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Writer: Tony Snow
Introduction
Slavery began in 1440 when Portugal started to trade slaves with West Africa. Britain, Denmark, France, Holland, Portugal, and Spain all profited from the slave trade. During the Triangular Trade 20 million African people would be kidnapped, taken across the Atlantic in chains and sold as chattel. However even 300 years after slavery started, no church condemned slave ownership or slave trading. The Quakers however organized opposition to slavery in the late 1750's. In 1833 Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act which gave all slaves in the British Empire their freedom.
Slave-owner compensation
The British government however, provided £20 million in compensation to the slave-owners who had lost their 'property.' Each plantation owner received compensation of £12 14s 4¾d (£1270) in today's terms for each emancipated slave. Meanwhile, the ex-slaves received nothing but hollow promises. In 1865 the US Congress established the Freedmen's Bureau. Its purpose was to distribute 850,000 abandoned and confiscated acres of land to former slaves. But the distribution never happened and former Confederates were allowed to reclaim the property.
Legacy of slavery
However the termination of slavery did not bring closure. Instead it left a legacy, which many regard as the root for many of the social issues, which afflict black people in contemporary British society. These include family breakdown, poor job prospects, to crime and social exclusion. Others counter that it is used as a convenient excuse for those within the black community who fail to face up to their individual inadequacies.
In the Caribbean and Africa, slavery's legacy is not the basis for sociological debate, but a grim reality. Massive debt is prevalent and across many parts of sub-Saharan Africa. And from Senegal to Angola, Mozambique into Malawi and Tanzania, there is evidence that the depopulation and socio-political effects caused by the slave trade stunted the growth of a continent.
Estimates show that Africa's population remained static at around 100 million between 1650 and 1850 while in the same period the populations of Europe and Asia increased between twofold and threefold. The great kingdoms of Africa such as Mali, Songhai and Ghana fell into decline while the slave-trading nations prospered mightily.
Apologies
The late Bernie Grant MP campaigned tireless for reparations by the British Government. For Bernie Grant, the starting point in the healing process lay with the wrongdoers of Europe acknowledging their crimes. British Prime Ministers have consistently stopped short of issuing such an apology and none has shown the fortitude of the Whig Government led by Lord Grenville, who started the political process to end slavery two centuries ago. Needing to win over the traditionally anti-abolitionists in The House of Lords for the abolition of slavery bill to be passed Grenville launched into an impassioned speech arguing that the slave trade was 'contrary to the principles of justice, humanity and sound policy'.
In more recent times, the late Pope John Paul II set an encouraging example when he recognised the collusion of Catholic Church in the Transatlantic slave trade. While visiting the slave dungeons of Goree in Senegal in 1992, he said: 'From this African sanctuary of black pain, we implore forgiveness from Heaven'.
The concept that reparations are payable where a crime against humanity has been committed by one people against another is well established in international law. Germany paid reparations to Israel for the crimes of the Nazi Holocaust. Indeed, the very creation of the State of Israel can be seen as a massive act of reparation for centuries of dispossession and persecution directed against Jews.
Meanwhile, 10 years ago, Japan apologised to the victims of its wartime atrocities citing its 'mistaken national policy of colonial rule and aggression' during the Second World War. The US also made an apology and restitution for the internment of Japanese Americans during that period.
The media and politicians continually stirred up agitation against Jewish immigrants in the 1890s. They claimed that Jews were living in overcrowded unsanitary conditions, spreading disease, undermining sexual mores, undercutting British workers' wages and spreading political subversion.
Going further back into history, the Queen, personally signed the Royal Assent to the Waikato Raupatu Claims Settlement Bill which saw the New Zealand Government pay substantial compensation in land and money for the seizure of Maori lands by British settlers in 1863. The Queen apologised for the crime and recognised a long-standing grievance of the Maori people.
Profit and loss
But world leaders have consistently proved more reticent on apologising for the Transatlantic slave trade. Clearly, any claim would be on an unprecedented scale. The African World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission has put the bill at £400 thousand billion, which, it insists, should be met by 'all those nations of Western Europe and the Americas and institutions, who participated and benefited from the slave trade and colonialism'. It also calls for all international debt owed by Africa to be unconditionally cancelled.
But it is not just nations which profited. Many commercial entities were able to gain an economic foothold through the slave trade, which, it should be noted could not have been established without the involvement of some Africans. In addition a clear distinction needs to be made between the gains made by some Africans, and the long-term wealth accrued by the nations of Europe. Acquisitions, mergers and dissolution of companies make following the paper trail a messy business.
In addition to individual companies benefit, entire cities such as Liverpool and Bristol enjoyed a period of economic prosperity thanks to the triangular trade of manufactured goods going to Africa, slaves going from Africa to the colonies, and sugar coming back from the colonies to Britain.
In the US, the reparations debate is far more advanced. Investigations by historians and lawyers have even exposed some British firms – operating in the tobacco and rubber industries – to the prospect of litigation. Earlier this year, America's second biggest bank, JP Morgan Chase, made a rare apology for its subsidiaries' involvement in the slave trade with the admission that it accepted slaves as loan collateral and ended up owning several hundred. It sent a letter to employees expressing contrition for its involvement in a 'brutal and unjust institution' and established an initial $5m college scholarship programme for black students.
While it is unlikely a time will ever come when the British government will find it politically expedient to financially compensate the descendents of slaves for crimes of the past, it does nonetheless have a duty to redress the disparity it helped create between Africa and the rest of the world through the slave trade. The continent was stripped of its wealth over a period of centuries. And in reality, no amount of money can repair the damage done.
400 years of slavery, followed by 200 years of inertia would undoubtedly take an equal amount of time to fully remedy. But until the wounds begins to heal, slavery continues to serve as a reminder that those with blood on their hands have a debt to the people of Africa. Cancelling the debt of African nations is surely the first step on the road to reparation, although the journey is so long that there will be no end in sight for centuries to come.