Slavery: Sorry seems to be hardest word

Published on Monday 27 November 2006 00:16

TONY Blair's attempts to condemn Britain's role in the slave trade without making a full apology have been attacked as "spin".

In a newspaper article today, the Prime Minister issued an "expression of regret" for Britain's involvement in the forcible transportation of millions of Africans through British ports, including Glasgow and Liverpool.

However, he stopped short of taking responsibility for the horrors inflicted on past generations; such a move could have opened up the government to claims for reparations and been contentious with "middle-England" voters.

Now anti-slavery campaigners are urging black and white working class Britons to "reclaim" government-organised commemorations on the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery on 25 March next year. They claim ministers are emphasising the "white middle class" contributions to the abolition of slavery while largely ignoring the role that Africans' own uprising played.

In a written statement to the Commons this week,

Mr Blair will set out the government's programme of events, led by John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister and Hull MP, whose predecessor William Wilberforce led calls in the late 18th century to abolish slavery.

In an article published today in the New Nation newspaper, Mr Blair said of the human trafficking which killed more than a million Africans: "It is hard to believe what would now be a crime against humanity was legal at the time.

"I believe the bicentenary offers us a chance not just to say how profoundly shameful the slave trade was - how we condemn its existence utterly and praise those who fought for its abolition - but also to express our deep sorrow that it could ever have happened and rejoice at the better times we live in today."

The word "sorry" is not used by the Prime Minister in relation to Britain's role in the transportation of about 11 million Africans.

Rendezvous of Victory, a campaign group, has criticised the emphasis of the bicentenary committee on what it describes as a "white middle-class movement" represented by Wilberforce. Britain stopped shipping slaves in 1807 but it was not until 1833, a month after his death, that all slaves in the British Empire were freed.

The group says Africans were agents of their own liberation, and that their resistance and the contribution of white working-class British people have been largely ignored by the government

Kofi Mawuli Klu, of Rendezvous of Victory, said

the government's claim that the expression of regret was unprecedented was false. "In 1807, the passing of the slave abolition act was accompanied by an expression of regret. Now it is being spun as a new development," he said.

Oona King, the former Labour MP whose father was a leading civil rights activist, said Mr Blair's remarks would not go far enough for some activists.

However, Andrew Rosindell, the Conservative MP for Romford, said the role Britain played in abolishing slavery deserved to be acknowledged and there was no need for an apology.

• GOVERNMENTS will often stop short of issuing full apologies for past injustices, for fear of triggering reparation claims.

While some multinationals have apologised for their historic support of the slave trade, the United States' appeal court is to hear a class action lawsuit by African Americans against large firms including Lloyds of London.

Politicians are perhaps worried an apology will trigger similar action against governments.

However, the Church of England, which owned the Codrington plantation in Barbados, in February apologised for its role in the trade.

At the World Conference Against Racism in South Africa in 2001, Juan Carlos Aparicio, Spain's labour and social affairs minister, said of African slavery: "We profoundly regret the injustices of the past."

Former US president Bill Clinton, ever the lawyer, in 1998 said: "Surely every American knows that slavery was wrong, and we paid a terrible price for [it], and that we had to keep repairing that. And just to say that it's wrong and that we are sorry about it is not a bad thing. That doesn't weaken us."

However, at the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria's president, called for an apology by "the states which actively practised and benefited themselves from slavery" for "the historical wrongs that are owed to the victims of slavery".