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Slavery

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Howells, on giving us the opportunity to discuss this important issue and on the most impressive speech with which she introduced this debate. I will concentrate my remarks on the legacy of the slave trade on the Caribbean and the UK’s ongoing relationship with the countries of the Caribbean. As a general rule, I am not a great fan of political anniversaries. They lead merely to cloying self-congratulation. The 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade has been rather different. There has inevitably been an element of smugness about the fact that Britain took a lead in ending the trade in slaves, but this sentiment is not new. As Dr Eric Williams, the great Trinidadian academic and politician, put it some 50 years ago: "““British historians write almost as if Britain had introduced Negro slavery merely for the satisfaction of abolishing it””." The bicentenary has shone a spotlight on to an episode in our history that we have traditionally chosen not to confront, in terms of both its part in creating the wealth of our country and our ongoing responsibilities for its legacies. As an individual, with—as far as I know—no family involvement in the slave trade, I feel no personal guilt for the institution. As a citizen of Britain, I feel a sense of responsibility for its legacies in the Caribbean, because British slavery played such a central role in determining the ethnic composition of the Caribbean and because subsequent British rule played such a central role in determining its institutional and social structures. When we think about how to respond to the legacies of slavery, the starting point must therefore be an acceptance of some degree of ongoing responsibility for the well-being of these islands. I am not thinking here about reparations for those who suffered under slavery. As other noble Lords have pointed out, it is far too long ago for any kind of personal reparation to be either practical or desirable. Instead, there should be an ongoing acceptance by the British Government that their dealings with the Caribbean should be characterised by a generosity of spirit and action. What, then, are those legacies of the slave trade, and to what extent do they still require a personal and policy response from the UK? For Eric Williams, slavery and the racism that went with it were responsible for what he saw as the region’s ills, which he defined as, "““the domination of our society by racial and colour distinctions, the prevalence of crime and violence, the flimsiness of family structure, our propensity for conspicuous consumption, and our individualism””." If we accept this analysis, which I am broadly inclined to do, we must also accept that the role that Britain can play in addressing these issues is limited, not least by the understandable desire of the countries of the Caribbean to take their own decisions and not to be lectured by Britain any more on how to do things. However, there are a number of areas in which Britain, working with the grain of what the Caribbean is currently seeking to achieve, can make a difference. The most obvious area for co-operation is economic. If the problems facing Caribbean societies are not wholly economic, many are exacerbated by poverty and lack of opportunity. In this area, the framework within which the Caribbean can trade with Europe is one of the most important. Current trading patterns are very much a legacy of slavery and our subsequent imperial rule in the Caribbean. Sugar is the most obvious example ofthe historic trading patterns between the regions, but the same responsibility applies, for example, in relation to the trade in bananas. The banana trade between Jamaica and the UK was initiated as a result of a subsidy by Joseph Chamberlain in 1900, who wanted, as part of his plans for imperial preference,to encourage the growth of a Caribbean banana industry and to ensure that its products came here rather than to, as was more logical, the USA. An initial 10-year subsidy was agreed, and so began over a century of UK government support in various ways for the banana industry. The situation now is that, along with all other aspects of trade from the region, the ongoing survival of the banana industry depends on a trade regime that reflects the economic realities of the region. As Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, said a couple of years ago, the battle is not just about bananas; it is about the readiness of the WTO and the international trading community to meet the special problems of small island states that have vulnerable economies and very limited natural resources. Through the Lomé and Cotonou agreements, the EU has sought to address these problems, but as negotiations on the economic partnership agreement between the Caribbean and the EU reach a crucial point later this year, we need UK ministers and officials to press the Caribbean case. Over the years, that role was punctiliously performed by MAFF, but, as responsibility for agricultural trade negotiations has increasingly moved to the DTI, a rather purist free-trade mentality has taken over that does not always reflect the kind of ongoing responsibility for the well-being of the Caribbean to which I referred. We must ensure that the EPA, which is supposed to be based on the principle of partnership, leads not simply to increased market access but to increased, balanced and sustainable trade between the regions. I would welcome an assurance from the Leader of the House that the Government support such an approach and will pursue it during the negotiations later in the year. Incidentally, it is interesting to note that Sainsbury’s, by agreeing to source its fair trade bananas fromSt Lucia—a decision that in turn reflects changing consumer preferences—has done more to secure the industry in that island than the past two decades of trade negotiations. While we look to the Government to help to maintain and strengthen relationships between the two regions, both companies and individuals, through their purchasing decisions, can make a straightforward difference. Beyond the harsh realities and hard economics of trade relations, we can take some limited but worthwhile steps take to help Caribbean Governments to tackle some of the social challenges that face the Caribbean, and to which Eric Williams referred. I will mention just three. When the Prime Minister of Barbados visited Hull a couple of months ago to commemorate the abolition of slavery, he suggested that, to mark the bicentenary, new levels of collaboration between British universities and the University of the West Indies should be established. He suggested, among other things, the creation of Wilberforce scholarships to enable students from the Caribbean to study over here. I know that my old college, St Catherine’s at Oxford, is already in discussions about the creation of a scholarship that would commemorate the fact that Eric Williams was a student there. Other universities in the UK with such specific Caribbean links could do likewise. By definition, though, such programmes touch only a very small number of individuals, and programmes that benefit large numbers tend to be prohibitively costly. However, two initiatives could be taken that would have a broader impact, particularly among young people across the Caribbean. Given that there is an accepted need to increase the number of local entrepreneurs in the region, the UK could support and sponsor a youth enterprise week, such as has taken place with increasing success in the UK over recent years. In our youth enterprise week we have a template that could be relatively easily exported and which, at manageable cost, could hopefully stimulate many young people in the Caribbean to use their creativity and energies in a productive way. The second initiative, which is very dear to my heart, and in which I declare an interest, is a plan to use the power of cricket—still potent, despite the recent travails—to encourage children and young people to take education more seriously and, in a region second only to sub-Saharan Africa in its incidence of HIV/AIDS, to learn more about how to avoid the disease. If ever there were a cultural legacy that binds us, it is cricket, and, as the Playing for Success programme in the UK has demonstrated, education centres at cricket grounds can be a powerful tool to encourage children to learn. Wearing a professional hat, I am working on a programme called Sport for Life!, which will establish an education hub at the Kensington Oval in Barbados later this year and go on to do the same in all the other islands with World Cup grounds, many of which are now likely to be underused. The programme has wide support in the Caribbean and here. It could form the basis for new sporting and educational links between the UK and the Caribbean for many years to come. In concentrating on the Caribbean today, I am not seeking to underplay the importance of tackling the legacy of slavery in the UK, Africa and wherever slavery in its various forms is still a brutal reality of life. But without slavery, the Caribbean as we know it would simply not exist, which is why its well-being should command our continuing support.