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Slavery

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, for initiating this debate. While recognising the title—eradicating contemporary slavery—I felt that it was important to call your Lordships’ attention to the legacy on the descendants of enslaved Africans, which I hope will be taken into consideration by Ministers. It is now common knowledge how valuable the enslaved African was to the plantation owners. However, not much is known about the cost to those who are the descendants 150 plus years later. Not being an academic I speak as a descendant of the enslaved African. Transportation from tropical Africa to the Caribbean took its toll and left its legacy in many ways. How the slaves were sold was very much a process of genetic selection. The males had to be strong and able to produce profit for the enterprise. There was no consideration of tribal identity and the enslaved were brutally separated from their families and their offspring. Today, family breakdown can be traced to the earlier brutality of those who trafficked in human beings. The legacy of transportation also left behind many health issues which continue today. More hypertension, more schizophrenia and the crippling disease of sickle cell anaemia have all been classed as a direct legacy of slavery and the sudden shift from one country to another. Most of those claims are merely anecdotes but writers and historians have been trying to bring to the attention of the public the role of slavery in those diseases. Besides family breakdown, a whole dependency culture was instilled by the slave owners which still exists today—taking charge of the islands in the Caribbean has been an uphill struggle for today’s citizens. They are still dependent on the colonisers to enter into trade—sugar, bananas, and so on. The story goes on. Dependency, lack of faith in the ability to do the task in hand, always looking for approval from the white population—the slave mentality was carefully crafted by the slave owners and it is still alive today. The prison of poverty is a legacy difficult to shake off. While the Caucasian speaks in billions, the black man speaks in hundreds because he was enslaved. He was robbed of his manhood and treated as a boy even when he was three score and 10. In these corridors I still hear echoes of, ““When I was in Africa my boy did or did not do this””, or, ““I am looking forward to seeing my boys in India””. Those statements are really heartfelt by me. When I hear them, I walk away. Slavery has also left a legacy of Creolisation. I refer to the rape of enslaved women by White plantation owners. Their issue, neither African nor Caucasian, have had a not altogether pleasant effect on the Caribbean people’s growth. Most of us will have read the story of Mr Rochester and Jane Eyre and of the poor Dominican woman described as a Creole. Was she demented or having a crisis of identity? Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, helped me to understand the real crisis of Mrs Rochester. Those noble Lords who have read the book may never have grasped what was going on for that descendant of an enslaved African. The descendants, try as they will to get out of the trap, are hamstrung even after 100 years. They still retain the ““auction”” mentality that brought them into the new world. The drug-dealing politics of today and other forms of weaknesses prevail and have already been inherited. All is not gloom. The enslaved descendants have shown remarkable resilience. They have retained their skills as artisans and medicine men; they have learned to be equally at home in the cabbage patch of poor housing in Britain, in the cornfields of America and in the drawing rooms of present-day society. Previously they entered only as servants but today some of them are owners—only a very few. They have learnt to print newspapers and even to manage the master’s business. They are found among the medical professions, yet still deep down they ask themselves, ““Am I good enough?”” This model exists. The descendants can be found in all walks of life but still accept that those less talented than themselves, if they are Caucasian, will always be in the driving seat. Researchers have only begun to look at this legacy, and I hope soon to be able to read a more sophisticated analysis. Woolman wrote of the slave trade and slavery that,"““a heavy account lies against us as a civil society for oppressions committed against people who did not injure us””." Injury still goes on. The legacy is alive. It is in all our institutions today. All, however, is not gloom. Again, now that we have won the bid for the Olympics in 2012, some of those descendants will no doubt bring ““pride to us all””, because by persistence the myth that black people cannot take their places in society is being eroded—but not quite fully.