Last night, on Channel 4, there was a programme called
The Empire Pays Back, in which Dr Robert Beckford argued that the descendents of slaves should be financially compensated for the injustices of the slave trade. He put together a team of an actuary, a compensation lawyer and a historian to calculate how much should be paid. The figure they came up with included unpaid wages, compensation, and the profits and economic growth resulting from the slave trade. The figure was around £2.5trillion, approximately double the GDP of the UK. He argued that this money should be used to compensate Africa, and to invest in community, education and other services for the black British community. Unfortunately, however, Beckford was wrong on just about every point he made. He was right about one thing: the slave trade was bad. However, slavery and empire are not unique evils of the British Empire. More or less every civilisation in history, and certainly every large, powerful civilisation has done exactly the same thing. The Romans had an empire and slaves, as did the Greeks, the Arabs (including white slaves from Europe), and even the African nations and tribes at the time. Britain was not the only empire to have had slavery and imperialism, it was just the biggest and quite recent. In fact, some African nations still have slavery today, and many of the slaves that were shipped across the Atlantic were in fact sold to the slavers by Africans. Therefore, Africans were just as guilty as the British. Beckford does address this issue in his programme. However, he glosses over it, and makes the case (in the approximately 5 seconds that he dedicated to the point) that African nations probably did not benefit from the slave trade in the long term, and therefore cannot be expected to pay compensation. However, his compensation figure was not calculated solely on the long-term benefit to the British economy, but also included compensation for injury, death, mistreatment, unpaid wages etc. The African slave traders were just as complicit in these aspects of the suffering of the slaves as the British slave traders.
The British Empire was in fact the
first major empire to ban slavery from all its colonies, in 1834, and then forced this on other nations. By the mid-19th century, Britain had largely eradicated the world slave trade. This date is also important, as it is 172 years ago, approximately 7 generations. This means that there is not a single person alive today who has ever been a slave in Britain, or any British territory. It also means that the freed slaves and their dependents have had 172 years to do something about their predicament. To blame the social problems of the black British community on a phenomenon that ended 172 years ago seems to me to be a cop out. Even if one takes the view that racism is a direct legacy of slavery, - and there is a case to be made for this - most of the problems faced bytoday'ss black Britons are not due to racism alone. To suggest that it is so is to absolve black people from all blame for anything that goes wrong in their lives, a horribly patronising stance to take. The sooner people like Beckford realise that the only people who can make a genuine difference to the lives of black people in Britain is themselves, the sooner they can get to work on achieving their goals.
But the reasons why financial compensation should not be paid to the descendents of slaves are not purely historical. Any decision to pay damages for slavery, especially on the scale suggested by Beckford, would simply result in the alienation of other groups, particularly white working class communities, who would see it as confirmation of the perception that they are already put at the bottom of the waiting list. This would likely see a huge surge in the popularity of the
BNP and other far-right organisations, resulting in more racist attacks and breakdown of community cohesion. It is therefore in the interests of British society and all its communities that such a path is not followed. Black Britons, and the rest of British society, would benefit far more from moves to bring communities together in a situation of respect and understanding than from seriously divisive moves instigated by black nationalist intellectuals.
It could also be argued that Britain and the West have been paying huge compensation to African nations and black Britons for many years, through aid schemes. Britain gave £720million to Africa in aid last year (not including charity donations) and the amount of aid from the West to Africa between 1960 and 1997 is approximately £220billion. Whilst it can be argued that this figure should be higher (as has recently been the case at G8 and Live8), more may be achieved by ensuring that this aid is used wisely, rather than siphoned off by corrupt African leaders and officials.
Whilst I think that it might be appropriate for Britain to make an apology for the slave trade, I would not want to see this play into the hands of corrupt African rulers, who have also been calling for compensation (despicably, as it was likely the rulers' own ancestors selling their "African brothers" into slavery in the first place), whilst abusing aid, bleeding their own countries dry and starving their people to death.
A recent report estimates that the amount of money stolen from the Nigerian people by corrupt leaders since independence in 1960 is around £220billion.
The only way for Africans and black Britons to improve their lot is to accept responsibility for the task, and to begin to put things right. The constant blaming of empire and slavery for all of their ills will not help anyone.
