Should we apologise for slavery, colonisation
and imperialism?
Dr Evan Harris MP is backing the call by the
National Assembly Against Racism for an apology for the slavery, colonisation
and imperialism of Britain’s past. When I saw this reported in the
Bill Jacobs column in the Oxford Mail on 11 June, I wrote to Dr Harris to
challenge him. Dr Harris believes the Millennium is an appropriate time
to say sorry and take constructive action to tackle the legacies of the
slave culture. He says ‘Slavery and imperialism left a dreadful legacy.
It is not just a question of making a gesture - although it would be an
important gesture - but also doing something for the black community in
Britain.’
I told Dr Harris it was a mistake to confuse
the British Empire with slavery. I explained why. If British ‘colonisation
and imperialism’ had not taken place many territories would still
be living in conditions of primitive savagery such as we still see today
in Rwanda, Ethiopia, Angola, and other African countries. I worked for the
British Empire and know the great good it achieved, though obviously there
were exceptions. I was in many different countries, including several years
in West Africa, so I know what I am talking about.
Just to take one example, the British were
implored to take over what became the Gold Coast colony by the Africans
themselves (against the wishes of the Foreign Office). I know this because
I researched it for my 1962 book THE CONSTITUTIONAL LAW OF GHANA.
The Ga people implored the British to enter in order to rescue them from
the savage Ashantis, and they very reluctantly did so.
Many people write as though Europeans invented
African slavery. In truth it was a feature of life there long before European
traders arrived. From early times slaves were sent from Africa to Turkey,
Arabia, Iran and elsewhere. African custom recognised slavery as a feature
of tribal life. When Lagos in Nigeria was annexed by the British in 1861
it was for the purpose of suppressing slave smuggling. The first ordinances
of the Gold Coast colony when it was established by Britain freed those
treated as slaves by Africans themselves under their own customary law (Gold
Coast Emancipation Ordinance 1874).
In any case I do not think it is appropriate
for the present generation to ‘apologise’ for things their ancestors
did. We need to remember that pregnant saying of L P Hartley’s in The
Go-Between: ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently
there’. There is something patronising - even absurd - about such
presumptuous ‘apologies’ of one generation for others in the
distant past. No one living today has any responsibility for what was done
before they were born.
In his reply to my letter Dr Harris agreed
that not everything about our imperialist past was bad, and that as empires
go the British one may well have been one of the best. Nevertheless, said
he, it cannot be denied that some of Britain’s ports got rich on the
slave trade, and the repercussions of that still reverberate for some of
the black community in Britain. He went on-
‘It is because of these continuing
repercussions that an apology would not be inappropriate. I can partially
agree that there is a danger of being patronising or gimmicky about such
a policy of apology. Nevertheless, I think there would be much to commend
for this apology, and such an apology should not necessarily be taken to
mean that people living today have responsibility for what was done by earlier
generations. One, however, has a duty to recognise consequences (as for
prisoners of war of the Japanese), and do what one can to move on.’
I question this. The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘apology’ as ‘An
explanation offered to a person affected by one’s action that no offence
was intended, coupled with the expression of regret for any that may have
been given . . .’ This shows that the sort of apology Dr Harris intends
would be inappropriate. The African slaves were not affected by our actions,
as Dr Harris admits. And what about an apology from the descendants of those
people, Africans themselves, who sold their fellow citizens into slavery
and pocketed the proceeds?
Published as the Oxford TimesGuest Column on 9 July
1999.
