Should we be Proud or Ashamed of our Nation's History?

by Michael Carberry

The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Antigua has been dominated by a brouhaha concerning the role of Britain in the international slave trade and demands for an apology and possibly reparations.  This has been a recurrent and increasingly important topic for many of the member states present and has a particular resonance in Antigua – one of the sugar-producing islands which in the 18^th century depended heavily on slave labour and were the main destinations for the slave ships.  Which is why today Antigua has a museum of slavery in the Nelson Dockyard visitor centre.  The topic no doubt produced some sticky moments for King Charles III who attended the meeting as Head of the Commonwealth and expressed his personal sorrow at the evils of the slave trade, but without going so far as to make an apology or any other commitment which, as a constitutional monarch, he could not do without the agreement of his government.  The British Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, who was also present, had flagged up before the meeting that he was “open to discussions” about an apology but ruled out reparations; they were inappropriate.  That was no doubt intended to head off any embarrassing demands at the meeting itself and seems to have been moderately successful. Some of the other Commonwealth leaders said they thought the statement a “step in the right direction”.

The Leader of the Conservative Opposition Party in the British Parliament, Kemi Badenoch, was however, robustly dismissive of calls for either an apology or reparations. While acknowledging that the Atlantic Slave Trade was “horrible”, it was something which happened a long time ago for which the present British population were not responsible.  She questioned the motives of those leaders who were raising the issue, suggesting it was being used as a “distraction” from their domestic problems and a way of trying to extract money from British taxpayers. Unsurprisingly, the Conservative leader’s comments reportedly did not go down well with Commonwealth Leaders, not least because Kemi Badenoch (née Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke) is herself of West African heritage. She was born to Nigerian parents in London and spent her early life in Nigeria. She, of all people, might have been expected to have a detailed knowledge of the issue and empathy with the Caribbean leaders’ views.  But, unlike the Prime Minister, she was not present at CHOGM and was therefore less concerned with mollifying other Commonwealth Heads of Government than with appealing to those on the right of her own party and voters leaning towards the far-right Reform Party, who like to wrap themselves in the national flag and brook no criticism of their “great country”.

That may explain why Kemi Badenoch has at other times claimed that Britons should be “proud” of their history and stop “talking it down” which she accuses those on the left of the political spectrum of doing regularly.  Yet the Slave Trade is a major part of Britain’s history that apparently, she does not want to talk about.  And there are other events in British history she might not want to talk about. For example, the Amritsar Massacre where  unarmed  Indian protestors were gunned down by British troops on the orders of General Dyer in 1919, killing several hundred and injuring well over 1000. Or the fact that it was Britain who invented the concentration camp in the  Second Boer War (1899-1902) - half a century before the Nazis - where an estimated 18-24,000  Boers, mostly women and  children, died in appalling conditions from malnutrition, exposure, typhoid and other diseases.  Or, more recently and controversially, the so-called “Bloody Sunday” massacre in January 1972 when British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians during a protest march in the Bogside area of Derry,^] Northern Ireland  killing thirteen outright.  Are these things of which we should be proud? Obviously not.

In fact, our history is not something of which we should be proud or ashamed.  It is something we should know about.  In life we may like to feel proud of our successes but we learn much more from our failures (ask any football manager!). History is the life story of a nation or a people. If history never truly repeats itself, it is because circumstances are never quite the same. An understanding of how things occurred in the past, even long ago, can give us extremely valuable insights into the present.  For that reason, a sound knowledge of history is an essential pre-requisite for anyone engaged in government and especially foreign policy.

It was obvious to anyone familiar with 20th century history that in early post-Soviet Russia American pressure to liberalize the economy and free up prices overnight would simply provoke economic collapse and political instability in a very new and fragile democracy, creating fertile ground for the emergence of a fascist autocrat - Vladimir Putin.  The parallels were already there in Nazi Germany. 

Only someone as profoundly ignorant of history as Donald Trump would think that dropping bombs on the Iranian people would somehow enable them to rise up and overthrow the oppressive regime of the Islamic Republic. The deliberate carpet bombing of German cities by the Allies in the course of World War II (which would now be classed as war crimes) did not, as was hoped, weaken the morale of the German people.  Rather it stiffened their resolve to fight on and undermined those opposed to Hitler who wanted a negotiated peace. Similarly, the genocide and ethnic cleansing perpetrated or enabled by the Netanyahu government in Israel against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank on an almost daily basis since the so-called “cease-fire” have done nothing to improve national security. Instead it has turned Israel into an international pariah state and intensified hatred against the Israeli people and by extension (unfortunately), Jews around the world.  All that was predictable to anyone with historical insights into conflict situations.

History then is not about stories which make us feel good about ourselves.  Rather it is an autopsy on the body politic of the past.  Like any autopsy it sometimes throws up things which are unpleasant or distasteful but that is all the more reason why we need to take its findings seriously.

So what has this to do with the issue of an Apology for Slavery?   As always, a knowledge of the historical facts helps put the question into perspective.  During World War II some six million Jews were forcibly taken from their homes, deported and murdered in gas chambers or worked to death in slave labour camps because they were considered racially inferior. Starting in the mid 16^th century but predominantly in the 18^th and early 19^th centuries, approximately 12.5 million Africans, also considered racially inferior, were forcibly taken from their homes and deported across the Atlantic to the Americas.  Some 2 million died in the appalling conditions of the notorious “middle passage” from West Africa to the Caribbean although millions more probably died in slaving raids or in holding pens before they ever saw a ship.  Those who survived usually died within a few years from ill- treatment in the sugar plantations. And women and girls were routinely sexually abused and exploited by white masters or overseers as evidenced by the mixed ethnicity of many Afro-Caribbean or African Americans today. So, although further back in time, what is sometimes called the African Holocaust was in fact more extensive and of much longer duration that that of World War II and no less horrific.

Although a latecomer to the transatlantic slave trade compared with Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands, Britain and especially the city of Liverpool soon became the dominant player.  Britain’s extensive maritime fleet, the power of the Royal Navy and British control of many of the sugar-producing islands in the Caribbean all helped.  But it was the development of syndicates which spread the risk and sophisticated financing mechanisms enabled by the Lloyds insurance market, allowing new voyages to be financed before receiving the profits from the first, which caused British involvement in the trade to grow exponentially and enable not just wealthy investors but thousands of ordinary citizens to benefit. The overwhelming majority of African slaves were carried in British vessels and the vast profits pouring into the UK helped fund the industrial revolution which would make Britain the richest country in the world by the late 19^th century.

Indeed, it was the extent of Britain’s complicity in the trade which eventually gave rise to the abolitionist movement in the UK. Just as today the perception of Israel by the general public in Europe and America since the events of 7 October 2023 has changed with increasing awareness of what is being done to the Palestinians, so in the late 18^th century British people became increasingly concerned by the iniquities of the slave trade. The Zong case in 1789 was a turning point.

A British (formerly Dutch) slave ship called the Zong had run out of water. The crew threw 132 live African slaves overboard in order for the owners to be able to claim the insurance for “loss of property” which they could not do if the slaves had died on board. The insurers contested the claim and although the jury originally found in favour of the ship’s owners, the decision was later reversed in the High Court. However, it was still seen purely as an insurance matter and there was no question of anyone being tried for murder!  The case became a rallying cry for those opposed to slavery, especially Quakers and evangelical Christians. The Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade had been founded just two years previously in 1787. And a very effective campaign, spearheaded in the British Parliament by William Wlberfoce, led to the Act for the abolition of the trade in 1807.  But it was not until 1838 that slavery was finally abolished in all British colonies.  Even then the British government paid out the then vast sum of £20 million in compensations, not to the victims but to the slave owners for “loss of property”.         

Today, we tend to associate slavery with the United States, but of  the 10.5 million who arrived in the Americas only half a million (less than 5%) went there.  Some four million went to Brazil or elsewhere in Latin America but the great majority ended up in the sugar plantations of the Caribbean where the high death rates created a constant demand for more slaves. Slavery was therefore very much a British institution. Today almost the entire populations of most Caribbean nations are descended from slaves.  Slavery is literally in their DNA.  And they remain surrounded by the plantations, watch towers, sugar mills, colonial mansions and other physical infrastructure of that period. It follows that slavery has the same significance for the people of the Caribbean as the Holocaust does for the people of Israel and Jews worldwide. 

Within a relatively few years from now, the last survivors of the World War II holocaust will have died. I doubt if Jewish people around the world would be happy to hear a British politician saying that the Holocaust was now something which happened a long time ago; that it had become a “distraction” and that we should “move on”.  It would be surprising if Caribbean leaders had not found Kemi Badenoch’s dismissive remarks deeply offensive. 

With regard to the issue in question, I actually agree with both the Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister Andy Burnham that the current UK generation should not be held accountable for the actions of their forebears three centuries ago. Reparations are not appropriate and should be resisted.  However, that does not mean we should not take Caribbean concerns seriously. Simply ignoring or dismissing them will not make them go away.  An apology would at least be a very public acknowledgement of the complicity of successive British governments and their citizens over more than a century in what we now recognize to be one of the most appalling crimes against humanity in recorded history.  That surely would be a “step in the right direction”.