Britain's Slave Owners uncovered

A BBC2 documentary to be screened this Wednesday takes a much needed look at Britain’s imperial past. 'Britain's Slave Owners', the first of the two part programme, features what happened in 1834 when Britain abolished slavery and paid compensation to over 46,000 British slave owners. Presented by the historian and film-maker David Olusoga the documentary will shine a bright light on this murky part of our history.

Speaking about the programme he states: ‘The disadvantage and discrimination that disfigures the lives and limits the life chances of so many African-Americans is the bitter legacy of the slave system and the racism that underwrote and outlasted it. Britain, by contrast, has been far more successful at covering up its slave-owning and slave-trading past.’

In today's money, the slave plantation owners were paid £1.6 billion compensation, whilst the enslaved African’s, brought low by 500 years of enslavement, enforced illiteracy, the shameful sale of men women and children, many of whom were subjected to rape and sexual violence, were paid nothing.

This subject continues to provoke fierce debate and inflame passions. Many people believe that with a few exceptions we are now a 'post racial society'.

Their view is that the crude racism of the past and the horror of blatant race discrimination are over. Britain is the most 'tolerant' nation on earth and our race equality legislation is the most advanced anywhere in Europe. We have a longer history of migrant settlement than most other nations and we are a beacon of democracy and diversity.

This view almost wilfully ignores our colonial history, and calls to mind the Jamaican saying that Dennis Brown, Crown Prince of Reggae, used in the title of one of his many great songs: 'What about the half that has never been told' ?

This refers to the historical amnesia and revisionism so typical of former colonial powers like Britain. Despite slavery being one of the greatest crimes in human history and despite colonialism being the legalised theft and rape of entire peoples, continents and cultures, we remain profoundly and wilfully ignorant and hostile to the historical truth.

This unwillingness to address the evil of slavery or discuss compensation to nations weakened to a point of penury by voracity of colonialism points to the reality of racism today…that black people have had to and continue to endure, the modern day myopia that denies them their historical context and entitlement to justice. The denials of racism are part of our daily experience and provide us with an echo of the past. Everyday racism makes us mentally ill, driven mad by the pernicious and insidious affects of a constant undermining of our past and present. This is tantamount to psychological warfare that does not just seek to distort the past but seeks to deny present day realities. We all know what it’s like to have our experience constantly denied as reality. It’s a psychological con trick to induce stress, depression and confusion.

The current descendants of enslaved peoples in Britain live the modern day legacies of racism that are routinely denied. This is designed to break their attachment to their past convincing them to abandon any cause for justice.

Most white people will not understand why we remain angry at this injustice or will simply be ignorant of the enormity of the profits generated for this country. Some though are right wing historical revisionists with an agenda of wiping out those deep, abiding scars on the consciousness of modern Britannia.

Britain’s industrial revolution was funded by the profits generated by slavery and the rule over Empire filled the coffers of the treasury making Britain the richest nation on earth. Roads, schools, libraries, parks, hospitals, sewers, factories and rail networks, all built on the vast profits generated by slave labour. The entire modern fabric of the UK is cemented with the blood, sweat and tears of slaves and colonial subjects. Our ancestors should be considered the creators of this nation’s wealth then and now. Our role and sacrifices should have been recorded honestly in school text books, statues and memorials should have been erected and Africans and colonial peoples hailed as being the people that built modern Britain, not ignored, belittled and humiliated.

How does one calculate the economic and psychological damage done to a people who suffered generations of brutal oppression the legacy of which still haunts the descendants of those slaves, the slave colonies and former colonial empires till this day?

Do we need reparations? Yes we do. For the legacy of 500 years of daily terror, abuse, stress, demeaning subjugation and horror which have built into our genes over 500 years. The taking away our religions and cultures. The destruction of our family structures with our babies and children ripped from their mothers then sold like cattle. The ignoring of our languages and enforcing us to speak the language of the oppressors in order to survive. And then once slavery is abolished in law, the century of discrimination, segregation, and Jim Crow racism. All this cannot be conveniently forgotten just because it’s 2015.

Britain will never escape the continued legacy of its past until it faces the reality of and consequences of its crime. Human history show us that such profound and prolonged injustice spanning generations at the cost of hundreds of million of lives cannot be conveniently forgotten. Time and time again throughout the world such ancient disputes emerge with tremendous force and often violence into modern day reality. The Confederate flag debate in the US is just one current example.

In 2001 the United Nations World Conference on Racism finally acknowledged that the slave trade was a ‘ crime against humanity’. This year see the launch of the UN International Decade for People of African Descent’. A subsequent resolution by the UN which was adopted by the General Assembly in November 2015 profoundly regrets “the untold suffering and evils inflicted on millions of men, women and children” as a result of the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism. (UN resolution A/RES/69/16)

It calls upon those States “that have not yet expressed remorse or presented apologies to find some way to contribute to the restoration of the dignity of its victims” and invites “the international community and its members to honour the memory of the victims of these tragedies with a view to closing those dark chapters in history and as a means of reconciliation and healing.”

Moreover, it calls “upon all States concerned to take appropriate and effective measures to halt and reverse the lasting consequences of those practices, bearing in mind their moral obligations.”

Contrast the way slavery is regarded by Britain with the deep reverence reserved for the holocaust. We have an annual National Holocaust Memorial Day (27 January). In 1991 we were the first European country to make teaching about the Holocaust a mandatory part of the history curriculum in state secondary schools.

In 2009 we were the first country to undertake extensive national research into Holocaust teaching and learning. Recently, the Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission, was tasked with establishing what more Britain must do to ensure that the memory of the Holocaust is preserved and that the lessons it teaches are never forgotten.

We also have the UK Transatlantic Slavery Memorial Day designated by the British Government that takes place on August 23rd on the anniversary of the Haitian revolution in which African slaves overthrew their French colonial oppressors. The shame is we’re so ashamed of our own past that we have done little to enshrine this as an important day of remembrance and reflection. The power of racism on the mind, a racism that results in self regulating behaviour, is, as Bob Marley in his song Redemption, ‘mental slavery’.

Britain can only evolve into a 'post racist nation' once it comes to terms with the crime of colonialism and it accepts the need for apology and reparations. Last year saw the first large scale Reparations March that took place in London on the 1st of August, known to black people as Emancipation Day, the day the slaves became free.

Over 5,000 people marched on Parliament demanding reparations, yet it wasn't covered in the press, nor on the TV or radio stations and yet the march was one of the largest black marches that took place last year.

Like the issue itself, this march was contemptuously ignored by politicians and the media. This modern day racism reflects the marginalisation we and our history have suffered for generations. This year we march again and we need your support to break through this conspiracy of silence.

In common with most Africans, I’m a spiritual person. It was Dr Martin Luther King who stated ‘The moral arch of the universe is long but it bends toward justice’. I also believe that the understanding and confronting of our shared experience is part of bend towards natural justice. I also am a strong believer in ‘What goes around comes around’.

But this truth must be faced…with such a violent rip in the temporal and space time continuum that enslaved peoples were forced to endure, as a consequence of slavery and racism, karmatic payback for Britain is almost inevitable.

All great empires were built on great crimes and the unacknowledged crime of slavery is a curse on the fortunes of the nations - soon or later the universe will see those scales of justice rebalanced.

When one looks at the financial crisis, the migrant crisis, the climate change crisis, wars and rumours of wars, when one looks at Greece now having to endure the same IMF conditions that were once reserved for African, Asian and Latin nations, I can’t help feeling that the British sky is becoming darker with the number of colonial chickens coming home to roost.

More information on the programme can be found here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02wt8p7