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in which we stand at this moment, with respect to the slave trade. I can well understand that nations as well as individuals may be guilty of the most unusual act, from their not having the courage to enquire into all their nature and consequences ...” [He was talking about crimes of omission, as well as commission]. He continued: “Before the year 1789, this nation had not the courage to enquire into all the circumstances of this trade. But in that year, this House had the courage to investigate the complaints which were preferred against it. This Committee sat, and after a painful and anxious investigation, they reported to this House, a great body of evidence, by which was established beyond the possibility of dispute that the African Trade is carried on by rapine, robbery and murder; by encouraging and fomenting wars; by false accusations and imaginary crimes. “Thus were these unhappy beings, and in order to supply this traffic in human blood, torn from their families, relatives and homes not only in war, but profound peace, and after being sold in their native land, they are carried across the Atlantic, in the most deplorable state in which it is possible to convey them alive, and under circumstances of too much horror to bear reflection. “Now, Sirs, after all this have been proved; after it has been ascertained by indisputable evidence, that this trade cannot be carried on without the most iniquitous practices; that rapine and murder are the foundations of it; [I had never heard the word rapine so I looked it up in the Collins English Dictionary – It said ‘rapine (noun - the seizure of property by force; pillage from the Latin rapine - plundering, also from rapere – to snatch]. “That men are falsely accused, and on these false accusation, condemned, in order to supply its victims; that wars are fomented to support this traffic; that most disgusting cruelties attend it, in the passage of this unhappy part of our species from their native home to the place of slavery; that they are subjected to a cruel and perpetual bondage; I do say that these ought not to be suffered to continue for even an hour; it is a stain on our national reputation and ought to be wiped away.” The solicitor-general went on: “The inhumanity of this traffic is most enormous; it is such that we cannot look at it without shuddering. Since the period at which we resolved to abolish this trade in 1796, no less than 300,000 individuals have been

Re-enacting slavery: How our people were selected and bought in the Americas

torn by us from the coast of Africa to supply this trade. Such is the accumulation of guilt that hangs on the English nation at this moment. “I cannot therefore, suffer this subject to pass, without expressing my most anxious wish to concur in the immediate abolition of a traffic that has brought upon this nation such indelible disgrace...” That was the solicitor-general of England, no less. It is now the turn of the Lord Chancellor, Lord Erskine. “My Lords,” he began, “I have not been in the internal parts of Africa, but I believe what is related of them by men whom I know to be impartial, and diligent in their enquiries. From them, I find that parents are torn from their children, children torn from their parents, husbands torn from their wives, wives from their husbands, all ties of blood and affection (for negroes have affections, as well as ourselves), torn up by their roots. “My Lords, I have myself seen these unhappy creatures put together in heaps in the hold of a ship, with which every possible attention to their accommodation must still be intolerable; and I have heard proved in courts of justice, facts still more dreadful, if possible than those which I have seen. “Cases have occurred in which the victims of misery have been made frantic and have fought death by violence, rising up in rebellion and endeavouring to break the chains by which they were fastened to one another; and then have ensued scenes the mere statement of which is a disgrace to a British court of justice; not to those who administer justice according to the rules of law, but to those who ought to prevent a repetition of the misery, by putting an end to the practice by which it is produced. “I allude to a case well known to my noble and learned friend (Lord Ellenborough) upon a policy of insurance in which it became necessary to defend the underwriter from the effects of his insurance; for he had undertaken, by his policy, only to indemnify the assured in the usual way against the perils of the sea. “The negroes on board the ship, the cargo of which was thus insured, rose up in a mass to destroy the captain and his crew in order to liberate themselves; and having advanced in pursuit of their objects, it became necessary to repel them by force as well as to save their own lives and the lives of the crew.

“Some of them yielded; some of them were killed in the scuffle. But many of them actually jumped into the sea and were drowned, thus preferring death to the misery they felt on board; while others hung unto the ropes of the ship repenting of their rashness, bewailing with frightful noises, their horrid fate. Thus the whole ship exhibited nothing but one hideous scene of wretchedness. “Those who were subdued into obedience, and secured in chains, were seized with flux [dysentery] which carried off many. These things were proved on trial by a British jury which had to consider whether this was a loss which fell within the policy of insurance, the negroes being regarded as if they are a cargo of dead matter. “My Lords, many instances might also be given of mortality on board ships in this traffic. Where the voyage, having been unusually protracted, famine has visited the ship and death has kept pretty even pace with the short allowance.

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“A great body of evidence ... established beyond the possibility of dispute that the African Trade is carried on by rapine, robbery and murder.”

“My Lords, these are things only too shocking to describe: and I ask your Lordships, is it possible that you should voluntarily assent to the continuance of so much misery, which you have the power of preventing; or that you should deem this practice consistent with humanity or justice? No, my Lords, it is impossible.”

Law and jurisprudence The issues of morality, as well as the legality of slavery, have been kept under lock and key for over 200 years. All attempts to raise these questions were seriously undermined by the powers that have benefited from slavery. Why rake up the past? Let sleeping dogs lie, they say.

Or, they continue, your ancestors were partners, so shut up. Indeed, quite often the victims have been made to apologise. So distorted and falsified has been the history which was passed on by imperial historians from Oxford and Cambridge. But with the 2007 celebration of the 200th anniversary of the abolition, these uncomfortable truths are beginning to intrude quite rudely and quite vividly into public consciousness. It is for us, Africans, to find the truth, and then to ask: Has the national disgrace been wiped away? Does murder cease to be murder because the murderers have decided to stop their murderous ways by abolishing the slave trade in which they were the chief perpetrators?

Great Britain, the poacher in chief, overnight becomes the gamekeeper in chief. But did the crimes cease to be crimes? Criminal Law theory has it that no crime is without punishment. These questions must have haunted the British government, and they have, I am sure, agonised over them. So it was not too surprising that on 27 November 2006, Tony Blair, then prime minister of Great Britain, issued a statement of regret, which was in many ways a nonapology. He admitted that “Britain’s rise to pre-eminence was partially dependent on the system of colonial slave labour and, as we record its abolition, we should recall our place in its practice”. Profound words! He went on: “It is hard to believe that what would now be a crime against humanity was legal at the time.” Here, we may pause to ask: When was it ever legal to commit murder? To foment murder? Or to kidnap? When was rapine ever legal? Does the fact that the British government authorised, sanctioned, and profited from an action make it legal? When is something legal? And when is it merely moral? Were the actions of Nazi Germany legal because they were sanctioned by the authority of the Third Reich? These indeed are troubling questions, and I would like to leave them to legal expertise. What I do know is that Africa has waited 200 years for truth and justice. Does Great Britain of today possess the moral courage of her ancestors to seize the opportunity presented by the 200th anniversary of the abolition to begin to wipe away this stain on its national character? I cannot tell. So perhaps I should conclude as I began: A people will only be able to obtain what they negotiate and ask for. Secretary Fox, in moving the motion for the abolition, was truly eloquent and lofty when he said: “The time it is hoped, is not far distant, when Africa will be relieved from the oppression, degradation, and misery of this impious commerce; when arresting the progress of that system of fraud, treachery and violence, which converts a large part of the habitable globe into a field of warfare and desolation ... then this nation shall begin to atone to the negro race for their accumulated wrongs...” Will Great Britain be able to mobilise the moral courage to take the lead in this struggle for truth and justice – “to atone to the negro race for their accumulated wrongs” which we believe could put the Great back into Britain? g NA

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