hard
slog and require us all to examine our consciences about why we are
able to buy some imported goods so cheaply.
If
you care to follow the link to what has been called the ‘Arab
Slave Trade’, you may wonder as I do, whether the term BAME,
which is frequently used to imply some community of interest amongst
the groups included in the acronym owes a great deal to wishful
thinking.
Typing
the search terms ‘economist modern slavery’ will lead to a wealth
of detail about global supply chains and their links to slavery.
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2 comments:
Last night I watched several episodes of 'Black and British - A Forgotten History', presented by the historian, David Olusoga, on BBC 2. I enjoyed the programme but I'm not aware that he alluded to any black complicity in the slave trade.
According to Christopher Hitchens, around 1.5 million Europeans and Americans were enslaved in Islamic North Africa between 1530 and 1780. He points out that some of this activity by 'Corsair' raiders or Barbary pirates was hostage trading and ransom farming,and to extract protection money,rather than the more labour-intensive horror of the Atlantic slave trade.
However, when the American slave owner/politician, Thomas Jefferson, met Tripoli's Ambassador to London in March 1785, he enquired by what right the Barbary States preyed upon American shipping, enslaving both crews and passengers. He was told that it was written in the Koran that all nations that did not acknowledge their authority were sinners, and that it was their right to make war upon them and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners.
Hitchen's says that Jefferson's famous ambivalence towards slavery may have been resolved somewhat, when he saw it practiced by the Muslims. Neverless, the levels of tributes increased and there were appalling reports of the mistreatment of captured men and women being held in the dungeons of Algiers and Tripoli.
Les May is right to draw attention to the modern day slave trade which is still with us and to black complicity in the slave trade. This is, as he says, an 'unpalatable truth' which is largely ignored in the historical narrative about slavery, and I suspect, that efforts to 'decolonize' history, will bury it even further.
Two relatively recent historical novels dealing with the Atlantic slave trade:
Hayti by Kurtis Sunday (the origins)
https://www.cambriabooks.co.uk/product/hayti-ebook/
Also available to download at
https://freebooks.dp.la/collection/feed%2F46%3Fentrypoint%3DBook/book/URI%2Fhttps%3A%2F%2Funglue.it%2Fapi%2Fid%2Fwork%2F288645%2F
A Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth (the peak)
https://www.librarything.com/work/93486/reviews/109250079
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