Tony Blair and the Slave Trade: “Deep Sorrow” but No Justice

Workers' Daily Internet Edition: Article Index :

Tony Blair and the Slave Trade: “Deep Sorrow” but No Justice

Slavery: A Letter to Tony Blair

Hiding Imperialism under a Cloak of “Benevolence”

A Project of Dispossession Can Never Be a Noble Cause

Tony Blair’s recent expression of “deep sorrow” over the fact “that the slave trade ever happened”, published by the New Nation at the end of November, has already provoked   widespread protests amongst many in the African and Caribbean communities as well as more widely. Even the mainstream press felt compelled to point out that Blair’s sentimental words of “deep sorrow” were more an expression of pragmatism than anything. As usual, the Prime Minister is minded to present himself as the great humanitarian, not only in Britain but on the world stage, finding this the best means to commit even more crimes against humanity in the context of making Britain “Great” again. WDIE condemns these words of Tony Blair for their refusal to settle scores with and take responsibility for these most heinous of crimes against humanity and thereby insulting the memory of the millions of victims of the slave trade and leaving in place the conditions for the present-day enslavement and deaths of millions of victims of imperialist plunder, exploitation, war and aggression.

            The Prime Minister’s statement is being made in advance of the commemorative events which are planned for March 2007, the bicentennial of the abolition by Parliament of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, a commemoration in which the government is playing a leading role [see article in WDIE]. The 1807 Act made it illegal for British ships and citizens to be involved in the trafficking of human beings, millions of whom had been kidnapped from the shores of Africa during the previous three centuries. In the 18th century Britain was the world’s leading trafficker in human flesh. It is estimated that about half of all Africans who were kidnapped and taken across the Atlantic were transported in British ships, but Blair is not even able to honestly present the extent, nor enormity of this crime.

            In his statement Blair suggests that Britain was the first country to abolish this trafficking in human flesh, although this was not the case. Denmark was the first by some four years.  He obviously wishes to claim some glory for the “mother of all parliaments”. But the Act of 1807 was only passed because the representatives of the rich who voted for it calculated that its was to Britain’s economic and strategic advantage to do so, and at the same time that it might divert attention from the politically unpopular, reactionary and lengthy war which was being fought against France and its allies at the time. No doubt Blair and his government are hoping to create a similar diversion, from the war crimes committed in Iraq, Afghanistan, in Africa itself and elsewhere, while at the same time wishing to present themselves as the nature successors to those they claim were the great humanitarians of the 19th century.

            It is no doubt with this in mind that Blair suggested that the bicentenary not only allows the expression of “deep sorrow” but also the chance to “rejoice at the different and better times we live in today”. For someone who is allegedly preoccupied with the fact that Africa is a “scar on the conscience of humanity”, it is difficult to understand how the Prime Minister can believe there is much occasion for rejoicing for the majority of Africans who live on less than $1 a day. It is clear that he is unable to make any causal link between the exploitation of the African continent by Britain and others in the past and its impoverishment today. He is also wholly silent on the rape and plunder of that continent which occurred after 1807, in which Britain also played and continues to play a leading role. It is noteworthy that for Africa there is no mention by Blair of the necessary reparation for all the crimes that British governments have carried out. On the contrary he proudly champions the doubling of enslaving “aid” privatisation and other means to continue Britain’s exploitation of the continent and interference in its affairs.

            The exploitation of the African continent and its peoples, as well as the exploitation of the people of Britain and other parts of the world has created the great wealth which the country has at its disposal. Yet even Blair is forced to admit that inequality is still a feature of modern life, not only in terms of the racism that is the legacy of colonial oppression but also for the working people of Britain a whole, as a consequence of the fact that wealth is still in the hands of the few. Far from being able to rejoice at the “different and better times we live in today”, it is a fact that life in Britain is still dominated by a political and economic system that is controlled by and benefits the rich, just as it did in 1807. Not only that, but the Blair government is intent on carrying forward Britain’s so-called “civilising mission”, the essence of which is of the superiority of a mythical “British way of life” and regards other civilisations, particularly of Africa as those of lesser human beings. Indeed, this is an outlook that these are not civilisations at all, that their history only began with colonialism, that they have no history and hence seeks to erase their humanity, and lauds the “aid” and “humanity” of the big powers and the universality of Anglo-American values, institutions and thought material.

            It is not just an issue of condemning Tony Blair for his sanctimonious and hypocritical statement on the trafficking of human flesh but of condemning all the crimes of the British governments of the past and of the present. The people themselves must draw the appropriate lessons from history and organise themselves to become the decision makers so that they may settle scores with the old conscience and ensure that reparation is made for slavery, colonialism and all crimes against humanity.

 

December 6, 2006
From:
Cikiah Thomas.
Chair, Global Afrikan Congress.
Cc: GAC IWC Members and Ambassadors
GAC International Reparations Commission: Mr. Clarence Ellis - GAC USA; Mr Amani Olubanjo Buntu - GAC Secretary General; Mr. Kimani Nuhusi - GAC UK
           
           
To:
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Rt. Hon Tony Blair
10 Downing Street
London, England
           
Dear Prime Minister Blair:

Re: Taking responsibility for the British role in the European Trade in Afrikans as Slaves, Enslavement and Colonial exploitation

           
I am writing to you in my capacity as Chair of the Global Afrikan Congress to inform you of our profound disappointment that you have failed to do the right thing and acknowledge the full responsibility of the British government for the state sponsored kidnapping, rape, enslavement, dehumanisation and denial of individual and collective personality of millions of Afrikans that were victimised by slavery and colonialisation.

            That acknowledgement should be accompanied by a statement of unreserved apology to the descendants of the British enslaved Afrikans who continue to this day to bear the burdensome legacy of slavery and colonialism.

            You should have demonstrated a moral and legal understanding of the continuing catastrophic effects on Afrikan people today as a result of their ancestors being treated as chattel slaves, mere property as listed in inventories of British plantations.

            Today you have British troops fighting in Iraq for so-called human rights, democracy and freedom. We ask of you Prime Minister Blair, what about the freedom and human rights of millions of Afrikans who are the descendants of the victims of the crimes of the British government, military, companies and families, including British royalty? How could you, as someone trained in the legal profession, conceive and repeat the nonsensical argument that the British 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th century crimes were legal? Why are you still demonstrating disrespect for Afrikan civilisation, customs, integrity, governance principles and rules of law? Why are you still reinforcing the white supremacy ideology to justify these horrendous crimes and adding insult to injury by suggesting that the rules of Afrikan governance were inconsequential?

            The Global Afrikan Congress feels very strongly that you should stop insulting Afrikan people and the dignity of our ancestors, who through the pain of servitude, the suffering of oppression and the indignity of subjugation fought to free themselves from the most barbaric crimes committed in human history. The 2007 bicentenary of the British Empire ending of the trade in Afrikans as slaves must be a time when your government seeks atonement and begins to right the wrongs of history as opposed to crediting some British parliamentarian and other members of British high society for the freedom of Afrikans. Afrikans fought for and won their freedom against great odds and for the damage they suffered they must be paid reparations.

            Why are you championing the causes of other victims of crimes against humanity and yet refuse to take responsibility for the crime that is inextricably linked to Britain's wealth, human development and industrialisation? Why are you refusing to play your part in a world where Afrikans in England can not enjoy the same human rights and privileges like white people? Why are you not addressing the alarming rate of imprisonment and mental institutionalisation of Afrikans in Britain? Why are you not part of the process that would see a world with *fair* trade practices and a new international economic and social order?

            We believe that as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, you should on January 1st, 2007 announce to the world that you are committed to repairing the enormous damage that has been done to Black people by establishing an International Commission to recommend to the British government, families and companies the form in which reparations payment is to be made.

            I want to take this opportunity to remind you that the concept of reparations is not new and that at the time of the 1834 emancipation of Afrikans from direct slavery in the Caribbean, reparations was paid to the slave owners. The emancipation legislation in each and every Caribbean country made provision for reparations to be paid. This payment of reparations was made to the slave owners as if to reward the horror and injustice of their actions over centuries. In other words, the benefits of ending slavery in the British slave owning colonies went not to the victims but to the criminals who received a sum total of 20 million pounds sterling.

            The economic and social underdevelopment of Afrikans on the continent and in the diaspora is a direct result of the European slave trade and enslavement by which all the wealth created by Afrikan slaves were used for past and present development of European societies.

            The racist social and economic development policies created by the British Empire are present for any well thinking person to see. The Empire ensured that white settler colonies such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand enjoyed industrial development with the wealth created by Blacks, while Black majority colonies remain perpetually underdeveloped.

            We urge you to reconsider the ill advised and inadequate statements you made on the verge of the bicentenary of the great victory of Afrikans over the British trade in Afrikans as slaves. We also urge you to correct the long running injustice Afrikans and Afrikan descendants have suffered for centuries. We ask that you give Afrikans the respect and equality all human beings deserve and that you take the responsibility for starting this process in 2007.

            Afrikans also have the sense of justice and human decency you have been advocating over the last few years on the international political stage, and should be treated accordingly. In that sense reparations and compensation are in order.

            Yours truly

            Cikiah Thomas. Chair, Global Afrikan Congress.

Cc: GAC IWC Members and Ambassadors
GAC International Reparations Commission
Mr. Clarence Ellis - GAC USA
Mr Amani Olubanjo Buntu - GAC Secretary General
Mr. Kimani Nuhusi - GAC UK

Media Lens, November 22, 2006

The title above Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's column yesterday in the Independent was a real corker, joining our list of banal nuggets from the liberal media: “Even when our foreign policy is benevolent, it appears condescending and exploitative.” (The Independent, November 20)

            In the article, the columnist mocked Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for their efforts to "sort out" Pakistan and Iraq on their recent respective trips there. She wrote of "hubristic European nations", western leaders "dictating to the non-Western world as if they own it by right" and the "old colonial lens" through which many liberals see the world. Nowhere did Alibhai-Brown state or imply that "our" foreign policy is "benevolent". Indeed, she disparaged the notion of the "white man's burden", calling it by its real name: "imperialism".

            When we asked Alibhai-Brown what she thought of the misleading title given to her column by an Independent subeditor, she replied: "they do what they do I guess, often independently of what writers write." (Email, November 21, 2006)

            But the title was no mere slip; it fits an ideological pattern to which the liberal media conform religiously. The standard doctrine states that since, by definition, "we" are the "good guys", British foreign policy is essentially benevolent. In elite circles, it may sometimes be admitted that, in the execution of benevolent policies, occasional "mistakes" or "misjudgements" are made.

            Thus, for example, a recent editorial in the Independent referred to "the costly folly of the Iraq war", "a terrible mistake" based on "misjudgements" that had led to a "catastrophic mess." (Leading article, “Three countries, two discredited leaders and one disastrous mistake”, The Independent, October 21, 2006. For an earlier example taken from the BBC news, see our media alert, “The Mythology of Mistakes”, October 5, 2004).

The Supreme International Criminal Magically Transformed Into a “Formidable Leader”

Whether "our" leaders' orders are criminal or merely mistakes, we must "contemplate the heroism of the men and women who risk their lives on our behalf in the armed forces." (Leading article, “Stop the Clocks”, Independent on Sunday, November 12, 2006)

            How and why they are doing this "on our behalf" is left hanging in the ether.

            Sadly, laments one editorial, "the war in Iraq helped to undermine the moral legitimacy of the Western military presence in Afghanistan." (Leading article, “Blair's bloody bequest”, Independent on Sunday, September 10, 2006)

            In particular, "reports of prisoner abuse" by British and American forces have led to "a critical erosion in our moral authority." (Leading article, “How to lose the moral war”, Independent on Sunday, February 19, 2006)

            The case for "our moral authority" need not be tested or examined, but merely presented as fact.

            Again, only "mistakes" can be admitted. Thus, when Tony Blair gave his last party conference speech as Labour leader, The Independent noted: "A single speech cannot wipe out the calamitous mistakes Mr Blair has made since he resolved long ago to form a close friendship with President Bush" (Leading article, “A tour de force from a leader with awkward months ahead”, The Independent, September 27, 2006) Nonetheless, "the speech was a reminder of why Mr Blair has been such a formidable leader."

            To the Independent, then, Blair remains a "formidable leader" despite having launched an aggressive war - the supreme international crime by the standards of Nuremberg - resulting in the deaths of around 655,000 Iraqis, a destabilised Middle East and the increased threat of terrorist attacks.

The Moral Puzzle of Waging War by High Ethical Standards

In such a twisted ideological world-view, there is even a moral case for the 1960s US invasion of Vietnam which led to the deaths of 3 million or more in Indochina: "Nothing destroyed the moral case for the US war in Vietnam quite so effectively as the complicity of American forces in the use of torture." (Leading article, “Keep torturers out of UK airspace”, Independent on Sunday, December 4, 2005)

            So, US aims in Vietnam may well have been noble, but the execution was flawed by torture. The editors continue, woefully wringing their hands: "Of the many lessons of that conflict which optimists hoped the US had learnt, this was surely one of the most important: that it is impossible to maintain the support of domestic opinion for military engagement abroad unless it is conducted by high ethical standards."

            How to undertake war, or rather "military engagement", by sticking to "high ethical standards" is an interesting moral problem that need not detain the leader writer. However, one thing is clear: "Torture forfeits the high moral ground so essential to maintaining and/or winning popular consent."

            What a shame this forfeit has now occurred given that: "Before the Prime Minister decided to join President Bush in this reckless adventure [in Iraq], Mr Blair had done much to rehabilitate the doctrine of humanitarian intervention." (Leading article, “An unpopular war, by any measure”, The Independent, October 24, 2006)

            In those halcyon days, in the early years of the New Labour government: "Intervention in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, even Afghanistan, seemed to be a vindication of Mr Blair's outlook. An ethical foreign policy seemed possible."

            The Independent continued: "But then came the distortions and lies over Iraq - and the tarnishing of Britain's good name internationally in the unseemly rush to war." Britain's "good name" around the globe is assumed, conveniently overlooking centuries of imperialism, followed by stalwart support for US hegemony since WW2.

            As for New Labour's "ethical dimension" to foreign policy, a discreet silence now reigns. That convenient mantra, echoed by the liberal media, belied an utterly discredited mythology of “benevolence” as a veil for raw imperialism. (See “The Dark Heart of Robin Cook's ‘Ethical’ Foreign Policy”, Parts 1 and 2, August 22 and 24, 2005;  www.medialens.org/alerts/05/050822_ the_dark_heart_of_robin_cook.php;
www.medialens.org/alerts/05/050824_the_ dark_heart_of_robin_cook_part2.php)

The Invisible Humanitarian Aims of UK Foreign Policy

As mentioned in previous alerts, British historian Mark Curtis has shown how the primary aim of British policy-makers has been, and remains, to protect "favourable investment climates" for western corporations around the globe. This has been at the expense of human rights, social justice and environmental sustainability. State support for corporate profit opportunities has often required dealing with recalcitrant “Third World” governments who refuse to comply with western demands. This is the real motivation for numerous British and US military interventions around the globe, including Iraq.

            As for any "humanitarian" intent to foreign policy, Curtis notes that:

"humanitarian concerns do not figure at all in the rationale behind British foreign policy. In the thousands of government files I have looked through for this and other books, I have barely seen any reference to human rights at all. Where such concerns are evoked, they are only for public-relations purposes." (Curtis, “Unpeople”, Vintage, 2004, p. 3)

            This simple truth has somehow eluded the attention of the ideologically bound managers, editors and reporters of the Independent, and of the liberal media as a whole.

Ahdaf Soueif, The Guardian, 17 November 2006

Before Donald Rumsfeld departed from the Pentagon, the "Transformation Group" he headed worked with an Israeli army team to develop ideas for controlling the Palestinians after Israel withdraws from the occupied territories. Eyal Weizman, an Israeli academic who has written about this cooperation, tells us that they decided to do this through an invisible occupation: Israel would "seal the hard envelopes" around Palestinian towns and generate "effects" directed against the "human elements of resistance".

            We saw this concept being implemented in Beit Hanoun last week when the Israeli army killed 19 sleeping people with a missile attack.

            The world can look forward to more of the same. According to Weizman, the chief of staff of the Israeli armed forces, Dan Halutz, confirms that the Israeli army sees the conflict as "unresolvable". It has "geared itself to operate within an environment saturated with conflict and within a future of permanent violence ... it sees itself acting just under the threshold of international sanctions ... keeping the conflict on a flame low enough for Israeli society to be able to live and prosper within it." So here's another function for the separation wall Israel is building: to shield Israeli society from too close a knowledge of the brutal acts their army carries out in their name.

            And yet Israeli intellectuals wonder at the malaise that grips their country. Two Nobel Prize laureates, Yisrael Aumann and Aaron Ciechanover, were recently quoted bemoaning the "fatal disease: the depletion of spirit ... [the] cancer that has spread through Israeli society". They attribute it to a kind of generalised "selfishness" which, oddly, they think may be OK in Switzerland but not in Israel. It's nothing to do with "the enemy" they say, because they can handle the enemy with their "wisdom and technology". Again, as we saw in Beit Hanoun.

            Einstein, their distinguished predecessor, expressed grave doubts about political Zionism. A letter he signed, published in the New York Times in December 1948, warned against the emergence in Israel of (the future prime minister) Menachem Begin's "Freedom party". It cited Deir Yassin, where Begin and friends, eight months earlier, had killed 240 men, women and children and "were proud of this massacre". "This," the letter goes on, "is the unmistakable stamp of a fascist party for whom terrorism ... and misrepresentation are means, and a 'leader state' is the goal." Professors Aumann and Ciechanover might consider what Einstein would have made of the scenes in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiye over the last several weeks.

            David Grossman seemed to many commentators to be evoking Hamlet in his Rabin memorial address on November 4, published in the Guardian. But when Grossman in effect argued that something was rotten in the state of Denmark he was merely referring to the lack of a "king" in Israel – a leader "to appeal to the Palestinians over the heads of Hamas" to start another peace process. But the peace processes the Palestinians have been subjected to have only led to their further dispossession.

            The Palestinians elected Hamas last January because two decades of interacting with a variety of Israeli governments has bankrupted the secular Palestinian leadership politically and morally. So the wish to engage in yet more talks, to get the "peace process" back on track, is either catastrophically blind or expresses ill faith. It always comes with lamentations over a "noble" project that has somehow gone wrong.

            The secret rotting at the core of the state of Israel is its refusal to admit that the Zionist project in Palestine – to create a state based on the dispossession of the non-Jewish inhabitants of the land – was never noble: the land it coveted was the home of another people, and the fathers of the Israeli nation killed, terrorised and displaced them to turn the project into actuality. But the Palestinian nation lives on – visibly and noisily and everywhere. To make its own denial stick, Israel has to deny and suppress Palestinian history. To impose its design on Palestine, it has to somehow make the Palestinians disappear.

            "Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill"; and so the ethnocide continues. The new deputy prime minister, Avigdor Lieberman, plots against the Palestinians within Israel. The Israeli army kills and terrorises the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Zionists and their friends are desperate to silence the voices of and for Palestine.

            Meanwhile, Israel insists it is civilised, decent, peaceable – a light unto nations. How can a society caught in such delusion thrive? And how can people living within the Zionist project as privileged Jewish citizens bewail their embattled lot or be puzzled by it? Liberal Israelis of the left should heed another couple of lines from the bard: "Glamis hath murder'd sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more."

            Israel will not be well until it acknowledges its past and makes amends for it. The process has a name: truth and reconciliation. Israelis cannot remain within the Zionist framework and profit from it and think of themselves as good citizens of the world. Many thoughtful and brave Israelis have made a choice. Some have left Israel, others remain. Practically all have made it their life's mission to expose how Zionism really works – and what it costs.

            Since 1988, initiatives, peace talks and road maps have aimed to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with its capital in Jerusalem, and to do justly by the Palestinian refugees. For 12 years none of this happened, and first-hand accounts of the Camp David talks in 2000 show that Israel did not have the political will then to make the necessary minimum offer. Presumably it still doesn't; hence the "sealed envelopes". But, perhaps because the stakes are now so high, people are once again speaking of the visionary solution: the secular democratic state, a homeland for both Israelis and Palestinians.

            The Palestinian social scientist Ali Abunimah and the Israeli historian Ilan Pappé's recent books are the latest to make the case for this. They find hope, as Pappé puts it, in "those sections of Jewish society in Israel that have chosen to let themselves be shaped by human considerations rather than Zionist social engineering" and in "the majority of the Palestinians who have refused to let themselves be dehumanised by decades of brutal Israeli occupation and who, despite years of expulsion and oppression, still hope for reconciliation".