Britain was built on the backs of slaves. A memorial is the least they deserve

[Soph0571]

As I and others have argued before, one reason that British people feel complacent about Britain’s role in pioneering slavery, and the racism that underpinned it, is that it happened slightly farther away. The Caribbean is Britain’s own Deep South, where enslavement and segregation as brutal as anything that existed on American soil took place at the hands of British people. And that distance facilitates denial.

If there is one useful thing we can all do this Black History Month, it is to bridge that distance. And that raises the question: why is there no memorial to enslaved Africans, on whose backs Britain was built, on British soil?
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It’s true that the country’s treatment of people descended from this history could not be more shameful. From the institutionalised racism they experienced fighting for Britain in both world wars, to the attempts to deport members of the Windrush generation just last year, they have endured the worst of what Britain has had to offer.

But this campaign is not requesting a favour for a marginal section of society. The history of how we came to be this nation is a history for us all. If we can’t dignify it with a simple memorial, one whose location, design, importance and even planning permission have already been established, then we really have lost the plot.

[link:https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/23/memorial-2007-enslaved-africans-black-history-britain|]

We are very good as a nation at brushing this under the carpet. They deserve more than just a memorial, but this is a far right government that only does things that keep them in power and stats show in the crudest sense that black people do not vote for Tories... simples.

And as one commentator at the end of the article put so well: Cue a billion posts explaining how the fact that the empire abolished slavery is sufficient reason never too talk about the rest, or to consider the empire justified. There will also be plenty of self justification (it was a better empire than others) and whataboutery (it was other black people what done it), and a sheer bloody-minded refusal to recognise the specific slavery (which does not need to be the worst ever, the only or eternal to merit memorial) in question.

[bobbieinok]

1. Was stunned to learn about 10yrs ago that Elizabeth I started the practice of African slavery

[Doodley]

2. It was the elite, the Lords in their manors and mansions, and those connected to royalty who

profited from slavery. They didn't treat the indigenous British population well either - they were their servants, their farmers, their sweatshop workers who had no right to vote or ability to generate wealth. They had no idea what the elite were doing in other nations. I don't know if it is fair to say the Brits are complacent. Most are not happy with Britain's role in the world, but they weren't part of it. They were victims of the class system too, and many are still fighting against it.