With a growing sense of despair I read of moves afoot to remove a statue of David Livingstone which currently stands on Cathedral Square in Glasgow. This is because he has been accused of benefitting from slavery, having worked in a cotton mill in Edinburgh at the age of ten. What is particularly distressing is this campaign is being driven by academics and one is left wondering what has become of British educational institutions. Is there nobody learned enough to point out to these fools that this man actually devoted most of his life to ending, not promoting slavery and died in pursuit of this goal? Anyone who can read will find out with ease that he was appalled by what he saw in Africa and the trade in innocent Africans that he tried to counter was not run by the British, but by African warlord chiefs and Arabs who seem to escape mention in the anti-slavery furore currently.
In his quest to stop the trade he endured enormous hardship and faced constant danger the likes of which his modern-day critics cannot even imagine. How distressed Livingstone would be by the existence of widespread slavery today on the African continent he tried so hard to free of this vile practice. Sadly, there are apparently no Livingstones out there who care enough to tackle the issue.
Britain’s imperial past has recently been in the headlines following the Royal tour of the Caribbean by Prince William and his wife Kate. They were repeatedly attacked and faced angry demands from politicians and the general populace for reparations to make amends for their crimes of the past. William and his courtiers did what the British do so well these days and grovelled. Nobody had the gumption to point out to the baying mob that Britain, with the Royal Navy in the vanguard, launched one of the great naval campaigns of the 19th century to stop the human trafficking coming out of Africa, at the cost of scores of thousands of British lives. And they could add the fact that a major impediment to stopping the trade was curbing the alacrity with which greedy black warlords were marching their captives to the coastal markets. They could also point out the British Empire also brought peace and great prosperity to much of the world; the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Singapore, to name a few examples.
Unfortunately, there was no mention of this and so the demand for compensation remains on the political table with the handwringers pondering the quantum. Whatever happens, this transaction will involve people who never enslaved anyone, having to pay people who were never slaves, but there will be more questions requiring answers.
Will the money be sourced only from white people in the UK or across the board in which case millions of Britons of south-Asian and African descent must contribute. Will anyone check to see if any blacks living in Britain have ancestors who were involved in facilitating the trade by supplying the ships with human cargo. Will Britain be compensated for the capture of whites from Britain’s shores by the Barbary pirates of Africa? This white slave trade is estimated at over one million people. Will Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, whose parents come from west Africa be considered a victim, or were his ancestors involved in loading the ships? Will Education Secretary Nadhim Zarhawi, who is Arab be asked to help pay the bill or is he excused because he is not a European? One wonders if this will this result in poor whites having to pay rich, mixed-race ‘blacks’ like F1 driver Lewis Hamilton and footballer Mason Greenwood? Will Lewis Hamilton, only qualify for 50% of the final figure or the full amount – and will he have to fund the other ‘white’ 50%? And will there be any credit given for the billions the British have poured into Africa and the Caribbean in aid in the post-colonial era?
I suspect none of these issues will be raised because the UK ruling class is gutless when it comes to standing up to their critics and defending their history for fear of being called a racist.
Reading a new book by Norman Scott, former lover of Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe, it is plain the rot set into the British political establishment a long time ago and it has been downhill ever since.
Scott, now 82, then a vulnerable, mentally ill young man, writes of his rape by Thorpe at Thorpe’s mother’s house in November 1961. He then goes on to describe how later, his assailant tried to have him murdered when he appeared to pose a threat to his political career.
The reason for my interest in this sordid saga is Thorpe went on to try and improve his political appeal by leading the charge to use military force to destroy Rhodesia after the unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) in 1965. When planners baulked at committing troops on the ground, Thorpe demanded the RAF step into the breach and launch an air campaign. He was cheered on in the House of Commons when calling for this course of action and earned the sobriquet ‘Bomber’ Thorpe as a result.
So it turns out, when he was not planning to kill his spurned former lover, he was working on killing his fellow Englishmen, most of whom had found themselves in a faraway land, at the behest of successive British administrations, but who were now threatened with death and destruction because Her Majesty’s government had suddenly changed its view on the morality of colonial exercise it had initiated.
Thorpe’s approach was a harbinger of more of the same that was to come as the post war political space in Britain was filled with left-wing leaders spreading a message of guilt because they insisted the country’s imperial past was not an act of greatness but in fact a monstrous crime for which the electorate must immediately atone. The message hit home, the voters sank to their knees, and it looks like they are still there.