Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners

[Blackstar*]

Has anyone seen the BBC documentary?
Here is a summary:

David Olusoga finds out about Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners and as he forensically examining the compensation records, he learns about the surprising range of people who owned slaves.

He also looks at how slavery serves as the foundation for Britain's economic development and how pro-slavery arguments are still being used in today's political discourse.

[j-kid]

What is the actual name of the documentary?

[Tropicana]

Quick before they take it down:

David Olusoga’s two-part documentary Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners(BBC2) concluded last night by following the money. The money in question was that paid to the slave owners to compensate them for the loss of their human property when slavery was finally officially abolished in 1834. A 10-man committee divvied up nearly £17bn in today’s money among 46,000 claimants stretching across the entire British empire, from £800 or so to a country vicar for his single servant to £80m for John Gladstone’s (father of prime minister William) loss of thousands of unpaid workers on his plantations in Guyana. Not a penny, of course, was paid to the slaves themselves.The compensation money was drawn largely from consumption taxes, as income tax didn’t exist at the time, which effectively meant the poor paid for it. The disproportionate extra whack they paid for basic goods set those who had already grown fat on the profits of slave labour nicely ever after. They were able to diversify, investing in industry, insurance and institutions whose income streams would balance each others’ fluctuations out and keep flowing nicely down the generations. This useful injection of taxpayer cash enabled its recipients to avoid any hardship once their indefensibly exploitative bubble burst and freed them to concentrate on other things, like building country piles, grooming their sons for government and ensuring that no more than seven families actually matter in Britain at any one time. It’s a good thing history never repeats itself.
Olusoga was able to provide us with a detailed and vivid picture of the spread of slavery profits through the British economy largely thanks to research done by a team of historians at University College London. They have been combing through the 46,000 entries in the Slavery Compensation Commissions accounts books and following the paper trails thereafter. The collated results are free to all at ucl.ac.uk/lbs.
More pernicious still, and as instrumental in shaping our cultural and imaginative landscapes as the money was in our physical and institutional landscapes, were the ideas unleashed and promulgated during the propaganda war between the abolitionists and their opponents. Black people, the latter argued desperately but influentially, were childlike savages who needed the firm, white, paternal hand of discipline to save them from themselves and their innate inferiority. Slavery was abolished (officially – the end of it in practice would take years) but the underlying ideas, theories and attitudes endure. Programmes like this, and thoughtful, thorough, unswerving guides like Olusoga bring them into the light. Because it would be a good thing if history stopped repeating itself

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/jul/23/britains-forgotten-slave-owners-review

[Tropicana]

I think this segment was overly harsh:

Whitewashing slavery

David Olusoga examines James Hakewill’s sanitised vision of slavery. The images were used by British slave owners in their vicious propaganda war to defend their trade.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02wr28z

Artists are under no obligation to reflect reality in their work. I am grateful for the book of watercolors. You can get a digital copy online.

[Tropicana]

This is interesting:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02xl8km

The crux of the matter - very important:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02wr1lc

[Tropicana]

Rothschilds bankrolled Brittain's massive payout to slaveowners.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7c0f5014-628c-11de-b1c9-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3gp0kvpVg

How many people on here knew that?

Unfortunately, I can't share excerpts.

High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article.

[Tropicana]

March 2007 – SlaveryTony Blair received criticism from some quarters when he expressed his “sorrow” over Britain’s role in the slave trade but stopped short of a full apology. The following year he used the word “sorry”.
“I have said we are sorry and I say it again,” said the Prime Minister after talks with Ghanaian president John Agyekum Kufuor.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said he was "sorry" for his country's role in the slave trade.
Blair has previously expressed "deep sorrow" for slavery, abolished within the British empire 200 years ago, but has been criticised by black rights organisations for not going further.
"Well actually I have said it: We are sorry. And I say it again now," Blair told a news conference, when asked why he had previously stopped short of saying "sorry".
"For us, the most important thing though is obviously to remember what happened in the past and to condemn it and say why it was so entirely unacceptable," he said during a news conference with Ghana's President John Kufuor.
Between 10 million and 28 million Africans were shipped in appalling conditions to the Americas and sold into slavery between 1450 and the early 19th century.
When Britain abolished the trade in 1807 it was the first major slave-trafficking nation to do so.
Blair has previously acknowledged Britain's rise to global pre-eminence was partially dependent on colonial slave labor and cabinet minister Peter Hain has said "sorry" for the role played by Northern Ireland and Wales in the trade.
Earlier on Wednesday, Kufuor said people should be careful when spreading accusations about slavery as some African countries, including Ghana, were not free from blame.
"If you study the slave trade, you will find that it was incidental to the history of those times," he told the Chatham House think-tank in London.
"Yes, among the trading partners perhaps some were worse than others. But I assure you if you come to Africa, if you come to Ghana, you will see that there were some very local participants in the trade," he said.
Kufuor said Britain, Spain, Portugal and other nations that came to Africa to promote the slave trade were guilty, but they were not alone.
"Some local indigenous groups were also guilty. So we have to be careful," Kufuor said.
European nations shipped slaves to the Americas from West African countries such as Ghana. However, some local tribal chiefs in Ghana were responsible for selling fellow Africans to the European slavers.
Blair said the focus now should be on stamping out modern-day slavery.
"We shouldn't forget that although that act of parliament was passed 200 years ago, there are still modern examples of slavery and people trafficking that we need to act against.

Now come with the reparations. Will we ever seem them?

[j-kid]

Mi haffi wait til mi get home, but thanks Tropi!!!


Noh matta whe wi sey bout yuh, yuh alright, SOMETIEMS.

[franksterr]

Has anyone seen the BBC documentary?
Here is a summary:He also looks at how slavery serves as the foundation for Britain's economic development and how pro-slavery arguments are still being used in today's political discourse.

Yeah...... Eric Williams of Trinidad did a excellent book on that, named "Capitalism and Slavery" well worth reading - basically showing that without the enslavement of Africans there would have been no Industrial Revolution and all the technologies that flowed from it.

[franksterr]

Now come with the reparations. Will we ever seem them?

Yes we will get reparations, just as how the American farmers did.....the precedent has been set.
An Apology is just not enough

[Tropicana]

Mi haffi wait til mi get home, but thanks Tropi!!!


Noh matta whe wi sey bout yuh, yuh alright, SOMETIEMS.

I am alright all the time and you love me me why don't you just admit it.

[Tropicana]

Yeah...... Eric Williams of Trinidad did a excellent book on that, named "Capitalism and Slavery" well worth reading - basically showing that without the enslavement of Africans there would have been no Industrial Revolution and all the technologies that flowed from it.

I've read it. Interesting that when he became Prime Minister of Trinidad....he banned his own books.

[Tropicana]

Here is part 2.

[Blackstar*]

Thanks for posting the videos, Tropicana. I didn't know they were on youtube.

One of the points raised in the documentary is that while the institution of slavery itself has ended, there is actual documented proof of its legacy living on in business, culture, socio-economics, and politics today. Most educated black people know this, but most "educated" white people do not and do not teach their children either at home or in school or in the media. This ignorance is at the crux of their "colour-blind" ideology where they disregard a large part of their own history and heritage and insist that we do the same.

[Tropicana]

The other thing that it is important to stress is that many who formed the Jamaican middle class got a serious leg up from their White fathers. Not all of them were slaveowners but they certainly worked within the system whether they were bookeepers or overseers.