Robert Buddan, Contributor
A Jamaican idea introduced by a CARICOM resolution was accepted by the United Nations in December designating March 25, 2007, as a day to commemorate the end of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade 200 years ago.
Jamaica's House of Representatives also passed a bill against modern-day slavery or human trafficking this week after signing the international protocol in 2002.
The U.N. Resolution was overwhelmingly adopted by 160 countries. The countries of the formerly enslaved in Africa and the Caribbean, and the former enslavers in Europe, joined in adopting it.
The countries hope to begin a process of acknowledgement, atonement, healing and reconciliation. They hope to acknowledge that slavery was a major cause of the social and economic inequality, bigotry, racism and prejudice that affect people of African descent today. They hope remedies, recourse, redress, and compensatory mechanisms will right the historic wrongs. And, they hope that the slave trade and slavery will be a part of people's education so that something so terrible will never happen again.
The Jamaica National Bicentenary Committee will begin its own process with a cultural rally at Emancipation Park on January 2, 2007.
The resolution and anticipation of it has scored two major successes. The United Nations has overwhelmingly endorsed it. The Prime Minister of Britain, Tony Blair, has admitted Britain's shameful role in it. Before this (February this year) the Church of England had apologised for its role in the slave trade acknowledging that the Church "was at the heart of it." For those who think it is a thing of the past, the Church of England reasoned that, "The body of Christ is not just a body that exists at one time, it exists across history and we share the shame and the sinfulness of our predecessors."
Tony Blair, however, has been criticised for stopping short of an apology. There is clear difficulty in how Britain's powerful estates .... Church, State, and Parliament ... handle guilt and responsibility. The Church of England has acknowledged shame and offered its apology. But it did not propose financial compensation. Mr. Blair, leader of Parliament, has acknowledged shame but did not offer an apology or compensation. In 2004, spokespersons for Queen Elizabeth, Head of State, said that there was nothing to apologise about since slavery was the law at the time.
Mr. Blair now says, to the embarrassment of royal conscience that, "It is hard to believe that what would now be a crime against humanity was legal at the time." The BBC will not shield the aristocracy either. It reported that, "Today many of the great aristocratic families of Britain have a hidden past in the slave trade."
LOVE OF MONEY
Why can't Britain's great estates come clean? The problem is, as it was then, a failure of moral consistency and love of money. The U.K.'s Guardian informed us in 2001 that 11 countries of the European Union were willing to issue an apology for the slave trade. However, Britain, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands had blocked that decision, preferring the softer word 'regret'. Concerns about money topped morality. To declare that slavery and the slave trade were crimes against humanity would expose those countries to claims for reparations. Even an apology, Blair felt, might have led to calls for reparations. The last leader of government (Bertrand Aristide) to have demanded reparations (from France) was overthrown just two years ago on the 200th anniversary of the revolution that abolished slavery in Haiti. Overthrow was cheaper.
The 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (the Durban Declaration) obligingly refrained from using the word 'reparations'. It used words like 'remedies', 'redress', 'recourse', and 'compensatory mechanisms', which could mean debt relief or trade concessions. The declaration also left a loophole by not explicitly demanding an apology. The slaver countries had threatened to walk out of the conference otherwise. But the loophole left them the opportunity to engage these other compensatory mechanisms.
Europe has not shown the courage to go this route, even though it can well afford to, and is even morally obliged to provide compensatory mechanisms. Europe's enrichment from the slave trade is no longer in dispute. Tony Blair himself acknowledged the correctness of Eric Williams' thesis that slavery was in part responsible for the wealth of Europe and its industrial revolution.
MORAL INCONSISTENCY
Britain and Europe suffer from moral inconsistency. Even as Mr. Blair was expressing shame over the slave trade he was unveiling a decision to spend 20 billion pounds to update Britain's nuclear arsenal. Critics in his own party remind him that nuclear deterrence is a relic of Cold War policy and that the money could be better spent on new crises like climate change and human trafficking. But the war against terrorism is Blair's priority.
Indeed, Britain's policies towards Africa seem more interested in containing terrorism than in investing in economic and human development. Britain is also complicit in the inhumane secret jails and detention without rights being pursued by the Bush administration. Britain, the U.S. and Europe remain unconcerned about apartheid-like conditions in the Israeli-occupied territories of Palestine, as African states, and lately Jimmy Carter, have described these conditions. It is difficult to understand the mindset that can moralise about the shamefulness of the slave trade while stockpiling enough nuclear warheads to blow us all to bits many times over, and supporting apartheid, secret jails and torture.
A Time for Restitution
Which of Britain's estates can jump-start the country's conscience? Does the Church of England have that influence? The Guardian reported a Bishop as saying, "The profits from the slave trade were part of the bedrock of our industrial development. No one who was involved in running the business, financing it or benefiting from its products can say they had clean hands." It continued: "We know that Bishops in the House of Lords with biblical authority voted against the abolition of the slave trade." We also know that the royal families of Europe invested heavily in slave trading companies. The real problem these estates face is moral failure.
So have economists and socio-logists. Adam Smith gave pride of place to the free market for the industrial revolution. Max Weber said the Puritan ethic was behind capitalist industrialisation. We had always suspected that the free market had only succeeded on unfree labour and that the Puritan ethic thrived on an impure morality.
Britain is consumed with doubts about its national character and finds it difficult to admit to moral failure. Probably the churches of Europe - the moral estates - should demand that their governments apologise and make right for crimes against humanity. It is a grand hope that the commemoration of the end of the slave trade might open up a new restitutive moral order in international politics.
States and powerful institutions are being increasingly asked to right the wrongs of genocide, slavery, dispossession of territory, enforced prostitution, drug trafficking, theft, persecution, war, illegal internment, torture, child labour, discriminatory trade, ill-treatment of immigrants, and failure to help people in disaster. Is an apology for the slave trade too much to start with?
Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI. Email: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm
