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Slavery

My Lords, as has been said by many noble Lords, it is a privilege to follow my noble friends Lady Howells of St Davids and Lord Morris of Handsworth, both of whom spoke with great feeling about this important issue and both of whom drew attention to the fact that slavery still has echoes down to the present. I also point out that it has echoes beyond, too, because, as has also been pointed out, many of those who fought against slavery were slaves themselves. Here I declare an interest: I set up the Mary Seacole memorial statue appeal, in which my noble friend Lady Amos is playing a key role. It is intended not just to have a memorial; there is an educational side to that charity which will draw the attention of the British people to the achievements and actions of ethnic minorities, especially during the British Industrial Revolution and the period of Empire. I shall limit my remarks today to a couple of key issues, because there is too much to cover otherwise. I simply endorse some of the comments made about modern-day slavery. I also mention what I thought was a very impressive speech by Kofi Annan on Tuesday in this Parliament, when he reminded us of the effect that public opinion can have if it is mobilised. It is an extraordinary fact that, in the 1790s, Britain was the biggest slave-trading nation, but by 1807 it was the leading abolitionist nation. Something changed in that period which was very important. Economics was an important part of it, but there was a moral awareness, which is profoundly important in its own right. Kofi Annan reminded us of that when he said: "““Beware of moral blindness””." It is worth remembering that in 100 or 200 years’ time people may look back at what we said and did and wonder why we had the attitudes and values that we did. Our moral blindness towards some despotic and tyrannical states that still occupy this world is something that has concerned me for some time. I move on to that area now because one of the most interesting aspects of the period following 1807 is the way in which the law and morality became joined in a struggle between the primacy of law and the primacy of morality. That has lessons for us today; it is not just an academic point, as I will seek to explain. One key difference between the transatlantic slave trade and the periods of slavery before—which, as the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, rightly reminded us, go back through all societies at all times—is that, for the first time, modern science and technology, especially in the form of navigation and building large seaworthy ships, ships that could cross oceans, made it possible to transport very large numbers of human beings from one continent to another. The technology that underpinned the economies of many nation states, mainly but not wholly European, was to translate many years later into the absolute horror of the death camps in Nazi Germany and many other tyrannical states that disfigure the world today. In other words, science and technology can have enormous influence in improving our lot in life and our understanding of life, but it can also be used for evil ends. What happened after 1807 is a fascinating sequence of events, where the British Government were driven—for economic reasons, some would argue, though no one could seriously argue that it was not also driven by opinion about the immorality of the slave trade—to try to find a way of stopping it. The Royal Navy was used to stop the ships of all nations, and to release the slaves. As Kofi Annan reminded us the other day, they released an estimated 150,000, maybe more, although one shudders to think of how many slaves were thrown overboard when a slaver saw a Royal Navy ship approaching, knowing that he would be fined for every slave he had on board. That is the particular discrete horror of the slave trade. In 1807, George Canning, then Foreign Secretary, indicated the syndrome of a great power that wanted suddenly to impose its newfound morality on other nations by saying that abolition should not be, "““thwarted by the pertinency of other powers in allowing their subjects to continue this disgraceful traffic””." That is the first time that I have found a quote bya British politician that almost makes Donald Rumsfeld sound humble. The British then proceeded to use the British Navy to stop the slave trade, particularly stopping the ships of France—which they could do fairly easily because of the war at the time—as well as those of other nations. They fought by a process of force, law and diplomacy to stop the slave trade. Close allies such as Portugal were forced to stop the slave trade, not least because they were at the time occupied by the French during the Napoleonic Wars and the Government had to move to Brazil. They found that the only way of keeping British support was to sign up to the abolition of the trade. Portuguese ships continued the slave trade. United States ships were returned to ports in Africa and the slaves released. British naval ships entered Brazilian harbours and burned empty slave-trading ships in the harbours. There was a series of actions, many of them over a period of some 60 years when the force of the Royal Navy was used to impose its will on other nations. At the same time arguments were going on about whether this was lawful. The important lesson here is about international law and morality as two sides of a difficult coin. At times the law trumped morality and, in doing so, allowed the trade to continue. At other times morality trumped the law and stopped the trade in slaves. What the British occasionally did, for example when they found it difficult to win the approval of some states, was literally just to announce that any ships found to have the ability to carry slaves—which usually meant having handcuffs, shackles, an extra deck and extra water onboard—could be taken, and so they took them. The British were taken to court on many occasions, and found to be in breach of international law. In an example of the law trumping morality, in 1816, Lord Stowell declared—and I would not argue that he was legally wrong, but what is interesting is whether he was morally right or wrong—that the British were wrong because, in his view, nations were independent and equal, and one country could therefore not intervene against another on the high seas. The British ignored that and continued their practice of intercepting. In another case morality trumped the law: the Privy Council simply declared that because slavery was prima facie illegal, the Royal Navy could therefore do what it liked. There was no law or international arrangement saying that; international law was quite clear that it was wrong to intercept these ships and turn them back. There were various attempts to get the ships of other nations—particularly the United States, because it came out against the slave trade as early as a year or two after we did, although it did not enforce it—involved in an international policing exercise to intercept all slave-trade ships. It was not until the 1860s that the trade was finally abolished. That was really because of the civil war in the United States. The United States feared that Britain might back the south unless it agreed to British demands to end the slave trade. It then signed up to that agreement. Similarly, the Brazilians finally acceded because they wanted recognition by the British, having declared independence from Portugal. That brings me bang up to date. The struggle is always between an international morality which we all have in the form of views about despotic tyrannies around the world and what we should do about them, and the practice of the law. We assume—in a country where law is decided by a democratic institution, with human rights and so on—that the law should always triumph and that you should try to change it by parliamentary process. That is not such an easy assumption when you come to international law. There are many lessons to be learnt from the slavery issue, and I am touching on just one. This is unfinished business in international law and morality. We have a long way to go before people are truly free.