Abolition’s Bicentenary: Sorrow Expressed, Justice Withheld

Quarterly Jamaica Windrush & Diaspora Update | Published: 3 July 2007 | Period covered: January–June 2007

Key Developments at a Glance

• 25 March 2007: Bicentenary of the Slave Trade Abolition Act marked with national events in Britain and across the Caribbean.
• Tony Blair expresses ‘deep sorrow’ for slavery in a New Nation article and in Parliament; stops short of a formal apology.
• Caribbean community and CARICOM leaders say Blair’s expression of sorrow does not meet the standard of justice required.
• Bristol, Liverpool, and London hold major bicentenary commemorations; Portia Simpson Miller attends London events.
• Reparations debate intensifies in Britain, Jamaica and across CARICOM in the bicentenary year.
• Tony Blair announces he will leave office by end of June 2007; Gordon Brown confirmed as his successor.

The bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act — the legislation passed by the British Parliament on 25 March 1807 that made it illegal for British ships to engage in the transatlantic slave trade — is the organising event of the first half of 2007 for the Caribbean diaspora in Britain and for Jamaica and the wider Caribbean. Two hundred years on, the reckoning that the bicentenary demands is neither simple nor comfortable. Britain made abolition in 1807, but the enslaved did not become free; full emancipation in the British Caribbean came in 1834 and in practice 1838, and was accompanied by compensation — paid not to the formerly enslaved but to their enslavers. The bicentenary of the Act is, at one level, the anniversary of the beginning of a process; at another, it is the occasion for a long-overdue national conversation about what is owed.

Blair’s ‘Deep Sorrow’: Falling Short

In the weeks before and after 25 March 2007, Prime Minister Tony Blair made a series of statements addressing the bicentenary and the legacy of slavery. In an article published in the New Nation newspaper, aimed at the Black British readership, Blair wrote that he felt “deep sorrow” for Britain’s role in the slave trade. In parliamentary statements, he acknowledged the trade as a “crime against humanity”. These were significant statements — stronger than anything said by previous British Prime Ministers — and they were widely reported.

But they were not an apology. And for the Caribbean community in Britain, for CARICOM heads of government, and for reparations advocates across the Black world, the distinction matters. An expression of “deep sorrow” is a personal sentiment; an apology is a legal and political act that carries implications for accountability and remedy. The Caribbean Reparations Commission and its predecessor organisations have argued consistently that a formal state apology from the British government is a necessary precondition for any serious engagement with the reparations question. Blair’s formulation, carefully worded to express emotion without creating legal or political liability, was seen in much of the Caribbean community as a statement designed to achieve the appearance of acknowledgement while avoiding its substance.

Portia Simpson Miller, Jamaica’s Prime Minister, attended events in London and was forthright in her view that Britain needed to go further. CARICOM’s communiqué on the bicentenary called for formal acknowledgement of the crimes of slavery and the slave trade as violations of international law, and for a process of engagement on the question of reparatory justice. The communiqué stopped short of specifying financial amounts — the CARICOM Reparations Commission, which will attempt to quantify the claim, is not yet formally constituted — but was unambiguous that the bicentenary of abolition is not a moment for celebration by the perpetrators. Two hundred years of impunity is not, the communiqué stated, a basis for declaring the account closed.

Commemorations: Bristol, Liverpool, London and Beyond

The national programme of bicentenary commemorations in Britain in 2007 is extensive and, in parts, genuinely moving. Bristol — a city whose Georgian prosperity was substantially built on profits from the slave trade and the plantation economy it sustained — holds events that include public installations, academic conferences, and community-led walks connecting the city’s slave trade history to its present geography. Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum, opened in August 2007 on the Albert Dock waterfront, will become a permanent institutional acknowledgement of the city’s role in the trade. In London, events at Trafalgar Square, the Tate Modern, the Museum of London, and dozens of community venues mark the date with art, testimony, and political debate.

The Caribbean community in Britain has been central to shaping the bicentenary programme, pressing for it to be not merely an exercise in national self-congratulation about abolition but an honest engagement with the full history: with what slavery was, with the profits extracted from it, with the compensation paid to slaveholders in 1833, and with the continuing economic consequences for the Caribbean nations whose wealth was systematically looted over two and a half centuries. This argument — that abolition was a beginning, not an end, and that the bicentenary is an occasion for reckoning rather than celebration — has not been universally adopted by the official programme. But it has been heard, and it is shaping the public discourse in ways that would have been difficult to imagine a decade ago.

Blair Departs: A Legacy Assessed

Tony Blair’s announcement that he would step down as Prime Minister before the end of June 2007 invites an assessment of his decade in office from the perspective of Jamaica and the Caribbean diaspora in Britain. The assessment is mixed. Blair’s governments oversaw the introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998, which has been used by Caribbean community organisations to challenge deportations; the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, which extended the duty not to discriminate to public bodies; and significant investment in public services from which Caribbean communities, with their high rates of NHS employment and public sector engagement, benefited substantially. On these counts, the Blair years represent real progress.

Against this must be set the progressive tightening of immigration controls; the introduction of citizenship tests and ceremonies that some community leaders argue impose a burden of proof of belonging on people whose families have been British for generations; the detention and deportation policies that have separated Caribbean-heritage families; and, above all, the expression of sorrow without apology on slavery. For many in the Caribbean community, Blair’s legacy is that of a leader who understood the importance of diversity and race equality in the abstract but did not follow that understanding to its most demanding political conclusions. As he leaves office and Gordon Brown prepares to take over, the community’s relationship with Labour remains committed but no longer unconditional.

Sources: Jamaica Information Service; The Gleaner; Jamaica Observer; New Nation; Caribbean National Weekly; BBC News; Reuters; AP; The Guardian; Runnymede Trust; CARICOM Secretariat; Jamaica High Commission London; House of Commons Hansard; International Slavery Museum (Liverpool); Black Cultural Archives; The Guardian.

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