How To Avoid A Bad Guilt-Trip: Just Say ‘Know’

Civitas, 22 June 2006

Next year marks the bicentenary of Britain’s abolition of the slave trade. In many ways, this anniversary would form a fitting occasion for a national day of celebration, a rallying point to foster social cohesion as well appreciation of this country’s glorious role in the past as a harbinger of liberty around the globe.
In our present-day victim culture, however it would seems, no one in this country shall be allowed to take any vicarious enjoyment or pride in this world-historic achievement of their country, without first having been made to eat a hefty slice of humble-pie for its past complicity in the practice.
A foretaste of the guilt-fest currently being planned for the country’s inhabitants next year in connection with its past involvement in the African slave trade can be savoured from a report in today’s Times entitled, ‘Slaver’s descendant begs forgiveness’.

Here, it is reported that earlier this month a 37 year old youth worker from Cornwall named Andrew Hawkins, who claims direct descent from the Elizabethan slave trader with whom he shares the same surname, begged forgiveness of the Vice-President of Gambia before a crowd of 25,000 Africans assembled there for the sins that his ancestor committed in relation to that practice. The latter-day Hawkins did so, apparently, along with a score of colleagues of his from a UK Christian charity named ‘Lifeline’ which had organised the trip.
To accentuate their contrition, so it is reported, Mr Hawkins and his colleagues had before the ceremony shackled themselves in chains similar to those used by European slave traders to bind African slaves in transporting them across the Atlantic.
Apparently, the Gambian Vice-President found it in her to forgive the assembled penitents in a magnanimous gesture that Mr Hawkins found most moving. Of his forgiver, Mr Hawkins remarked, she ‘accepted the apologies very graciously. She offered her forgiveness and then came forward and took the chains off. That was entirely impromptu and very moving.’
Concerning the value of his trip more generally, Mr Hawkins was no less impressed, being reported to have said:
‘It was one of the most memorable things I have ever done. You see just how deep are the wounds left by the slave trade really are. As someone with family links to the slave traders it was a very difficult thing to see the consequences of their actions.’
The report adds ominously that Mr Hawkins believes not enough is taught in Britain about its complicity in the slave trade and about the effect its complicity in that trade has had on Africa. So, next year, it is reported, he and his colleagues plan to walk from London to all the major slaving ports in the country.
What the Times report about next year’s planned walk omits to mention is that Mr Hawkins and his fellow guilt-ridden colleagues from Lifeline plan to make it in chains. As the charity’s website explains about next year’s planned walk:
‘A dramatic feature of the walk will be the slave coffle itself… [that is] walking as a group in yokes and chains. This symbolic action has been taking place under the name of the Lifeline Expedition in recent years. The expedition is a series of reconciliation journeys, which constitute a response to the legacy of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade… A frequent reaction of Africans of the Diaspora was “At last! Now we feel that white people are taking our story seriously. Thank-you – but so much more needs to be done.”
‘White people walking in an attitude of humility in the slave coffle … would surely be more appropriate than any sort of triumphalist commemoration [of the abolition of the slave trade]. It would certainly be in keeping with the attitude of William Wilberforce who once said: “I mean to take the shame upon myself, in common indeed with the whole Parliament of Great Britain, for having suffered this horrid trade to be carried under their authority. We are all guilty – we ought all to plead guilty.”’
So, now we in Britain know that we are not to be allowed to take any pride in our country’s lead in abolisheing this dastardly trade without first having been required to feel guilty for its earlier complicity in it.
But who the hell shouldn’t be required to feel guilt by that token? And what right have present-day Africans to forgive present-day Europeans for the complicity of their ancestors in this trade, when their own ancestors in Africa had been no less complicit in the practice? More to the point, what right have present-day Africans to demand more contrition from the British for past complicity of their ancestors in this trade, when so many parts of Africa remain riddled with the trade today?
Surely, rather than seeking to make whitey contrite for their forefathers’ role in the slave trade, present day Africans of the Diaspora should be more concerned about seeing the slave trade stamped out in the many parts of the African sub-continent in which it apparently still flourishes?
Tucked way on page 2 of today’s Times is a brief news report to the effect that a national police drive against human trafficking has discovered ‘a dozen girls, aged from 12 to 17 and mainly from countries such as Sierra Leonne and Ghana ..… [who have] been brought to Britain as sex slaves and …found on the streets discarded because they were pregnant.’ The report goes on to claim that as many as 8,000 such girls are working in brothels in Britain against their will.
A news report posted on the BBC News website in 2001 entitled ‘Africa’s trade in children’ gives some indication of the scale of the present-day slave trade in African children. It suggests that, whether they be British descendants of John Hawkins or present-day Diasporan Africans, all who profess any concern about this abominable practice have much better objects of their attention than the British public in general. The report states:
‘When war disrupts rural economies, children are forced onto the streets; In Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Sierra Leone and Liberia, where 10-year olds are sexually exploited at military bases.
‘In Luanda, ‘catorzinhas’ – 14-year-olds – are now fashionable playthings.
‘Even in peaceful regions, children are shipped t work as prostitutes n cities such as Douala, Lagos, Accra, Dakar, Libreville, and Abidjan.
‘Young Zairois are sold across the River Congo.
‘ The trade is growing in Cape town and Durban, and there are now thought to be more than 70,000 child prostitutes in Zambia.
‘ In Sierra Leone, child trafficking is largely in the hands of the Lebanese.
‘ The traffic is now growing from Africa to Europe and is treated almost like any other business transaction.’
Lest it be replied that the present-day complicity in slavery in many parts of parts of Africa is the legacy of past European involvement there in that trade, it is worth noting that, by the time the first European voyages to that continent took place, slavery and trading in slaves was already rife throughout Africa, as it was in many other parts of the world with the notable exception of England.
Indeed, according to the entry on the African slave trade in the web-based encyclopedia Wikpedia, it was slave traders in Africa who first introduced to the initial voyagers there from Europe the idea of using African slaves in European colonies in the Americas. As the Wikpedia entry puts it:
‘The idea of using black people from sub-Saharan Africa as slaves initially came from the existing Arabian and Persian slave trade along East Africa which Portugese sailors came into contact with in the fifteenth century. The Europeans had also noted the West African practice of enslaving prisoners of war.’
Moreover, so the article point out, Africans were not always the losers in this trade. It speaks of ‘the massive wealth black Africans were making from selling their own enslaved people to … Europeans.’
So who, then, owes an apology to whom as regards the slave trade?
Does Andrew Hawkins owe the Vice President of Gambia an apology for what his ancestor did to hers?
Or does she owe Mr Hawkins one for what one of her ancestors may have done to entice one of Mr Hawkins’ ancestors into participating in this appalling practice?
Or, as I prefer to see the matter, does neither owe either any form of apology?
And, irrespective of who it might be who deserves to apologise to whom for the sins of slavery in the past, wouldn’t the time of everyone who is in any way concerned about African slavery be spent far better in considering how best that continent may be rid of this vile, but still very much alive, barbaric practice, rather than in laying bad — because undeserved — guilt-trips on innocent third parties who have much better cause to celebrate the part that their country took in helping to stamp out this practice than they have to feel bad that, like practically every other, their country once took part in it?