In a ground-breaking decision last month, the students of Georgetown University, Washington DC, agreed to levy a fee of $54 a year payable by every student into a reparations fund to give educational assistance to the descendants of slaves once owned by the University.
When slavery was abolished in the USA there were many slaves owned by Georgetown University who were set free without any compensation for the years they had served the College. At last this injustice is being recognised and the students want to help the descendants of the slaves by providing bursaries for them to enable them to meet the $70,000-a-year cost of education at the University.
Students in Glasgow University are considering doing something similar, but surely it is time for Britain as a nation, not just our student population, to acknowledge the enormity of our national injustice when it comes to the issue of slavery.
This injustice has never been admitted, despite evidence published by University College London’s investigative team, who studied documents showing the enormous sums of money paid to British slave-owners when their slaves were set free by the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act.
The Case for Compensation
The British Treasury paid out some £20 million compensation to the owners of slaves for the loss of their human ‘property’, but not a penny was paid to the slaves themselves in compensation for the years of grinding labour and appalling cruelty they suffered in the sugar plantations of Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and the smaller islands of the British Empire in the Caribbean.
No British Government wants to face this injustice and the case for reparations in the Caribbean, where a lack of industrial and technological investment continues to condemn millions to living in poverty and to a lack of educational opportunities for improving their lifestyles.
The British Treasury paid some £20 million compensation to the owners of slaves for the loss of their human ‘property’, but not a penny was paid to the slaves themselves.
Nevertheless, even if we choose to ignore the plight of the Caribbean islands, we cannot continue to deny that there is a legacy of slavery right here in our towns and cities across the UK, where knife crime, black-on-black violence, fatherlessness, ill-health, educational underachievement and poverty (all issues connected to a history of slavery) characterise many Caribbean communities in Britain.
The Movement for Justice and Reconciliation
The Movement for Justice and Reconciliation (MJR), of which I am a founding member and trustee, has carried out research showing the extent of the problems facing black youth in modern Britain and works to raise public awareness about this issue.
Replica slave ship, sailed up the Thames in 2007 to commemorate 200 years since the abolition of slavery. See Photo Credits.
Back in 2007, at the time of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, we sailed a replica 18th-Century square rigger slaver up the River Thames, through Tower Bridge, into the Pool of London. We moored there and linked it with a public exhibition of British colonial slavery based in All Hallows by the Tower.
Thousands came to see the ship at Tower Pier and the on-board exhibition, including large numbers from the Caribbean communities in the UK whose forebears would have travelled from Africa to the Caribbean islands on ships such as this. There were emotional scenes as they went below deck and looked at the iron chains and slatted shelves where the Africans were packed closely together for the horrendous journey across the Atlantic, during which some three million are said to have drowned.
The Zong Project
MJR’s future plans are to use a similar sailing ship as part of a leadership training project for young people from the Caribbean communities in Britain. As a step towards this, plans are in hand for sailing the ship around the British ports that were involved in the slave trade through the 300-year period prior to the 19th Century abolition. A lot of work has already been done to establish community groups in Plymouth, Ilfracombe, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, Lancaster and Whitehaven, where the ship will visit.
MJR’s future plans are to use replica slave ship as part of a leadership training project for young people from the Caribbean communities in Britain.
Part of the purpose of sailing a replica of the notorious slaver, The Zong, into these ports is to raise public awareness of the horror of their social history and of the legacy that still exists today among the descendants of those who were transported from Africa to satisfy the sugar lust of Europeans.
The Liverpool-based Zong was the most notorious of the British sailing fleet involved in the human trade. In 1788 it sailed from the West Coast of Africa with more than 400 Africans on board – a journey that took nearly three months due to contrary winds. Upon nearing Jamaica, the Captain realised that many of the Africans were emaciated and would not fetch a good price on the slave market, so he threw 133 live men and women into the sea so that he could claim insurance money on them. This is featured in the film Belle, which tells the true story of the legal battle involving The Zong.
This is a part of British history that has been ignored for 200 years but is coming back to haunt us now in the communities of deprivation we have allowed to develop in so many of our towns and cities across the UK.
The Zong sailing ship project is a Christian initiative designed to make a difference in the lives of young people in inner-city communities. More information is available on the MJR website . If you would like to be actively involved, helping financially or practically in the community groups in any of the ports, or sailing on board the ship between ports, you can contact MJR Secretary Jenny Cooper at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Find out more about the Movement for Justice and Reconciliation on the MJR website, www.mjr-uk.com. See also previous coverage on Prophecy Today UK, here and here.
