Africa: Why Britons Shall Never Be Slaves

Source from:  The East African (Nairobi) 6 November 2007 11/07/2007

BRITAIN HAS BEEN PREPARING SLAV-ishly (so to speak) for the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the Abolition of Slavery Act in 1807. Galleries and museums in the United Kingdom have all devoted space to the anniversary and attempted to look at it in a new light, given the multi-cultural population and the fact that many of the country's first post-war immigrants were from some of the first colonies such as Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad. The first International Slavery Museum opened in the port city of Liverpool. Much attention has centred on the role played by William Wilberforce, the man most identified with the anti-slavery movement, but this has raised questions about the approach to the study of history which has focused on the Dead White Male Heroes and how they have dominated it. Ironically, just down the road from London's Trafalgar Square - a stone's throw from the towering presence of military hero Lord Nelson is another Nelson - former President Nelson Mandela whose recently erected statue stands not too far from South Africa House, scene of many anti-apartheid demonstrations in the past, and to Zimbabwe House where activists fighting a different kind of oppression regularly gather to keep the suffering under Robert Mugabe in the world's eye. Lord Nelson stands facing the Mother of Parliaments, with children around him, a far cry from the pomp and circumstance of the great military hero. THERE HAS BEEN A DETERMINATION TO shift the emphasis from noble abolitionists such as William Wilberforce and Granville Sharpe to African campaigners like Olaudah Equiano and Ottabah Cugoano both of whom wrote major texts against the trade from a personal point of view. The celebration of church-led initiatives has given way to the part played by the constant popular rebellions which ultimately made slavery both unworkable and uneconomical. One of London's foremost galleries, Tate Britain, features a timeline in its exhibition on the subject which shows just how long and complex the matter was, and how its effects are still with us in the way so much modern trade is organised. The importance of sugar and tobacco cannot be underestimated, together with the tea and coffee that provide so many developed countries with Third World primary products, and take up precious land which could be used to grow food for the latter's hungry. The first British venture into the slave trade was way back in 1562 when one John Hawkins sailed to West Africa to capture slaves; soon after, Barbados, St Kitts, Jamaica all became colonies. In 1700, the first slave trading ship sailed out of Liverpool, marking the beginnings of the wealth that the Industrial Revolution eventually brought. For instance, the iron industry in Merthyr Tydfil, in Wales was founded by slave trader Anthony Bacon whose contracts providing food to troops guarding slave forts on the African coast and "seasoned and able working negroes" brought him enough funds to build the Cyfarthfa Ironworks at Merthyr in 1765, which became the centre for gun founding in Britain. Thus the early links between the arms trade and its stranglehold n the economies of the world can be traced back to the 18th century, supposedly the Age of Enlightenment. The West Indies were patrolled by the Royal Navy, being the most valuable colonial possession the British had at the time - all of it dependent on the slave trade. Iron was used as a trading instrument to buy slaves - 12 iron bars bought you an adult male - as well as on the estates themselves which required iron for agricultural equipment, as well as for shackles and implements of torture. Iron was used to make sugar crushing rollers for the Caribbean plantations. DR CHRIS EVANS OF THE University of Glamorgan claimed in a BBC programme: "British mercantile life was dominated by slavery. One way or other the Welsh economy is intimately and directly connected with the slave system as a whole." He said that the industrial revolution would have happened without slavery but in a different way and at a different pace. Sir Henry Tate, he of the Tate and Lyle Sugar Company and the original benefactor of the Tate Britain and Tate Modern museums made his fortune importing and refining sugar, though he was not directly involved in hiring slave labour. His philanthropic efforts didn't end with founding the great national collection of art; through his support of West Indian sugar in its competition with European beet, he did a lot in helping the Caribbean economy. A refreshingly different angle was provided by the showing of film by a Cuban director well known only in his native country because of the reluctance of some power, notably the US, to hear alternative points of view. Made in Cuba in 1976, Tomas Gutierrez Alea's The Last Supper is a profoundly ironic study of the hypocrisy of the Spanish plantation owners and its connection with the church. Set in 18th Century Havana, wealthy and somewhat guilt-ridden Count, owner of a sugar estate decides to host his own Last Supper during Holy Week, appointing himself Christ and a dozen down-trodden slaves as the apostles. The Count appears to be concerned about the morality of his position and anxious about the welfare of his workers, making him more than simply a wicked monster. Regarded as a comic "auteur," Alea has the master clean and kiss the feet of the slaves before preaching to them at a table groaning with goodies. Many have never used cutlery before and hog their food, knowing this scenario is unlikely to be repeated soon, whilst others - finely drawn, distinctive characters - point out the inconsistencies in the text of the sermon. Those coming from formerly cannibalistic tribes are bemused by the fact that the Eucharist apparently means eating and drinking the body of Christ, yet they have been heavily chastised for their ways. The Count promises that on Good Friday, his charges will not work, but when he goes back on his word an almighty revolt breaks out quelled only by the unleashing of dogs and the beheading of the "apostles" who, only hours before, had been treated like nobility. The contrast is as grotesque as any painting by Goya. The film makes the point precisely. In an article in the Guardian on February 24, this year, Nigel Willmott wrote that the abolition of slavery was the work of many; "to canonize Wilberforce is an injustice to history." Though he was indeed the spokesman of the anti-slavery movement in parliament and the promoter of several Bills to outlaw the practice, Willmott insists that to focus exclusively on the one man "not only ignores the role of black people in the colonies who made slavery increasingly untenable through resistance and rebellions - and, in the case of Haiti, outright revolution under Toussaint L'Ouverture, but also those black leaders like Olaudah Equiano who campaigned in Britain for the abolition." Wilberforce was, after all, a member of the Anglican-Tory establishment which was busy enriching itself on slavery. He points to the Reverend Thomas Clarkson who, earlier on in 1787 had founded the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade which was supported by a nationwide movement including great figures of the industrial revolution like Wedgewood, whose descendants Tony Wedgwood Benn and his son Hillary still carry the radical flag. That famous line from the almost national anthem Rule Britannia: "Britons never never never shall be slaves," hails from the judgement handed down by Lord Mansfield in 1772 that the runaway slave James Somerset could not be returned to his "owner" on British soil and became a rallying call for many populist movements of which this was the first. SINCE THAT TIME, REFORMS have been fought for suffrage, factory hours, anti-apartheid, racial equality and gay rights modeled on the passion aroused by the abolitionist cause. Nobility of heart was not necessarily the motivating cause: new factories, plus the increasing hostility of the slaves themselves was making it unprofitable to continue. Not for nothing did the great French philosopher Voltaire look enviously across the Channel at the loud fight for human rights which has sadly become a little muffled these days. When it comes to such past grievances, it has become the fashion to expect leaders to say sorry for things they weren't personally responsible for and have no intention of changing; "National Sorry Day" wasn't supported by Australian Prime Minister John Howard though many of his people regarded it as an appropriate if belated gesture. It did not resurrect the millions of Aborigineswho were decimated but perhaps helped to alert the public about some wrongs that could be righted like compensation for the "stolen generation." Tony Blair felt obliged to mouth some feeble words of regret: "It is hard to believe that what would now be a crime against humanity was legal at the time," but the economy which he oversaw and the Iraq war into which he blindly led his people could both be considered crimes against humanity too. Enditem